Tag Archives: Midwest

Winding Clocks

Posted on by under Guest, Reclaiming Place

The world looked calm and vivid and possible.
~ A. Alvarez

The New Year brought sun. I awake to a teeny rainbow projected on our bedroom wall, courtesy of the light reflected off a prism-shaped rod hanging from our blinds. Even with the blinds closed, the light peeks through, catching a corner of crystal and bending, working its magic on the morning. It is joy.

I go through the rest of the house opening blinds, and a memory comes to me of Mom and her morning routine. Mom in her robe and slippers, hair still up in bobby pins, lighting lamps, opening drapes, winding old clocks with old keys. She’s done this every day for umpteen years, and today I see her again heading for the fireplace, finding the key, removing the glass dome, winding the back of the clock. Two or three turns, maybe it was more. I begin to wonder: What became of that old clock?

That bright, January morning I find myself wondering about other things, as well. About what it was like to be in the home she loved, in the neighborhood that was just right, in the middle of the family that depended on her. What was it like to leave all that and start over at age seventy?

Mom did not say. I’m sure she felt she didn’t have to. She probably sold the old clock, along with the baby grand and organ and other things she loved, including the house, in order to make way for the next stage of her life. The car would go next, and, with it, a lot of her independence. I’m not sure she was sad to see them go, but I’m not sure she wasn’t. Mom did not say.

If Mom was making a statement by selling away her former life, item by item, it was totally lost on me. In 1996 I was only forty-two, so I was young. I still had a few kids at home, and one about to be married. Yes I remember 1996, not because of what was happening to me but more because of what was happening around me. But time has moved us along and now I have a “child” the same age as I was back when Mom sold the family home along with most of its contents and moved into a retirement village. Mom made a decision to change her life. It was her decision to make, even if none of us kids agreed or understood.

Doreen2And believe me, we didn’t.

Oh, we made our opinions known. We argued with the folks. Mom was not interested in our opinions, nor was Dad, who seemed content to simply do it Mom’s way for once.

Now time has moved us all on. Twenty years have come and gone and I’m the mom making life-changing moves that are probably quite curious to my children. My grown children who argue with me. And make their opinions known.

And do I listen to them? Yes. And no. Because of Mom I’ve been educated into the world of moving on. Mom was strong enough to do what she felt she needed to, even if we saw it as giving up something she loved. I’m the same girl she raised and then let go, I’m the daughter always reaching for more life, not less.

Perhaps I still don’t understand why Mom wanted to let go of the old house, but then I don’t really need to know. I knew Mom. I know myself. And that’s all that’s needed.

 *  *  *  *  *

DoreenFrick“Winding Clocks” is by Doreen Frick, a 61-year-old Baby Boomer who was born in Philadelphia. She moved away in 1976 (at age 22) to live in a bus in Washington State (see her book, Hodgepodge Logic). In doing so, she looked at life through a whole new set of values and with a whole new appreciation for the place of her youth. This year, she again pulled up roots and moved, this time to the Heartland. Doreen lives in Ord, Nebraska and has been published at Boomer Cafe.

 

The cost of playing cowboy

Posted on by under Money & Place

“It’s like a resort for rich Christians who want to spend a week pretending to be cowboys.”

This was my standard explanation of Deer Valley Ranch when I told college friends where I had spent the summer working. There was really no better way to describe in a nutshell the wonderful yet bizarre place—especially from the perspective of someone like me, who had grown up solidly middle class, taking budget vacations that involved sleeping in a tent and eating Mom-made sandwiches at scenic overlooks.

My upbringing in the Midwest also fueled my fascination with Deer Valley Ranch. While several of my friends lived on farms and had horses, no one seemed particularly intent on embracing the romantic charade of playing cowboy. Maybe Michigan’s wooded trails and country roads just didn’t provide the sort of Wild West backdrop necessary for getting in the cowboy mood.

18908034673_9961758d39_bDeer Valley Ranch, near Buena Vista Colorado, definitely has the right backdrop. The ranch is nestled in a range of mountains known as “the fourteeners,” with Mt. Princeton’s Chalk Cliffs rising dramatically behind the lodge and horse stables. The whole setting suggests the work of a talented stage crew under the direction of God (with a very large budget). The actors in our theatre were the staff—the other Christian college students and I, in our Wranglers and cowboy boots and hats—and our drama relied on “breaking the third wall” by inviting  guests to participate in the action.

We took the cowboy narrative pretty far down the trail at Deer Valley. I quickly learned it was what the guests were paying for—good-clean-Christian-family-cowboy-fun. Each week started off with an all-ranch hymn-sing led by Cowboy Dave, an event that served to set the tone and to begin drawing guests together with their common beliefs (not to mention their shared vacation proclivities).

Those of us working as servers in the dining room completed our Wranglers-and-cowboy-boots costumes with a red or navy gingham checked shirt and a contrasting bandana around our necks. We carried large trays filled with plates of authentic Western food, like beef brisket and whole trout. (Sometimes the cook prepared the very fish that had been caught earlier in the day by the guests. You have to pay good money to catch your own dinner.)

Square dance nights on the deck called for full staff participation. It was our job to urge hesitant guests out onto the dance floor unders the sky to learn the line dance moves, or to succumb to the lively two-stepping spins of an eager old cowboy in need of a partner.

4812123590_c50fae710e_zBut the Cowboy Breakfast was the Deer Valley act that topped all others. A couple of times a week a handful of staff got up at the crack of dawn to travel off-road in an ancient pickup truck to our wilderness breakfast site. Once there, we started a cooking fire, letting it get nice and hot before adding cast iron skillets of bacon, to be joined later by scrambled eggs and grits. Big pots of “cowboy coffee” were added to the grate, ready to pour into tin cups when the guests arrived.

Even at the end of my summer at the ranch I still fought a bemused smile when Cowboy Dave and his crew came rounding the bend on their horses, each rider in full cowboy attire. We greeted them with a boisterous “Good mornin’!” as they dismounted and walked over on stiff bow-legs to grab a tin cup and load up a plate at the fire.

How could I not inwardly chuckle as I slopped grits on someone’s plate and Cowboy Dave swung his guitar around from its perch on his back to begin playing suitably-mournful cowboy songs? The guests were sore, cold, and sleepy after getting up before the sun to sit too long in the saddle. The plates I spooned grits onto weren’t those nice, speckled blue enamel sets you buy at camping stores—they were dented dull grey metal. And the coffee we served was full of grounds. As someone who had grown up roughing it on the cheap, I found plenty of irony in people spending significant sums on such an experience.

But there were those incredible mountains reaching up behind the guests as they crunched into another piece of bacon and their horses munched on some feed nearby.  And I had to admit, my feet felt good in my cowboy boots, and there was something energizing about a deep intake of that high-altitude air. I even began to understand that having things like shiny plates and gourmet coffee would ruin the charade these folks had paid good money for. And what’s any expensive vacation, after all, if not a charade to help us vacate reality for a handful of days?

*    *    *    *    *    *

Kristin bio YAH

Photo of Mt. Princeton’s Chalk Cliffs by Wongaboo. 

Cowboy and horse photo by Just Too Lazy. 

This Is Not My Home, But I Hope It Will Be Yours

Posted on by under Finding Place

This is our fifth year in Columbus, OH and among the various tasks I’ve taken on in this city, perhaps the strangest one is greeting people on their way into our church.

I used to dread driving through Columbus during my 12-hour sojourn to college. I passed through the rolling Appalachians, the hills of eastern Ohio, and then the relentless flat that dominates central Ohio.

downtown-columbus-ohio-1331979-638x455As I wove my way through the interchanges of Columbus before hitting the farmland again, I often wondered how anyone in their right mind would want to live surrounded by concrete and corn in a flat landscape bereft of salt water and mountain peaks. Twenty-somethings sure can be opinionated despite the limited perspective of the highway and a few years of life experience.

These days I call Columbus, Ohio my home—at least for now. I never thought I would say that. My wife’s career path landed us in Columbus for a temporary time that is quickly drawing to a close.

When I hold the door open for families once a month at church, it’s as if I’m a foreigner who helps others settle down and find their places. I’m a foreigner who didn’t choose to live here, who has struggled to find his place, and who knows he’ll be moving on soon. Yet I welcome families with small children, young couples, and blended families of every shape and size to a place where I hope they’ll feel comfortable staying, even if my mind is frequently occupied with our eventual leaving.

This morning our kids weren’t in full-on revolt, so I left my wife at home to get them out the door on her own, while I headed to church early to pray with the other greeters and pastors. We are interceding for an elementary school-aged child in our church who had a rough week in school, and we pray that she’ll have peace, courage, and good friends. We also pray for a resolution with her teachers.

While we pray, my mind is still trying to get past the struggle of getting my three-year-old son into his church clothes that morning, and then I begin to wonder where he’ll go to school next fall and if he’ll have a difficult transition. It probably won’t be in Columbus. Perhaps he’ll finally get past his pajama obsession by then.

“I want to wear my pajamas to church!” He shouted at me while I held out khaki corduroys and a plaid shirt. He would never leave the house in anything other than his fleece pajamas if we didn’t beg, barter, and bribe him to wear clothes. Reluctant though he is to let us inch the zipper down and unsnap the button at the top, the promise of switching back to his pajamas after church placates him.

Our pastor has been praying for the struggling girl while I’ve been trapped inside my own head with fleece pajamas. If anything, I need to go to church in order to be challenged to move beyond my own difficulties and concerns. My worries about my child’s future is someone’s struggle today. I also fight to find time to greet because I’m trying to see people eye to eye, face to face, when my work day in, day out, involves computer screens, social media profiles, and brief bursts of video.

There are many reasons why I have struggled to feel at home in Columbus. It’s not just my prejudice about landscape. It’s about a season of life where money, time, sleep, and just about everything else appear to be in short supply. We have two small children, two careers in transition, and days that are always scheduled to the minute. I wouldn’t change a thing about my work or my family. It’s just the season we’ve been in for these five years of transition, but it sure has been hard to be present for others.

*******

church-doors-1524762-639x852As the greeters set out to our assigned posts, I’m the lone greeter for the main parking lot. Twigs shoved into the doors prop them open.

A single mom with a pack of boys leads the charge up the steps, and they flash through the door before I can get a word in. A young couple I have yet to formally meet despite attending for years follows, ducking past my greeting. I finally catch the eyes of the next few couples, and we chat before they run off to keep track of their kids.

Oftentimes I try to keep things short, especially with the elementary school-aged kids.

“Hey, I love that super hero shirt!” I say to one young boy.

“Are you a ballet dancer?” I ask a girl in a tutu.

I interact on Facebook with quite a few people from our church, but some only engage in conversation with me when I’m a greeter, which is one of the stranger aspects of of our brave new world of social media and in-person Christian community. While greeting I also have a chance to follow up with the people from our church I run into during the week at the clunky, neglected cafe where I work each afternoon because of its big windows that let in the warm sun even if the coffee is usually lukewarm.

Two young women approach with a young girl, and they keep their eyes down and away. I struggle over how welcoming to be. I’m pretty sure they’re new, but I’m not certain. Truth be told, I’m an introvert, and the only thing that makes greeting possible is that I can overcome my social anxiety by embracing my “role” as a greeter. I’m not naturally gifted at drawing people out, and I don’t want them to feel pressure to be friendly.

“Welcome!” I say. “We’re so glad you’re here. There’s coffee just down the hall.”

They meet my gaze, nod politely, and walk in. I’m immediately seized with regret that I mentioned coffee and not the children’s church check in table.

I welcome a few more families, but I keep wondering how those young women are getting along. Did they find the children’s check in table? Is someone talking to them? Are they in New Church Hell where everyone seems to know everyone else?

Ten minutes into the service, I swing by the coffee table for a refill before tracking down my wife and kids. I arrive at the precise moment that one of the young women steps out of the auditorium with her daughter. She’s looking around—a bit confused, but she relaxes when we make eye contact.

“I don’t think I’ll get too much out of the service if my daughter stays with me,” she says. “Do you have something for kids?”

“We certainly do,” I say. “I’m sorry I didn’t mention that before. Here, I’ll show you the way and introduce you.”

We set off for the check in table, and in that moment I pray that she will feel like there’s a place for her at our church. In the back of my mind, there’s a moving van in my not-too-distant future, and a very unsettled notion that this isn’t necessarily my place—I’m not sure if it ever has been. It’s been a far better place than I would have expected for this season, but the door on this season is closing even as I walk this woman and her daughter toward the check in table.

How strange it is to welcome someone to a place that you’re waiting to leave.

 

*******Ed bio YAH

Out of Place in Yourself

Posted on by under Out of Place

At the time, I had no way to describe it other than, “I just don’t feel like myself.”

Feeling out of place in my own skin was new to me. I was the person who seemed comfortable almost everywhere—the one who struck up conversations with grocery store cashiers while they scanned my purchases and with other parents as we watched our children play at the park. I didn’t get nervous at job interviews or speaking in front of a group.

The world was a fairly comfortable place. I had somehow lucked into the type of personality that “fits” best in the world, a circumstance that then snowballs in the best possible way: My general comfort allowed me the luxury of assuming the best of others and believing I also had something good to share with them.

But then, that vague out-of-placeness began lingering. It was like a dark cloud just over my shoulder, gradually seeping then settling deep into my bones. At first I was able to override it, when I needed to, but eventually it took root as a feeling of insecurity—a sense that I was no longer comfortable with myself, or with others.

Rather than seeing strangers as potential friends, and seeing friends as people who were looking out for my best interest, I began seeing them all as possible agents of hurt, as people not to be trusted with my fragile being.

I also saw myself as having little to share with others. Where I had once felt powerful in my ability to enrich and brighten people’s lives, I suddenly felt sure I would do the opposite. So I did something I had never done before—I turned inward.

*   *   *   *   *

IllinoisfieldUnfortunately, this turn in me coincided with a move I did not want to make, to a place I did not want to live. My then-husband had accepted a job in the middle of Illinois, so we moved our two daughters (one still in diapers, the other a busy preschooler) away from the wooded lakeshores of West Michigan to the flat cornfields of Illinois.

But it wasn’t the landscape that left me feeling foreign—it was being surrounded by people who only knew this out-of-place version of me. My history, my core, the way I had been just a year or two before—they were all unknown to the people around me, which made those parts of who I was feel even less real. When reality is shifting, one of the only comforts is being able to look into the face of someone who sees and recognizes it too—someone who can say, “I know. You are not crazy.”

It would be months before someone knew me enough to ask—and I trusted her enough to listen—“Do you think you’re struggling with depression?”

Now, looking back at that time, I find it hard to believe that I could have been so oblivious to something so obvious. But in most cases, depression sneaks in so gradually that you don’t recognize it, and then it changes you so profoundly that, before you know it, you don’t recognize yourself. It’s disorienting in the most fundamental way. Even your own sense of who you were—who you are at your core—is distorted and suspect.

*   *   *   *   *

Thankfully, anti-depressants have been effective for me, especially paired with a whole lot of self-reflection and a determination to uncover and embrace my truest self (which in many ways I had never done, even back in those pre-depression days when my skin and the world I moved through felt so comfortable).

Now I have a decade’s worth of perspective on that time in my life, and I’m able to see this: If depression is one of the darkest of clouds a human being can try to live beneath, my experience with it has a silver lining. Not only has it allowed me to develop great compassion for others who feel out of place—whether that sense is rooted in depression or in a too-narrow set of societal expectations and norms—but it has also revealed to me what love looks and feels like: a deep desire for wholeness in another. God’s love for me is rooted in his desire for me to live fully as my true self, the person he created me to be. And likewise, that is how I am called to love others, from my husband and teenage daughters to the people in my community who rub me the wrong way: To love them is to long for them to be at home in their skin.

Where I Came From: 5,000 Miles and Back Again

Posted on by under Welcome to You Are Here

When I was a little girl with two brown pigtails and bangs cut straight across my forehead, home was a grey-blue ranch-style house situated in the middle of Michigan’s palm. It was also a musty-smelling blue canvas tent, the sweaty brown vinyl backseat of a station wagon, and the open road, always leading to someplace new.

 *  *  *  *  *

If “home” is defined as a specific place, then my answer to “Where are you from?” is clear: I’m from St. Johns, Michigan, a town of about 12,000 people with a two-stoplight Main Street that’s anchored on the south end by a classic Midwestern courthouse. My parents still live in the house they bought when I was just five, and when we visit today, my own daughters sleep in my childhood bedroom.

All the kids who went to my elementary school lived in town like me, but by the time we were in middle school, our classmates were pretty evenly split between “town kids” and the “country kids” who grew up on surrounding farms. (My best friend Rhonda was a country kid with horses we rode on the weekends.)

Besides sleepovers and football games, there weren’t many parent-approved things to do for fun, at least not until we were old enough to drive the half hour to Lansing for date-worthy restaurants, movies, and malls. But St. Johns was a good place to be a kid. Growing up in a sheltered town meant plenty of freedom to bike everywhere—the city pool, friends’ houses, the library, and the bakery for custard-filled long johns. We didn’t wear helmets or lock our bikes—the only requirement was a wristwatch so we wouldn’t be late for dinner.

But even with such deep roots in a single place, I also grew up with an understanding of home that was nomadic: Home was wherever you stopped and pitched the tent when it was time to cook dinner. bluetent

My parents were both teachers, which meant summers offered more time than money. Flying from Michigan to visit relatives on the West Coast wasn’t in the budget, so each summer we packed up our wood-paneled station wagon and hit the road for about six weeks.

I was prone to carsickness, so there were just two ways I rode in the car: sprawled asleep across the backseat or awake and perched dead center, leaning forward until I was almost as much in the front seat with my parents as I was in the back. Luckily, my big brother was never the sort to draw a line down the middle of the seat and enforce it with punches or pinches. Besides, I think he was happy to let me chatter away to my parents, leaving him in relative peace with his books.

The ultimate destinations we drove toward—a visit with our grandparents in L.A. or our favorite cousins in Portland, a week spent hiking in Glacier National Park, or a few days exploring San Francisco—were well-worth the 5,000-or-so miles we covered each summer. But so many days were devoted to just getting there, driving through endless-seeming states like Nebraska or North Dakota, only stopping for gas, bathroom breaks, and to eat the sandwiches Mom had made at the campground that morning.

After a full day of driving, as the sun was lowering in the sky and Mom’s voice was hoarse from reading aloud Little House on the Prairie books, we pulled out a thick campground guide and chose a place to stay—with a pool, if my brother and I were lucky. At the campground, Mom pulled out the camp stove and started dinner while the rest of us got to work setting up the tent and filling it with sleeping bags and pillows. The next morning it all came down again, was packed back into the car, and we drove some more—to the next place we would call “home” for a night.

*  *  *  *  *

Now, when I think about where I come from, I still envision that ever-present grey-blue house, first. I am very much a small-town Michigan girl. But it occurs to me that my rootedness in that place has always been filtered through an understanding of other places—of treeless plains and impressive peaks, of rugged beaches with magical tide pools, and of Chinatowns and subways, operas and contemporary art. I knew where I was back home in Michigan because I also knew where I wasn’t.

And in that sense, I come from places that protected me as well as places that exposed me—from a small Michigan town and big Montana mountains; from the inside of a station wagon, where my entire family was always close enough to touch, to a crowded San Francisco sidewalk where strangers pressed in as I absorbed glimpses of the world.

stationwagonPhotographs by William E. Tennant

 

Where I Am: Four Houses, Four Turning Points

Posted on by under Welcome to You Are Here

I live in Urbana, Illinois, a city I didn’t want to move to in the first place. My opinion on the matter was weakly based on the handful of times I had driven by the Champaign-Urbana exit on Interstate 57. From that vantage point it was just another flat, cornfield-edged town with predictable, treeless suburbs and chain restaurants.

But in 2001, when my youngest daughter was still in diapers and I was finally admitting to myself that my marriage was falling apart, it felt like God was urging us to move. More precisely, I thought that moving—and my husband’s new job—would somehow save our marriage.

In the 13 years since moving to Urbana, four houses have been home. I don’t know if it’s by design or coincidence, but it seems that each significant Act in my life here has demanded a new stage, as if the inner transitions couldn’t be complete without the leaving of one tangible place and the arrival at another.

*  *  *  *  *

Our first Urbana house caught my eye because—if you could see beyond the birdhouse and ivy wallpaper—it reminded me of the beloved house we sold in Michigan before moving here. Both were 1920s-era Mission style, with sturdy stucco exteriors, generous wood mouldings inside, and plenty of tall windows paned with thick, wavy, antique glass that creates mottled patterns of light when the sun shines through.

During the three years we lived in that house, our toddler and pre-school-aged daughters were at that kill-you-with-cuteness stage of life, busy choreographing dances, creating elaborate plastic feasts in their play kitchen, and layering on the most unlikely costume combinations.

But in spite of those bright moments, I think of that first house the House of Pain. Yes, I know it’s overly dramatic (and also the name of a nineties hip-hop band), but for me, the house was the scene of much yelling and crying and despair. Ultimately, it was the place where I gave up—not just on marriage, but also on my long-held childhood belief that God had plans to prosper me, not to harm me.

*  *  *  *  *

If I was drawn to my first Urbana house because it reminded me of a house in my past, I was drawn to the second Urbana house for the opposite reason: It was nothing like the House of Pain. It was one-story not two; 1960s not 1920s; brick not stucco; and straight-forward, not “full of charm and character.” Most importantly, I was bound to it only by a 12-month lease, not a mortgage. I signed the lease after my divorce was final—after the House of Pain was sold and our marital collections of books, CDs, artwork, and kitchen appliances had undergone a necessary but unnatural process of division.

This second home can best be described as the House of Rebellion (clearly a perfect name for an angry metal band). Just like music that serves to numb the mind, the House of Rebellion provided an escape hatch from the life my ex-husband and I had shared. It played into my desire to be tied to nothing: not a marriage certificate, a church membership, or a mortgage. I devoted myself to my daughters when they were with me, and on the weekends they weren’t, I did whatever I pleased.

Like many rebellions, however, this one led to rock bottom, not freedom or enlightenment. One day about a year after moving into the rental, I knew it was time to stop feeling sorry for myself and start claiming my place. Maybe if I chose to live here—decided to put down roots on my own, in a house of my own—that whole sob story about “following my husband to save a marriage that couldn’t be saved” would lose its power over me.

*  *  *  *  *

Buying house number three happened amidst a flurry of change: I ended a bad relationship, decided to try church again, went to a new counselor, and generally began figuring out who I really was.

This was my House of Healing (yep, cue the cheesy eighties CCM band). It’s the house where I learned to sit and just be in the moment, and where I learned that God wants me to find myself, not fix myself.

I worked in my garden, pulling out weeds with deep roots and planting perennials, and I invited new friends to sit around my table and share the meals I cooked. My daughters grew in those sunny rooms, writing stories, learning to play my grandmother’s piano, and forging great “wilderness” adventures with friends in our large, tree-filled yard. Along the way, as I mowed, painted, baked, and parented, I recognized this truth: I have more power to shape my place than it has to shape me.

And then I met Jason. We eventually got married, blending our families in that House of Healing, all five of us crowded in, watching and learning in awe (or at least the grownups were in awe) as redemption was worked out in one surprising way after another.

*  *  *  *  *

Finally, last spring, as our three girls (and their groups of friends) grew bigger, Jason and I sold “my” house and bought “our” house: The House of Hope (or Truth)? The House of Second (and Third and Fourth) Chances? The House of New Creations? I’m not quite sure yet, but that’s OK—I don’t feel the need to pin down the life that’s unfolding here or the God who works in so many places, in so many ways.