Tag Archives: confidence

Chips in a Foreign Land

Posted on by under Food & Place, Guest

The first time I had salt and vinegar potato chips was in London, and I couldn’t wait to trade them away.  I was 20 and a student in a four-week study abroad program. The chips came in a sack dinner I picked up every afternoon, and my friends and I would eat them along with our sandwiches, sitting on the curb in Leicester Square. For the first two weeks, if I found the salt and vinegar chips in my sack, I tried to trade them away for regular chips. The vinegar was too strong, too sour and tangy. But Londoners seemed obsessed with them: I saw them all over the city.

I wanted to be like the sophisticated Londoners I saw every day, walking purposefully in the busy streets, standing confidently on the Tube, and going to the theater. I began venturing off by myself more, without friends to trade chips with. By the end of the four weeks, I could hardly believe that I had once disliked salt and vinegar chips. What a perfect combination of flavors! What a brilliant country!

8865057426_6be830e5a2_oWhen I came back to school in the U.S., I frequently kept a bag of salt and vinegar chips in my dorm room, a late afternoon snack in the midst of writing papers, reading, and dinner dates with friends.

After college, I found myself living overseas again, but on the other side of the world. Instead of one strange food to adapt to, it was all unfamiliar. For the first two months overseas, I had to have every meal (that I didn’t eat at McDonalds) ordered for me. My coworkers and I soon had our preferred dishes, bowls of noodle soup, spicy cabbage, steamed rolls with sugar. I grew to appreciate the unfamiliar flavors, the crowds we ate them in, and the the anticipation of wondering what I would receive. But I longed for home. I would have been willing to run a marathon for something familiar.

Even after I began ordering my own food, I had to point to someone else’s dish to let the server know what I wanted. Sometimes this was done with lots of smiling, the server happily relieved when I decided on something and we seemed to be in agreement. Other times I smiled and pointed to a stone-faced waiter who seemed to dismiss me out the door and out of the country with his eyes.

Then one day, while exploring the foreign city by myself, I went up a new staircase in a long city block and found myself in a shopping mall. There, in a small store, on a display in the center of the room, were three cans of salt and vinegar Pringles. It was as if a spotlight was shining down on the blue and yellow canisters.

I grabbed them immediately, looking around furtively to see if I had any competition. I couldn’t believe they were just sitting there, available. I hadn’t seen any other Pringles in the whole country, and they were even my favorite flavor.

I kept the chips in a hidden corner of my apartment and didn’t tell anyone about them. For several months, when I was too tired to go outside for another minute in a place with constant reminders that I didn’t belong, I knew it was time for the chips.

Eating those chips took me back to London, to the carefree days with college friends. As I slowly savored them, I found myself wondering if I would one day be as confident and assured as those Londoners.

Now, ten years later, I remember the confidence of the young woman who lived alone and braved crowded, unfamiliar streets, eating countless bowls of noodle soup and savoring three cans of salt and vinegar Pringles. Now, back at home, I await the next adventure.

* * * * *

MiahOren portraitMiah is the author of The Reluctant Missionary, a memoir about the two years she spent overseas teaching English. She writes about learning to let go of perfectionism and embracing God’s plan for her life. She lives in Dallas where she dreams of someday having another cat. Connect with Miah online at www.miahoren.com.

Chip photo by RosieT on Creative Commons

A room of my own

Posted on by under Creating Place, Guest

Even before we were married, Ben and I enjoyed dreaming together about where we might live someday. Sometimes we explored the possibilities of different geographical locations, but more often we discussed the details of our future house. While we plotted ideal but realistic spaces for each of Ben’s many creative interests, I struggled to know what I would do in a room of my own.

I was a very imaginative child, but even from a young age I set impossible standards for the things I created. As I grew older, I took classes to teach me the “correct” way to create. I enjoyed art, writing, and music, but there was always someone better than me. I grew weary of feeling like a mediocre imitation of someone else.

After college, life was filled with expectations to meet—job interviews, performance reviews, housework, bills. I wanted something that was mine, with no one telling me what to do or how to do it. I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but as I struggled to find where I fit in the adult world, I needed a place where I felt free to experiment, make mistakes, and try again.

Simply the act of verbally setting aside space for me to create, even before Ben and I had the means to make it a physical reality, was powerful. The point wasn’t to be fair, making sure each of us occupied an equal allotment of square footage. Instead, it was about recognizing me as a creative being. We were investing in who I was and what I could create, without guaranteed results. My room was a gift of possibility, not something I had to earn. I was entrusted with resources before proving I would use them wisely and well.

Knowing I had space with no strings attached gave me permission to take my time and explore. I didn’t have to try to measure up to anyone else’s standards. I could rediscover my creativity my own way. Setting aside physical space to create gave me the internal space to start believing in my creativity again.

00030In our 525 square foot newlywed apartment, we carved out slivers of creative space. Our bedroom was small, but it became more than a place for our bed and our clothes. Amidst Ben’s drawing easel, computers, and musical instruments, I found room for a sewing machine I purchased from a thrift store. Choosing a less common pastime relieved some of the pressure to perform, and, as a tall woman generally unimpressed with fashion trends, the possibility of making my own clothes appealed to me.

A heather gray pencil skirt was one of the first projects I tackled. I even sewed a back vent instead of just a slit, not realizing it was a more advanced option. I just preferred the way it looked. I didn’t have any sewing patterns and didn’t know how to use them anyway—I made things up as I went, cutting into a 25-cent piece of clearance fabric after examining a skirt I already owned. The resulting skirt isn’t fit to be worn in public—the seams are unfinished, the hem is crooked, and the zipper insertion is appalling—but it still makes me immensely proud.

When the time came to move from our first apartment into our first house, we only looked at homes with at least three bedrooms. Of course we needed somewhere to sleep, but we also wanted to finally each have a room of our own. The house we purchased was old and the bedrooms were small, but they were ours to arrange and use however we wanted—places to experiment freely without worrying about the mess. After the crowded drabness of our apartment, our house was full of character. Built in 1926 in a logging town, it had beautiful birdseye maple floors and decorative molding above the doors and windows. I painted the walls of my room a soothing mid-tone blue and furnished it with dumpster dives, free finds from Craigslist, and anything that made me smile.

It was hard to leave my room behind when we moved to a new city, but I still have a room of my own. For now we’re renting and I’m not allowed to paint the dingy white walls. Bits of thread and fabric beneath my sewing table tangle in the utilitarian brown carpet. But when I feed the coral colored satin and lace of the bridesmaids dresses I’m making for my sister’s wedding under the presser foot of my thrift store sewing machine, I feel completely at home.

*    *    *    *    *

JohannaSchram“A Room of My Own” is by Johanna Schram. Johanna feels most comfortable in places that are cozy and most alive in places that are spacious. Though the city changes, Wisconsin has always been the state she calls home. Johanna is learning to value wrestling with the questions over having all the answers. She craves community and believes in the connecting power of story. Johanna writes at her blog joRuth to help others know themselves and find freedom from the “shoulds” keeping them from a joyful, fulfilling life. She can be found on Twitter @joRuthS.

An Inner Place

Posted on by under Guest, Travel & Place

Japan is a particular place, unique unto itself and settled into that particularity. When I am there, I feel completely at home and completely foreign. There are people going about their daily lives, following the predictable patterns that smooth the tasks of everyday living. Yet there are also subtle differences that unsettle a visitor such as myself when I disrupt these easy, orderly patterns.

Just over a year ago, I was fortunate to have work bring me back to this country that alternately fascinates and perplexes me. For eight days in the cold of February, I traveled. I spent the time mostly on my own — Tokyo to Fukuoka to Nagasaki — navigating the obvious that did not seem obvious to me at all, at first.

I did things like standing alone on a cold and windy train platform wondering “Where are the other passengers?” and then realizing that they had stayed inside, not passing through the gates until a moment before the train would arrive. Because, of course, this was Japan. The train would arrive precisely when scheduled. I entered the bus terminal by the wrong door and fumbled about for the tray and tongs so I could choose my items at the bakery. Every day I made mistakes.

However, I recall most clearly the kindnesses of those who nudged me into success.

The gesture of allowing me to go ahead in line that was also guidance about which line I should be in. The hotel staff member who made hot water for me since the instant hot water machines were obviously beyond my experience and thus ability. (He explained that he wanted to be sure the temperature was just right for the specific tea I had selected, silent on the reality that I had not been able to procure any water for myself at all.) The sushi chef who realized I had not ordered what I wanted and gently recommended that perhaps I would be happier with the alternative option offered.

Slowly I relaxed into the flow of the crowds around me, trusting instinct rather than ability to read directions or make logical sense of behaviors I observed. Eventually I found the patterns that guide those who are able to expect and predict rather than bumble and trip. Through this becoming, I reflected on the paradox that, the more foreign my surroundings, the more familiar I become with myself – that self that is always within me but is not always present to me.

Becoming so dependent on others as I did is not easy for someone as driven and self-sufficient as I. My first tendency is to resist – to insist that I can figure it out on my own. To declare that being alone does not mean I am incomplete or incompetent. I have come to realize, however, that if I can quiet that voice; I can hear another. It too is mine but it is the voice that reflects rather than analyzes, appreciates rather than judges, and welcomes the generosity of others — accepting the community that makes me more than I can be on my own. More fully myself. More familiar. More whole.

On my final day walking from shrine to shrine and temple to temple in Nagasaki, one of the vendors insisted that she take my picture with my camera “so that you will always remember this place.” She meant because of the signs below and between which I was standing, tall signs identifying Sofukuji Temple in golden Japanese script. She did not know that she was capturing for me a moment in time to which I had journeyed – to that inner place in which I re-find myself.

* * * * *

photoremember“An Inner Place” was written by Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe. Lisa is a librarian and is many times published, but always scholarly, professional pieces. It is a new venture to write in this genre, and she will have to think about whether she will do it again.

Lisa lives in Urbana, Illinois. When not at home, she lives easily out of a carry-on bag for up to weeks at time. Lisa can be found on Twitter at@lisalibrarian.

Table for One

Posted on by under Alone in Place, Guest

Looking back, that empty booth across the table from me was just the next in a long line of red flags and warning signs I rationalized away. This time, the reason for his absence was said to be a co-worker who needed someone to bail him out of jail. He wouldn’t be back in town until late, after dinner. It seems an outlandish story when I think about it today, one of many outlandish stories. Now I know some of these stories were lies.

I have no real frame of reference to know which ones were true, but to call them all lies seems the task of an uncharitable, bitter woman.

Regardless. That spring day I believed, or at least accepted, the story. Over the many years we were together, we always had a long distance relationship. That dinner date was no different. I drove two hours through central, rural, Georgia to get there. So, given the hour and my growling stomach, the best option seemed to be to just go ahead to dinner. Alone.

“Just one,” I said to the hostess. I settled into the booth and perused the menu. After I had ordered I took the ever-present novel out of my purse and began to read, stopping often to check to see if he had called. I was somewhat self-conscious about sitting at a table in a sit-down restaurant alone, but no one seemed to care at all. It dawned on me that my aloneness was awkward and uncomfortable only to me.

Inside my head I was fighting off the doubts and questions about my three-year-old relationship. I didn’t want to be alone, so it had been relatively easy to accept the cancelled plans and the strange stories. As I sat there alone at a restaurant table and no one looked at me in pity or shame, I began to wonder if perhaps alone on purpose would be a better option than alone again one more time because he failed to come through.

4869866579_2e5565c27c_zIn retrospect I can see that, somehow, that dinner made me stronger. It was not the first time that our plans had not worked. It was not the first time he had changed things at the last minute, disappointing me. It was the first time I kept the plans anyway. The first time I still showed up, lived the moment, and went forward instead of letting my world stop. I could have grabbed a quick dinner in a drive-thru, eaten the fries as I navigated the road back home. But, I didn’t. I sat in the restaurant I had planned to go to and had the dinner I had planned to have that evening. I wasn’t trying to “still live life” or “embrace the moment” that night.  It was simple, really: I was hungry and the restaurant was there.

So, I sat at a table alone and ate dinner.

* * * * *

A few months later, I broke up with that boyfriend. Or, at least I tried to. The words “the end” were there but for reasons that exceed the time and space I have here, I cycled back into him in a destructive pattern over and over again. We were never “officially” together again – but the energies of my day and my mind and my heart were frequently still wrapped up in that toxic relationship.

A couple years later, still caught in the cycle of trying to really end that relationship, I moved to a town near Chicago, alone, for a job. I would often walk or take the L train  to the movie theatre one evening a week and then to dinner afterwards. I’d sit in the dark theatre, no one on either side of me, and enjoy the show. Afterwards, I’d use the side exit that led out right by the door to a restaurant where I would walk in and say, “Just one.”

I usually had a book, but not always. Sometimes I would just eat my dinner with only my thoughts to keep me company. Sometimes I lingered: ordering an appetizer or a dessert or a drink. Sometimes I ate quickly before heading home. But I often thought of that first dinner alone and reminded myself it was good to know how to do to this.

Those years of dinner and movie dates with myself were part of the process of trying to get out of the cycle. I would sit there and remind myself:  I can do this. I can eat alone. I can sit at this table and have dinner and have a life and I can be fine. I can move forward.

Eventually the cycle back into the toxic relationship stopped and I was free.  Looking back I can only recall a handful of times in the past few years where I’ve eaten alone at a restaurant. It wasn’t an intentional choice to stop, but I guess that inner part of my soul knew I didn’t need those dates with myself as much anymore.

I rarely have to eat alone, but I know I can. And that has given me strength.

* * * * *

red stripeNicole says her love language is “eat the food that I cook” and is never happier than when there is a crowd gathered around a table eating food that she had fun preparing. She is thankful for all the friends, neighbors, family members, co-workers, and casual acquaintances who have filled the tables of her life. Nicole works as a freelance editor specializing in theology and social ethics and writes about bodies, theology, and community at jnicolemorgan.com. She tweets away @jnicolemorgan

Restaurant photo by Bart Heird

 

Fill in the Blanks

Posted on by under Role & Place, Uncategorized

If you had told my seventeen-year-old self what she would grow up to be, I think she might have cried. But then again, she never knew half as much as she supposed.

It all began early. In second grade I was set apart as “gifted.” Practically, this meant I stood waiting in the school stairwell on Thursday mornings, with a little boy name Todd, and a mini-bus came and delivered us to a neighboring school. It was the best part of my week. There, waiting in the library, were several other children, word puzzles, art materials, floppy disks labeled “Oregon Trail” and “Turtle LOGO”, and a magical teacher who made learning seem like play.

As school progressed, I rode the wave of privileges and honors. When I was in fifth grade, they let me assist the kindergarten teacher, in junior high I chose among special electives that were only available to kids ‘like me’. By the time I got to high school, I was enrolled in A.P. Everything, heading for Governor’s School, and chosen as a National Merit Finalist.

I was so very impressive back then.

****

When I was seventeen, I wanted to be an elementary school teacher when I grew up. And so I chose a college, and everything went swimmingly for about two years. But my interests were broad–or maybe I should say ‘scattered’. Toward the end of my junior year, I added some religion courses and decided not to student teach.

And with this choice, I stepped off the marked path, and began wandering in my very own vocational wilderness. Eventually I would end up in seminary, still longing for the day when I could finish this sentence: “I’m a _____________.”

If it wasn’t “I’m a teacher,” it could be “I’m a pastor.” Right?

But then our lovely, miraculous and terribly inconvenient babies were born. We welcomed two little girls, in two years. As graduation approached and I was changing diapers while learning Greek conjunctions, the thought of ordination exams-or a role as a full-time pastor-was more than I could bear. Again, I chose to get the degree without the title.

And again, “I’m a _____________,” was an open-ended statement. Sure, I could say, “I’m a mother,” but many of my friends were mothers and _____________. I had no “and.”

Without a professional certification, there was no point in getting a job just for the sake of getting a job. I made less per hour than we paid our babysitter. If I stayed home, the numbers worked. But still, it gnawed on me. How could it be that the little girl who was so smart, so full of promise, could grow up to become… me?

****

Here is a true statement: we would never talk to our friends the way that we talk to ourselves.

Did I consider my fellow stay-at-home-mom friends “failures”? No, of course not. They were making choices within a specific season of their lives. They were blessed to have spouses who made good salaries, allowing them to focus on their young children. They were doing what they needed to do, as were my friends who pursued their professions.

And I soon learned that the grass wasn’t greener for my “mother and _____________” friends. Their paths were not as straightforward as they seemed. Some alternated between full and part-time, and many felt as if they did everything, but couldn’t do anything well.

It seemed that we were all making this up as we went along.

3469696707_c188941c4c_z

photo by Niklas Fridwall

As my children have grown older (both are in elementary school this year), I have added hats along the way. Two years ago I took a part-time job as a secretary, working for an organization and with people I love. I’m also (as you may have noticed) writing, or rather trying-to-write while volunteering at my kids’ schools, leading a community Bible Study group, and being the “on call” parent for snow delays, sickness, after-school activities, and random inservice days.

It’s good. It’s busy. It’s worthwhile. However.

The most difficult part of all this is that it is almost completely volunteer. Not getting paid is a blow to my ego, makes our finances tight, and sometimes makes me feel as if I’m not a real, contributing grown-up. Now again, would I ever tell a friend that you “are” what you “make”, or that volunteer work is worth less than paid work? No.

But there are times, many times, when I still find these thoughts needling into my sense of who I am. Especially when I am tired, or a child is screaming, or some activity was a disaster, or a blog post fell flat, my seventeen-year-old self sits on my shoulder and says unhelpful things like, “We could have been someone, you know.”

And I just nod, wearily, and say, “I know. I know.”

But when I recover, usually after getting a good night’s sleep, I also know that being a grown-up is more complicated than I ever imagined it would be as a child. And then, ironically, I often remember a picture that was posted in the halls of my daughter’s elementary school, a picture that stopped me in my tracks.

The kids were asked to complete this sentence, “When I grow up, I want to be a __________” and then draw a picture of themselves in this role. Down the row there were firefighters and teachers, police officers and dancers-all the typical kid answers-but the one that stopped me said this:

“When I grow up, I want to be a woman.”

And underneath this sentence was a smiling stick figure. I suppose it was a picture of me.