Grandma Has a Dinosaur

Candy: Things have been a little challenging around here these days.

Tim made it safely home from Alabama on Sunday and it's great to have him around again. He's been feeling a little less than great about his options to remain in coaching for this fall. I can understand how he feels about watching a dream die (or perhaps go into hibernation).

I think for him the most frustrating part is that he did the right thing in leaving Hiram and he worked so hard to earn a doctorate so that he could be even better at his chosen profession, and now it seems all the doors are slamming shut.

However, I still believe that there is something great out there with his name on it. Maybe it won't be coaching. Maybe it will. I'm just excited to go out there and see what it is and what it looks like.

We have been going to my brother Jim's house in Starbuck on Monday nights to watch The Closer on TNT since we've been in Minnesota. It's probably our favorite show, and it's been great to see our nephews Isaac and Levi each week in addition to the show.

Tomorrow we're planning to go kayaking on Lake Minnewaska in Starbuck. Suze, a family friend of my brother and his wife, owns a kayak rental and sales business there and she offered to take us kayaking as the sun sets. It has been a little on the warm side lately, but certainly not as bad as the week before Tim went to Alabama, so an evening on the lake would be perfect.

Yesterday I began reading Anne Morrow Lindbergh's (her husband was the great pilot Charles Lindbergh) book Gift From the Sea and finished it tonight.

I tend to bookmark things that make an impression, and in this case, the book is littered with scraps of paper marking phrases or paragraphs that struck me. I'll share a few of them with you tonight.

If you haven't read it, the book essentially is a cohesive collection of essays in which Anne explores the meaning of her life, her relationships, and her contribution to the world as a woman as she spends a couple weeks' vacation on an island.

Throughout the book, Anne finds several shells on the beach and considers each one in light of the topic she's exploring at the time. I won't address each of them tonight because then I'd be the one writing a book, and I really only want to share some of her insightful nuggets at this point.

Anne presents a German word "Zerrissenheit" in her chapter about the moon shell. Zerrissenheit means "torn-to-pieces-hood" and she describes the modern woman (keep in mind that the book was written in 1955) as living in this state. Here's what struck me:

"She [woman] cannot live perpetually in Zerrissenheit. She will be shattered into a thousand pieces. On the contrary, she must consciously encourage those pursuits which oppose the centrigual forces of today. Quiet time alone, contemplation, prayer, music, a centering line of thought or reading, of study or work. It can be physical or intellectual or artistic, any creative life proceeding from oneself. It need not be an enormous project or a great work. But it should be something of one's own...What matters is that one be for a time inwardly attentive."

Then, in the chapter about the oyster bed (the time of life when women are raising children, often in addition to their work outside the home), Anne says this about looking ahead to the next stage in life: middle age.

"Perhaps middle age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells: the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego. Perhaps one can shed at this stage in life as one sheds in beach-living; one's pride, one's false ambitions, one's mask, one's armor...Perhaps one can at last in middle age, if not earlier, be completely oneself. And what a liberation that would be!"

Then, in the chapter about the argonauta, Anne says this about the marriage relationship.

"A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern...There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing. Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back--it does not matter which. Because they know they are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by it. The joy of such a pattern is...the joy of living in the moment...One cannot dance well unless one is completely in time with the music, not leaning back to the last step or pressing forward to the next one, but poised directly on the present step as it comes."

This one means a lot to me especially now as Tim and I are struggling to stay in the moment and not lean to the past (why did the Academy job fall through?) or press to the future (what are we going to dowhere are we going to go next?).

Finally (I know this is getting long, but it's so good), in the chapter entitled a few shells, Anne has this to say.

"One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few...Gradually one discards and keeps just the perfect specimen; not necessarily a rare shell, but a perfect one of its kind. One sets it apart by itself, ringed around by space--like the island. For it is only framed in space that beauty blooms. Only in space are events and objects and people unique and significant--and therefore beautiful. A tree has significance if one sees it against the empty face of sky. A note in music gains significance from the silence on either side. A candle flowers in the space of night. Even small and casual things take on significance if they are washed in space, like a few autumn grasses in one corner of an Oriental painting, the rest of the page bare."

Besides the obvious conclusion I draw relating to my photography, this takes on another meaning for me as well: our four-month effort to wash ourselves in space and return to what is significant to us is like a wave far out from the shore.

That wave is only starting to become visible, but before we know it, it'll crash onto the beach. As we focus on emptying our lives of unnecessary activities, crowds of people, and things we don't really need, our lives and the valuable people in them will continually become so much more significant.

Ok. Enough of the heavy stuff. I hope you didn't find it too stuffy to wade through.

I also want to share something that my mom found last week and passed along to me. I'm guessing you'll at least crack a smile, if not laugh out loud.

The essay below is one I wrote in the third grade as a writing assignment for Mr. Havamaki. It's called Grandma has a Dinosaur and it goes like this (third grade grammar and spelling as written).

"My grandma has a dinosaur. She calls it "Pet" and she feeds it every day. She takes him for walks all the time even if it is raining. Well if it is raining she takes her umbrella with her. She says that he gives her rides on his back. He is a nice dinosaur. She just loves him.

My grandma lives in the country because she lives just north of us so we get to ride on him he is so gentle that he'll do what ever we wanted him to do.

He is very big. He has four feet like usaul [usual] but here's the funny part, he has ten fingers on each hand. That's all Folks!

The End!"

Well, that made me laugh to read it again, and I imagine Mr. Havamaki wondered what the heck was going on in the imagination of that Candy Minion girl.

No photos today. Hope you enjoy your Wednesday.