the eye

It intimidates me. Sitting there, at eye level. Pointing is omniscient eye right through me. It resembles that of a vulture -- a pale blue eye with a film over it. Whenever it falls upon me my blood runs cold, and so by degrees---wait, rewind. Wrong story. There is an interesting tale regarding Edgar Allen Poe and me, but that I will save for another day.

Our new computer came equipped with a camera. Yes, I know that's not exactly new technology, but it was to me. Now, I have the technology, as they say, to give in to my friends' pleas to spend my time on Skype, if I so choose. Or any other number of uses for that creature perched up there above my screen.

The thing is, I'm 97% sure I don't choose. Think about this. With three teens and a spouse, my time at the computer is limited anyway. I get the hours between when my high school daughter gets dropped off and my college daughters get up. Granted, sometimes that's a wide window. Still, it's my time. It doesn't belong to anyone else. And besides spending the required half-hour with online jigsaw puzzles and Facebook, I really should spend that time in gainful employment.

Besides there is a bigger problem. If you put the camera on me right now, here's what you might see: My pajamas, which could be the new pretty purple ones or possibly the orange Godspell T-shirt and mismatched pants. Glasses, out of current fashion (possibly out of any fashion) because my eyeballs can't handle the thought of sticking foreign objects (contacts) into them so early. Hair that looks like it went through a salad shooter. And yes, I did drive my kid school this way. Now you know the real reason I do not speed on the way to school. This is not a pretty sight. This is why I have professional photos done. It's not a daily occurrence, mind you, but like I said, I've got to grab my time when I can get it.

Sometime last year, I saw a video presentation on Nehemiah. No not the easiest book in the Bible to find nor the most often quoted. So if you can't find it, don't feel bad. But the point that stood out was his reply to messengers who came wanting him to stop working on rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem to attend to their business. Not his business--theirs. Perhaps it was important business, or good business (in this case, it wasn't), but it wasn't his. And so his reply--

"I cannot come down; I'm doing a great work here." I guess that's how I really feel about the idea of letting one more technological media ogre in my life. I love connecting with those I care about on Facebook. I love getting back in touch with my long-lost friends. But sometimes, I have a great work to do, and if I dare come down, I can easily get lost in other things. The same thing happens with the jigsaw site, or that drawer that needs reorganizing. Or a good book, or even a bad book if I really want to procrastinate. It's so easy to avoid putting another brick in that wall (no not a reference to Pink Floyd). Especially when it seems like that's all I ever do, and the wall seems just as infinite as ever. Just this morning, I spent a couple hours putting together an intelligent query to a new magazine about an article I wanted to write. Less than an hour later, they sent a reply proving they had spent far less time reading my letter than I had reading their magazine. That brick seems like such a total waste of time.

But, I know I'm doing the work I am meant to do. So, I'll keep on stacking bricks. Please understand. When stacking bricks, you have to make choices about what you won't try to do at the same time. If you don't, you may start to drop them. And only bad things can happen when one starts to drop bricks off a ladder.

What choices do you make to let go from your life to stack your own bricks? You'll probably never see me online on chat. And I may never turn that camera on live. At least, if I do, I'll make sure I'm dressed first.

jill and the three ladies

Please join me today at http://sunnebnkwrtr.blogspot.com/where I am a guest blogger. Stop and read some of Carole's writings on your way!

so many books, so little time

They say a silent blog is a bad thing, and so this has been. Busy I have been, since our return, reading. Reading, in fact, twenty young adult novels as quickly as I can possibly get them finished. Preferably before the school year began, but as I have two to go, that feat was not attained, clearly.

Each year since our oldest was in seventh grade, I have had the privilege of helping to coach the junior high Battle of the Books team. Think literary Jeopardy. The kids read as many of the books off the list of twenty as they can before the battling begins. Then they meet other teams from the area and are asked questions about what they read. I don't mean questions like "What was the theme of such and such book?" I mean questions like, "What color eyes did John Smith have?" They've got to know these books. And so do I to be able to coach them. After reading each one, I write up about fifty questions on it to quiz them and hope I remember the answers.

I do get some pretty curious looks reading Redwall on the train, but overall, it is a great experience. Beyond exposing me to some excellent writing and allowing me to rediscover that junior high students are a fun and interesting lot, I have learned a quite a bit from reading young adult literature. Things such as:

• Every teenager has at least one parent who is dead or has abandoned him. Failing this, a sibling dying of cancer or a parent in jail makes an adequate substitute, but it should be understood that this is subpar. If your teenager is missing this in his or her life, someone has failed somewhere.

• Weasels, rats, and snakes are always evil. Always. Cats are iffy. I think the weasel anti-defamation league should have something to say about this. But apparently there is little to be done about it, because it is pretty universal. Cats probably don't resent it at all, though. Being the independent sort they are, they prefer to keep everyone guessing.

• Fourteen-year-old boys who have never so much as hiked a half-mile or mastered the secret decoder ring inside the Lucky Charms box can defeat a team of international spies on the side of a cliff with a week of training and the right amount of determination and wisecracking attitude.

• Cover artists do not read the books they do artwork for. If they did, they would not draw a heroine with red hair when she clearly is described with raven black tresses. Or a hero on a motorcycle when he has a gold convertible. Actually, I learned this a long time ago when my first book came out and I looked at the cover and, instead of the thrill that is supposed to run through you, I went, "The guy's eyes aren't supposed to be brown." So when a kid is asked in battle, "What color is Mennoly's hair?" and she gets it wrong, can she at least share the blame here?

• Rural grandmothers are the best relatives to have on earth. They will do things that, if you did them, could get you arrested or ostracized, and they will take you along for the ride. When I grow up, I want to be just like Grandma Hiddle. (Walk Two Moons, Sharon Creech). Huzzah.

• The most interesting people are always drama geeks or writers. But I knew that already.

it's a long way from the kids' table

This was not supposed to be how it happened.

I received one of those "rock your world" calls the other day. It was my cousin's wife, and the news was not good, as it would not likely be if she was calling rather than emailing or sending a Christmas card. My cousin, who is my age, is expected to die of pancreatic cancer within the year. But it is far more than just my cousin we are talking about here.

Yes, we grew up together, riding ponies that bit at his house in Wisconsin, swimming in the muddy creek and riding home in the trunk of my parent's car, sledding wildly down the big hill out back of his school, sitting at the kids' table at one of the sisters' houses for Thanksgiving meals while the adult table seemed to stretch through three rooms.

Things changed as we grew older and those sisters started dying off. Ties that the women had held together weakened and broke, and family members scattered. The two of us are some of the only ones who held on.

This wasn't supposed to happen. We were the two who were supposed to make it. The generation who was supposed to beat the family curse. The ones left standing. Except, now we're not.

As I've mentioned before here, my mother's family has polycystic kidney disease, the most common inherited disease in this country. Yet it gets very little press. What is worse, it leads to other diseases, among them the one that is taking the life of my cousin and the one that took the lives of his mother and brother, brain aneurysms. Those don't even get reported in the stats. Neither does the cause of my own mother's death, which was officially infection after a successful kidney transplant, not the disease itself.

Neither does the collateral damage, like the fact that two husbands, who adored their wives and lived to care for them in their need, drank themselves to death after their ladies were gone. It does not count the families that scattered when the wives and mothers that typically glue extended families together were not there to be that adhesive, or the man who watched first his wife and then four of his six children die. Statistics do not cover such things. They do not cover my cousin,who is alone in his family, having already lost his mother, father, and brother, nor his wife, who will lose him.

Why tell you all this? Because one disease should never be able to do all this to generations. Ours is not the first generation it has devastated, and I have no idea if it will be the last. I do know my cousin chose not to have children because of this gene, so I am the only one of our two families who has the potential to pass it on. I don't know about the other cousins with whom I have lost contact.

Other diseases devastate families, but they do not devastate generations of them, and several across the board. I don't have an answer today, just sadness. And anger, and loneliness. We were supposed to be the only two left. The two who beat this thing. The two who showed that this beast did not have to win. Only now I'm the only one left standing. And it's a pretty lonely place to be.

dinner by the rhine

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He had a difficult time getting a word in between the roar of passing trains (about 3-400 a day he said) and the near-equal roar of the men talking at the table nearby. It was obvious which one annoyed him more.

We had sat down to a late dinner in our last town of the European tour—Bacharach, Germany. Next to us was a lone German man enjoying his beer and, seemingly, the atmosphere, though the train tracks not three feet away didn't feel terribly atmospheric. He started to talk to us, and as time went by, we struck up a conversation that lasted the rest of the evening, until I realized we absolutely had to start our trek up the hillside to our hostel in the gathering dark.

He had worked in several industries, including tourism, had taken and taught classes in other countries, and all in all truly enjoyed sitting around meeting people from other countries. In the middle of the conversation, he paid my daughters and me the best compliment I think we got all vacation. “You see,” he told us, nodding at the four people sitting nearby, “There is the difference between travelers and tourists. Tourists go places. They take pictures. They meet other tourists, talk to people from their own country, then go home and tell people about the places in their pictures and tick them off in a book to say they've been there.

Travelers learn about where they are. Travelers want to know about the people, the politics, the history—travelers talk to the people who live there, and eat with them, and shop with them. They”—he looked at the four Americans who had just met at the restaurant but were already laughing loudly and swapping stories--"are tourists. You are travelers.”

Well, that's enough to give someone a bit of a swelled head. But it felt so good, knowing, really, that all the hard work of research, learning, and listening had paid off. Knowing that our teenagers had acquitted themselves as individuals with inquiring minds that wanted to know rather than spoiled American girls with permanently twitching texting thumbs. Sometimes, one does have hope for them. Knowing we had learned quite a lot beyond how to get to the riverboat dock and train station.

Is there anything wrong with being a tourist? Not particularly. People have different reasons for going where they want to go. If I start looking down my nose at a tourist, well, I can't learn anything from him, can I? But I know that, years from now, even as the pictures in our scrapbook may be of castles in Bacharach, the best memories will be of dinner and our new friend, learning about the German government system, health care, and education, punctuated by trains, three or four hundred a day, running down the Rhine River.

on comings and goings

And now, having returned from our five-week odyssey, here are:

Jill's Top Ten things I missed from home (besides my husband):

10--Air conditioning. Yep. Spoiled.

9--A washer and dryer any time I want them. With instructions in English. You haven't truly had fun until you've tried to figure out how to wash your clothes in Italian. The buttons on the machine are not at all self-explanatory.

8--My big computer screen and internet service. Now, I can see my vacation pictures without having to scroll down the screen for each one. Most of my friends have seen my pictures on Facebook before I actually have. Besides, netbooks were not made for eyes of a certain age, which cannot read that tiny print very well. Hence all the typos I made.

7--Free public restrooms in abundance. When you've gotta go, it's either fifty cents or go to a restaurant and buy a drink to use their bathroom. Which kind of defeats the purpose. Maybe it's a conspiracy.

6--Being able to read whether I'm buying shampoo or depilatory in the grocery store. It does really matter.

5--My bed! Not a hard hostel bed buy my soft, gently waving water bed. I love you.

4--Water, out of my fridge, for free, anytime. With ice. I cannot believe I've taken water for granted.

3--My kitties and dog. Even if I just had to clean more hair off the furniture than should come off a pride of lions in five weeks, let alone three cats and a dog. I missed them.

2--My clothes. Any clothes other than the four outfits I have been wearing for five weeks. I'm talking the extra-large T-shirts I usually reserve for painting in are looking good right now.

1--No smoking in public!! Oh, thank you for US smoking laws! I am ever so grateful. Really. It is so different when that is what you're used to.

But not to be forgotten--Jill's Top Ten List of things she will miss from Europe:

10--All the British schoolchildren in trains who gave her a terrible urge to go home and watch Harry Potter.

9--Being able to take a five-minute ride to another country, just to take a picture and say you've been there.

8--Easy and clean pubic transportation. Except during Italian transport strikes. We are so far behind in this aspect.

7--The sense of and appreciation for history. They have paintings older than our entire country.

6--The sense, in Southern Europe at least, that we are not controlled by the clock but vice versa.

5--Flower stalls on the street. It makes your day happier just to see them.

4--Fruit stands on the street as well. You get to talk to the people involved in producing your food. Plus, there is no excuse for not having fresh fruit.

3--The attitude in most of Europe that, if you do something stupid, you probably shouldn't have been doing it. Contrasted with the American attitude that, if you get hurt or inconvenienced, someone else is to blame and must be sued. It was rather refreshing.

2--Having people be surprised I'm an American. Sorry to say, but that was generally a compliment. The stereotypical loud American tourist, in volume and in dress, is alive and well.

1--Meeting people on trains, in restaurants, yes, even in campgrounds who want to talk to strangers and share stories. Americans want to be isolated. Why is that? Some of our best moments were had talking to complete strangers at the next table or sharing photo albums with the funny French couple we met on a walk. I don't do that at home. Maybe I should look for it more often?

More on some of these next time . . . it's good to go, and it's good to come home. I think that's the way it should be.

i think i can?

Forty-something women with kidney transplants and several pounds too many on their never-athletic frames should not believe they can scramble up the side of a mountain after three able-bodied teenagers. Wearing a skirt.

Yet there I was last week, high in the Bavarian Alps, on a top secret mission from middle child, clinging to an old wire fence and truly pulling myself up a vertical ascent over tree roots and rocks, trusting that said fence could reliably bear my extra pounds and not uproot itself and send me tumbling to my demise. In a skirt.

When we realized that middle child's GPS was leading us not along a horizontal path but straight up the mountain (and who said north is not up??), I nearly took a pass. I almost said, “Just too hard. I cannot do this. We've got to go back down down and forget about it.” I simply could not imagine how I was going to have the stamina for that climb, particularly not being quite certain we'd even find what she sought.

But I didn't. I could not disappoint her and her quest. Which is how I ended up on the fence. In a skirt. Partway up we noticed a young man climbing behind us. I'm pretty sure he saw way more of my middle aged booty than he ever bargained for. Not only that, but the poor guy was only taking that insane route because he thought we were in search of the perfect photo, and he wanted it too. When he found us all gathered around middle child's treasure at the top instead, going nuts over a box of google eyes, paper clips, and other odd items, he got very confused. Right now, there are probably stories circulating somewhere in Asia about four women doing occult rituals on top of the Alps in Germany. It will probably create a new tourist destination.


I think I can. Climbing, I felt less like the optimistic little engine that could and more like the stubborn mule that would, no matter whether it was a good idea or not. In the end, however, it doesn't rally matter, does it? Either one gets you to the top. Sometimes, optimism fails you, and sheer tenacity is all there is to cling to. And it will get you to the top, if you hang on to the fence for dear life and just keep going. By the way, the view from there is beyond spectacular.

surprise

I did not expect one of the more spiritually moving moments of my life to take place in St. Peter's Basilica. Yes, I am aware that it is a church, after all, and the largest church in the world, apparently. And I am a pastor, so churches are supposed to be somewhat moving, I suppose. But I am not Catholic, and so it was not moving for the reasons it is for so many Catholic people who venture there. I expected to be more moved by the beauty and awesomeness of God's creation in the Mediterranean and the Alps, and I was in the former and expect to be in the latter.

But it was standing before Michelangelo's Pieta that blew me away. I felt first the pain in Mary's face, past the shock of the death of her son into the empty resignation stage. I wondered how a man could possibly have grasped that look that every mother would know instinctively. I actually had tears.

Then there was the perfect form of every sinew of Christ's feet, arms, and ribs. I almost felt as if I was looking at the real thing, and seeing again that love that had endured this horrible thing for me.

Meanwhile, so many people were taking their flash photos and moving on, so they could put it in an album and say, “Yup, I saw that famous statue there in Rome.” And I could barely walk away. I just wonder how many people traveled around the world to see this, then completely missed what it was there for.

Another important quality for writers and travelers, whether in life or in the world—a sense of wonder and a willingness to be surprised.

leaps of faith

My idea of adventure has typically been switching laundry detergents, so it may surprise some people to learn that I would, as previously mentioned, point to a dot on a foreign map and declare that my family would go there in two days. But certainly, writers and travelers must also possess a sense of adventure.


Now, that does not have to mean a willingness to jump out of planes or volunteer for a knife-throwing class. We all know where our own personal sense of adventure threshold is. One of mine, for instance, was reached swimming in the Cinque Terre, when our daughters decided to join the cliff jumpers. Now, you have to know, none of us swims particularly well. But, this beach (using the term loosely; the "beach" was a group of large slate rocks) was quite sheltered, and the rocks from which people jumped faced inland, not out to sea. Still, they were high, by my standards.


Middle child was the first to go, and in her usual straightforward manner, she walked up to the mid-height cliff, sized it up, and jumped before she could worry about it too much. Then ventured oldest child, who hesitated long and much. She liked not the look of the rocks beneath. So, in her typical fashion, she quite logically went up to the highest outcrop, about thirty feet, and leapt from there instead. She was the only girl willing to do so that day. It is not the first time in her life; she will as a rule climb up or jump off of walls that only guys will tackle. I could handle this only because I watched through the lens of a camera. Somehow, this distanced me from the actual events, and I did not have to cope with the fact that my offspring were hurling themselves into the Mediterranean from heights greater than our rooftop.


A sense of adventure led us last evening to possibly our only peaceful moment in Rome. Against middle child's protests that we were going in a ramp that stated “Exit only,” we walked, rambling into the Roman Forum area after hours and nearing sunset. Which is why we found the top of a hill, overlooking the city, with only two young families to share the moment of a perfect sunset over matching pink buildings and glowing marble. Without a willingness to scout out the road less traveled, we would have missed that glorious moment.


I don't want to get home and say I saw the Colosseum, the Eiffel Tower, and the Mona Lisa. I want to say I saw a perfect sunset over Rome, I found a church in a tiny plaza that had a stunning painting (we did), and I watched my kids try something new and didn't hold them back. That's not just what travel and writing are about. It's what life is about.

we'll be in another universe this evening

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One of the first articles I may write upon returning home is The Truth about Riding Eurail. (Working title, obviously.) Travel guides make it sound so painless. Streamlined websites appeal to the vacationer who assumes the rail travel must be equally streamlined. And it is, to a point. But there is so much they don't tell you.

Bringing me to the third quality it is good to possess as both a traveler and a writer—flexibility. Previous blog posts from Europe have discussed maintaining a sense of humor and being observant. Now, flexibility.

Originally, plans had us hopping a train from Barcelona to Geneva for a few days in Switzerland before Italy. Originally, until the guy at the ticket counter in Paris looked up from his ever-clicking computer and said, “non.” What do you mean, “Non”? We have Eurail passes. Good anywhere, anytime, right? That's what the posters say. The posters neglect to mention that those American passholders still have to make reservations, and sometimes making them several days in advance is clearly not enough. Attempting practically every city between the two as a way stop availed us nothing; the answer was still a firm, “Non.” No reservations possible. All trains full. Well, only one train going, so the one train was full. What to do?

Cancel inn reservations, point to a dot on the map in France between Spain and Italy, and say, “There. We're going there for two days instead.” And so we did. We found a little hotel that promised on the website it decorated its rooms and floors “like the five continents, so your stay will be in another universe.” Their décor was cute, if their geography woeful, and the price was definitely right. It wasn't what we had planed, but it was its own good experience, if we were willing to embrace it.

This we did, and a day in a hotel room doing absolutely nothing after the pace of Paris and Barcelona, then a day at the beach, proved a very needed blessing. Montreaux, Switzerland, another day. This, day, flexibility.

look before you leap

In travel as in writing, it pays to be observant. I have always said that was my greatest weakness as a writer. A new book, The Invisible Gorilla, discusses a study in which people watching a video failed to notice a gorilla walking across the screen among the people. It is quite possible I would be the one person who would not see it if a gorilla actually crossed a room I occupied, not just a video. Of course, it is also possible I would be the one investigating an interesting bug on the opposite wall, so maybe my observance just flows in other directions.

Here in Europe, observance is a survival skill. There are the small things, like the Barcelona train station where I failed to observe that the toilet paper was distributed on a roll outside of the stall by the entrance. That would have been good information to have had.

Then the more important ones. Three times in the last two days, we have boarded the wrong train. Twice it was on the right track, just a few minutes earlier than the one we expected. Once it would have been a missed attraction if we had stayed on the wrong train. Once, four of us did end up stuck on it when the doors closed and my husband was stranded on the other side. He took the correct train, and as ours was going the same way, we met part way.

The final time, it would have been much more serious. The four of us (without said husband) jumped on the train we assumed he was already upon, rushed up the stairs, and looked for seats. I paused just to ascertain from the bartender that we were on the correct train. “A Marsailles?” “Marsailles? O non. A Paris!” “Non Non Non!!!” We all wailed as we ran to get off the train before the doors closed. Once train doors close in France, there is no getting off or on. Believe me. Even if the train is on the right track at approximately the right time, check the window, the arrival board, and anything else to make sure. Difficult to do when you're afraid of missing yet another one and your husband is alone without his Eurail Pass.

Then there was observance in the metro station. Our last night in Barcelona, I noticed a young man rushing through the station. Something about him looked wrong. I could not have said precisely what, just something. He was dressed like a bad American tourist, but he did not otherwise fit the profile. He was too young and too Spanish looking. He jerked awkwardly through the crowd, looking at people yet rushing through them in an odd sort of dance. He was also checking out my daughters' derrieres, which happens not infrequently at home and very frequently in Spain. So I was watching him. As it happens, he was checking them out not for the usual reasons but for wallets, as a few yards ahead of us I saw him pickpocket another woman's purse and veer off quickly. It was so fast I was not even sure of what I saw. But noticing that there was something not quite right made me more vigilant around him, which kept us safer (though we had been well versed in the ways of avoiding being pickpocketed).

So, I am hoping that travel this summer will improve my writing by improving my observance. At least, I am hoping for no more wrong trains.

to pee or not to pee?

Thirty years ago, on my first visit to Paris, I fell in love with the Montemartre District, the artist area around Sacre Couer Basilica. I had read that it has turned into a giant Parisian Wisconsin Dells (without the thrill rides and with considerably more adult interest). Nevertheless, one must go. With hundreds of people around, we needed a meeting place, and I suggested a kiosk to the right of the basilica. Little did I know.

Shortly after leaving child #3 and my husband there, they noticed an odd smell in the area. I noticed an odd liquid on the stairs nearby. Quite soon, sure enough, we watched as one young man went behind the kiosk, presumably did his business, and nonchalantly left, pulling up as he went. Then another. And another. And several more. Who says only women go in pairs? This, in spite of the fact that a public bathroom was right down those wet, smelly stairs. Some old world traditions die hard. Being the careful, shielding mother I am, I told the girls they should sneak around the corner and yell 'Boo!' at an opportune moment.

Though I certainly witnessed this thirty years ago, I was saddened by the way the are has been treated through the years. The basilica is as wondrous as ever and the street musicians as engaging, but the obnoxious bracelet hawkers combined with the broken glass and the smell of beer and urine almost destroy the finest view in Paris. Is it because this tourist attraction makes no money that is is forgotten in the caretaking department? Other cities take note—tourists don't really care for this type of atmosphere.

In fact, as a video we saw before we left home told us, Parisian police are attempting to crack down on public peeing. They issue ticket if they catch you, ah, issuing. But not, apparently, on Montmartre, as the kiosk was clearly a well known peepee palace and no one cared. So, clearly, there are places in Paris to pee or not to pee.

the kindness of strangers

I have found that there is a difference between being polite and being kind. I discovered this, of all places, at the Eiffel Tower. Yes, we have spent the past week in Paris, and as it is difficult to write about American national holidays when I am nowhere near America, I'm taking a break.

But back to the tower. A poor soul was attempting to take her beloved's picture on top of the Eiffel Tower, as beloved's everywhere are wont to do, but she could not keep the hordes of people from walking between her camera and her man. Seeing her predicament, I told her, “I'll block, you shoot,” and I stood in the way of the throng for a few seconds. She responded, “It's always the Americans who are the nice ones.” I thought that was amusing, coming in a country notorious for thinking Americans rude and vice versa.

But the reason behind Parisians thinking Americans rude is that Americans too often lack politeness, manners, and offend the Parisian sense of what is “simply not done.” Like talking loudly on the subway, eating on the run, or not greeting a shopkeeper. Or possibly wearing sequined tight T-shirts with “I Heart New York” emblazoned on them. And the reason Americans think Parisians rude is that they put this premium on manners, while we tend to place it on friendliness; more of a “help a brother out” sort of attitude that notices what someone needs and tries to fill that need.

Better, worse, just different, who's to say? There are pros and cons to both. I'm partial to friendliness because it's what I know. And, I guess I have to say, Jesus did command us to love one another, not be polite to one another. But that's another sermon. Rather than call one another rude, I find it more interesting and productive to determine why we feel that way and what the misunderstanding probably is.

In any case, I have not found the French rude at all, despite the rumors. I do attempt to speak their language, however woefully, and I think that helps. Sometimes I've had quite an amazing Franglish thing going on. Sometimes, to be truly confusing, I lapse into Spanenchlish. It's truly frightening. But at least they know I'm trying That earns points.

in honor of oceans day--who'd have thought?

Some years ago, I glanced through a gardening book on the bookstore shelves on one of my husband's and my cheap dates--going to Borders for chai lattes and paging through books. The author first subjected her readers to one of those personality tests to determine what kind of an "outdoor space" person she was. A meadow lover? Too many bees. A cave dweller? Too claustrophobic. A forest dryad? Too dark, and too many things ready and able to jump out from behind (or within) a tree. A point person? Oh, yes. That was me. Absolutely, solidly, no quibbling. My ideal outdoor space, as she described it and I completely concur, consists of me, a spit of land facing the ocean, closed eyes, breeze and spray just enough to be invigorating but not enough for a complete soaking.

Now this, if you had known me as a child, you would find rather odd. Some of my deepest childhood terrors involved other people attempting to get me to like water. My mother insisting I go down the slide at Cedar Lake. I swear that thing was 40 feet long and high and in at least that depth of water, too. At least, it seemed so to me. Same mother dragging me down a pier on Lake Michigan, bending down and tugging me toward that terrifying blueness. (OK, it was Chicago in the early 70's. More likely it was blackness, and the most terrifying part was what was in that water.) Nevertheless, I was sure as I peered into it at such close range that I would soon be in it and lost to this world forever.

Then, there was the swim test at Girl Scout camp, wherein I swallowed at least two gallons of lake water and probably some small fish. What was this about having to put my actual face in the water to swim? Wasn't a dry-eyed, barely breast stroke good enough? I'm not Australian. I do not have to crawl. I got a pity pass and barely missed the social stigma of the dreaded redcap--the landlubbing not-allowed-beyond-three-feet-of-water failures. We will not even mention here my older brother's fondness for dunking my head in the toilet. That is most likely where all this got started, you know. So what could possibly explain my grownup love of a rocky coast and open sea?

I think, maybe, it's not in spite of those fears but because of them. Maybe, for a fearful being, the ocean is the only place big enough to dwarf them all and make you think: my worries and terrors and, yes, even my me, are so tiny in the whole big sailboat of life. Maybe I forget me there. Maybe an ocean is as close to the freeness of eternity as I'll get in this life.

Alas, I will probably never have a garden that features an ocean view, so it was of no use to buy the book. I have to settle for a taste of glory when I can get it. In my very imperfect place on my very imperfect journey, I'm glad for at least a taste of eternity to remind me--the perfect place is out there. I'm just not there yet.

my cancer survivor friends

I've never felt like a cancer survivor. Maybe it's because I never underwent chemotherapy or radiation. Anyone who hasn't earned her stripes with those heavy hitters, I figure, can't really count, right? You almost don't feel you deserve the title if you haven 't endured the triumvirate of nausea, exhaustion, and new hairstyle.

Or, I think, it's because I still don't quite believe it happened. See, I knew the chance of kidney disease eventually getting me was pretty positive (100 percent), and the fact that all of my dad's side died of emphysema offered pretty good chances on that front as well, though I have failed miserably at the smoking like a chimney thing they all did so well. With those champions vying to bump me off early, who even considered cancer as a contender?

Honestly, when the doctor told me after surgery ten years ago that she had found thyroid cancer, my first reaction was more of surprise than fear. It was like having some lady jump in front of you in the deli line at the grocery store--I just looked at it and politely said, "Excuse me, I think this other thing was in line first to get me. You cut."

Regardless of whether or not I feel like a survivor, I am a ten-year cancer survivor, and Sunday was Cancer Survivor Day. If you are one as well, God bless you. You've fought hard, and I know you're grateful for every one of your days. I know a number of you, and you are blessings in my life. May others be a blessing to you today, and please, tell us your story if you wish.

but what does it mean?

What does ursprache to that mean? I have no idea. I also have no idea how to spell it. But someone does, notably Kerry Close, the Scripps National Spelling Bee champion of 2006. I posted that list last week in honor of National Scripps Spelling Bee Day. After researching the winning words for the last 75 years or so, the good news is that, despite the title of a book I read in Borders recently, The Dumbest Generation, the Scripps offers some hope that the author of that book may be incorrect. Some members of this generation are far from moronic, imbecilic, witless, dense, duncical, doltish, obtuse, or puerile. However you spell any of those.

The list I posted last week was the list of winning words since 2ooo. I don't know about you, but with the exception of the last one, I do not know how to spell any of these words or have the slightest idea what they mean. And I am a former English teacher with lots of cool sounding latin words in my degrees. The funny thing is, all those "smarter" generations of years gone by seem to have had it much easier. I mean, in 1940, the victor had to spell therapy. They couldn't give that word to kids now--all of them can spell it. If they're not in therapy their friends are. I guess it was more of an alien concept in 1940. Gladiolus? Knack? Cerise? Luxuriance? And my favorite from 1984--luge. It was an Olympic year, after all.

But honestly, up until the mid-nineties, I could spell most of the winning words. Then something happened. Like everything else, I suppose, spelling must have become a blood sport. Like everything else our kids do, the competition got kicked up, and those who couldn't, or wouldn't, devote every breathing moment to it got left in the dust. Yes, like Olympic skaters and violin prodigies, competitive spellers spend hours a day at it and hire personal coaches. Something I'm guessing kids of other generations could not do, since they had to do silly things like work for the family or wanted to do silly things like play.

I suppose given a choice I'd prefer my child spend hours learning to spell than learning to play Sims 3, but perhaps neither one is the best possible option. So, this generation can spell words no other has managed. And they have a right to be proud of that. They need not stand for listening to how "in my day we really knew how to learn things." They have gained a great deal of discipline, training, and problem-solving tools. But do you think maybe we've all lost something, too?