Let August Be August

August: a month that starts with humidity and ends with college football. In between, it's filled with everything and nothing, a month that languishes and races, a month that looms large in import and recedes in any semblance of daily structure until the very end, which is when you're practically smacked upside the head with daily structure.

If August were a specific time and day, it would be Sunday evening. Technically, it's still summer, but in your bones you know you're staring down the end of things. You know the other shoe will drop, that hazy days won't linger forever, that school busses and football games and parent-teacher conferences and increasingly early sunsets are near.

But now that I'm at the end of it, I'm not entirely certain where August went. Oh, I did stuff, alright. I finally cleaned my garage of remnants from a garage sale that took place in July. I touched up the dings on the exterior doors with fresh paint. I made a dozen zucchini bread one afternoon from one giant zucchini — mammoth, really – that resembled one of those fat, oversized plastic wiffle ball bats that, if you connect just right, it would carry the ball deep into your neighbor's yard, if not your neighbor's neighbor's yard.

I drove kids back and forth to various places, and back and forth again. I read books, and went to garage sales on Friday mornings, and watched reruns of Brooklyn 99, and cut the grass, and talked with neighbors, and gathered with friends, and moved our oldest daughter into her first college apartment, where I sat on the floor with a screwdriver assembling the legs back onto the old wooden kitchen table we bequeathed to her. I received — and largely ignored — no fewer than 172 emails from my younger two children's school. I took regular evening walks and listened to crickets get louder as the month plodded along.

Like a responsible adult, I also squeezed in a few doctor's appointments. As the semester encroached in earnest, I met with colleagues, visited my classrooms, attended all my department's orientation meetings, formatted my syllabi, and published my Canvas classes. The semester officially started yesterday, so I've tenuously memorized all my students' names through a repetitive, yet highly effective, ice breaker that I've been doing on the first day of semesters for eons. Hopefully I'll remember most of those names tomorrow.

August isn't as quite as tricky as it once was when our kids were little. They've now experienced many starts of many school years themselves. Even though it's a draining process regardless of age, their ages allow them to take it in stride. Everyone, it would seem, is growing up.

Even so, August, somehow, remains a month fit for childhood nostalgia, if you let yourself lean into such things. It feels like a month where you'd sit on a porch swing, sipping sweet tea and watching the lightning bugs blink their Morse code into the dark, and you'd soak it all in because soon enough, you know, summer will be over.

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Hiking in Utah, Knowing Nothing, and Packing the Perfect Book

My family just returned from a trip out west to hike Utah's "Big Five" national parks and visit the Grand Canyon. To be transparent, even though my husband had researched this trip for months, leaving dozens of internet tabs open to articles titled "Seven Sights You Must See in Arches National Park," I didn't know anything about any of these locations until we arrived. I just showed up.

He, a competent adult, planned our itinerary, booked our plane tickets, secured our rental car, improvised a revised plan when our flight from Philly to Vegas was abruptly cancelled minutes after we arrived at airport, and guided our family through the City of Brotherly Love for an afternoon of impromptu sightseeing, even though it was an obscenely humid 90+ degree day and I not only witnessed a man with his pants down, but also a woman yelling and washing her feet in the sink of a public restroom at Reading Station, which also is where we ate an obligatory Philly cheesesteak for lunch before returning to the airport later that evening for our hastily re-booked flight.

Our family has traveled before. We visit my parents in Florida on alternating spring breaks. Each June we spend a week with my husband's family at the shore — a tradition that started when our three kids and their cousins were still kids, whereas now almost all of the "kids" have their drivers licenses, apply their own sunscreen, and stay up later than the adults.

During these trips, every one of them, we've driven to our destinations. We've never flown, even on the nearly 1,300 mile trip from central Pennsylvania to the Gulf Coast, even the time we had to stop at seven different restrooms in the state of Florida alone because our youngest had chugged a 24 ounce Gatorade at the start of the trip. We pack our minivan until it sags with Joel's golf clubs, beach chairs, an umbrella, suitcases and duffel bags with more clothes than we need to pack (just in case), and an assortment of snacks — canisters of Pringles, Snickers minis that inevitably melt in the heat, and a sharable size bag of Twizzlers cherry nibs. It's food we otherwise try to limit, but it somehow seems perfectly acceptable to eat at 10 AM while on vacation. 

I also bring a tote bag of books. Five, six, seven books, at least. If I'm on vacation, I'm going to read. Our minivan operates like Hermione Granger used an undetectable extension charm on it; somehow everything fits. I'm never concerned that I'm taking too many books. It isn't a problem if I don't like a book or if I don't feel like reading a particular book at that particular time on that particular trip. I always have loads of other books to choose from my tote bag.

But you can't bring a tote bag of books when you're traveling by plane and rationing three suitcases for five people. You need to strategize.

This is why I'm happy to inform you that I made the exactly right choices with my reading selection for our trip west. It comprised of only three books. One was a devotional. The next was a romp-of-a-romance novel titled Read Bottom Up, which is entirely told through email exchanges between the new couple and the emails each of them send to their best friends about the relationship. (As someone who's closing in on 23 years of marriage, which is the same amount of time I was single, it's been a small eternity since I experienced the dating scene. Scratch that. I never really experienced the dating scene like this novel's protagonists experienced it, yet I still happily idled an hour and a half, poolside, following their emerging romance from cover to cover.)

The final book I brought — It Was An Ugly Couch Anyway by Elizabeth Passarella — is the type of book I want to have written. While packing, I bent its front cover and marred its new-book perfection, but the crease now seems fitting. When I love a book, I dog ear pages to mark especially delicious sentences or paragraphs. This book is now riddled with dog ears, inviting me to revisit sections that resonated so deeply as if her very thoughts had been lodged inside my own head surrounded by marble, and she somehow carved away the surrounding stone to bring the ideas to life, much like Michelangelo is known to have stared at the slab that eventually would become David and chip away at everything "not David" until his shape took form.

Elizabeth — perhaps I'm being bold to use her first name, but in my mind she and I are now friends — wrote about daily life past and present, about writing, about living and moving with three kids in New York City, about starting to run as a 43-year-old, about marriage, about chin hair, about her mother-in-law, about parenting fails, about faith, and about her dad accidentally running her over with their station wagon while on a family vacation to a lake in Arkansas.

You might ask, "Robin, does that content warrant a Michelangelo reference?"

I'd argue that, yes, I think it does. Her words and phrasings carve out and elevate ordinary experiences in ways that perfectly capture human likeness.

I haven't yet finished the book because I'm torn between bingeing and savoring the remaining two chapters. Her writing not only has delighted me, but it's also inexplicably helped me. I'm a person who has words inside of me, but when I have too much to say or when life circumstances create heavier thoughts I reckon I can't say — which on-again/off-again is the case — those words get dammed up. Then I say nothing, at least not publicly.

The words within me might get released in different ways. Steam has to vent somehow. I'll have a three-hour phone call with my closest friend. I'll inconveniently wait until my husband has said goodnight and there's been a perfect beat of silence where his breathing has stabilized into an optimal pre-sleep rhythm, at which point I'll feel an urge to launch into a spoken dissertation. Or I'll write sprawling, unedited journal entries just for myself.

But words for real audiences? When life itself heats up, those words get relegated to a back burner, and eventually the pilot light gets snuffed out. I figure I have nothing to say.

As I read Elizabeth's essays, though, fresh ideas surfaced. Words clanged against each other into thoughts and images and concepts. I stood in the hotel shower washing my hair (the hotel conditioning shampoo, surprisingly, offered an acceptable level of conditioning, unlike any other combined shampoo-and-conditioner I've ever used), and ideas poured through my mind like rivulets of water down the drain. In the process, pieces of me felt like they were thawing, pieces that have been stuck for a while.

Perhaps hiking in the Utah heat also helped. Every day neared, if not exceeded, 100 degrees. People will be quick to note that it's a dry heat, and they're not wrong. The humidity was nonexistent. If I hadn't hiked miles each day, I would have had amazing hair days, even using the two-in-one hotel shampoo and conditioner. But we did hike miles each day — beautiful hikes over beautiful spaces that looked so foreign from my familiar central Pennsylvania landscapes that I questioned whether I was in the same country. Even on the same planet.

As we hiked, we alternated who carried the backpack Joel had purchased on Amazon the week before our trip. I felt like an imposter, much like when I stroll through a city and suspect everyone I pass instantly can discern that I'm not from there, that I don't fit in LA, or DC, or Atlanta, or Philly, or anywhere urban at all. In Utah, it felt the same, just opposite, as I passed people who looked like they were born hiking, while I haven't eaten enough granola in my entire life to belong. I don't even own a pair of Chacos.

Weeks before we arrived, Joel researched the hikes we'd take because, as I mentioned before, he is an adult. During our first hike in Zion, I marveled at the switch-backed roads and the one-hundred-year-old tunnel stretching over a mile through the imposing mountainside, a tunnel that had been planned and excavated with limited technology, while, in contrast, I had struggled to squeeze the hardened toothpaste from my travel-sized tube that morning.

Don't even get me started on the embarrassing admittance that if you had pulled me aside at gunpoint before this trip and demanded, "Grand Canyon, Utah or Arizona?" I might have died. It really would have been up to a coin toss. This trip highlighted my recurring insecurity that while I'm smart in a few select areas, secretly, I remember nothing and don't know how to do anything.

(For the record, if you personally can relate to this, the Grand Canyon is in Arizona.)

So, in this spirit of not feeling especially competent with basic geographic knowledge, trip-planning aptitude, civil engineering skills, or even toothpaste excavation, I hiked. Each day, the five members of our family hiked up and down hills, around cliffs, through craggy holes, and over boulders. Our steps were punctuated by Joel's frequent and fatherly admonishment to stay "six feet plus one good stumble" away from the edge at all times. The phrase became a mantra of sorts.

Each hike felt similar to life — detours and twisted ankles, different paces and preferences, occasional bad attitudes and complaints, spectacular views with appreciative silences, mild vocalized irritations that someone could hear "everyone breathing" as we climbed, lengthy flat stretches and boring stretches and hot stretches, hard passages where steep uphill slants caused your quads to burn and your heart to question if you should continue or if the journey was stupid and you didn't have what it takes to finish. At one point, I swapped out my size 7.5 sneakers for my 14-year-old's size 6.5 sneakers because her toes were "rubbing funny." For a particularly unpleasant half-mile stretch, the younger two bickered about who should explain the plot of a movie to the family. (Mind you, neither of them had fully watched the movie, but both apparently felt strongly about summarizing it.)

Yes, hiking was parallel to life, to this cumbersome journey of parenting three teenagers, which is its own version of steady plodding, hard trails, questioned sanity, pinched toes, ordinary irritations, headaches, heartaches, and the occasional breathtakingly spectacular view that makes you feel like the hard parts are worth it.

As I sweat under the relentless Moab sun, I breathed in the dry desert air and the sandalwood fragrance of Old Spice Swagger because I was sharing bodywash with my husband (see: limited suitcase space). Thoughts that had been lodged in my head started to dislodge, shaken loose with each breath, each step, and each chapter that I read by the hotel bedside lamplight at night, reveling in Passarella's perfectly rendered, keenly detailed, ordinary life observations.

We've been home for a few days now. My eyes have grown accustomed Pennsylvania's greenness, which I had missed after ten days of western reds and browns. I've viewed with fresh eyes the remnants of my pre-life trip — familiar objects and rooms and streets that become so familiar when you're living in them they're nearly invisible.

Sometimes, I suppose, you momentarily have to step away to see what typically surrounds you with greater accuracy. And sometimes you have to read someone else's stories and thoughts to help jumpstart your own.

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Like Hitting Your Head Off a Brick Wall

I hit my head off a brick wall today. It was purely accidental and quite embarrassing. Let me back up to set some context. 

I was slightly behind on my way to work this morning, so I walked quickly from my parking garage to my classroom building. I wasn't late. I simply was on the cusp of not being early, and since I didn't want to be late I sped up my pace even more in the last stretch, finding a seldom used entrance that leads to a back stairway near my classroom.

This is where things get murky. As I reached for the door handle, my foot caught on an upturned corner of the entrance's commercial-grade rubber door mat, and I tripped. Since I was carrying a bag and water bottle, I had nothing to break my fall. I smacked my head into the brick wall, then I realized I was laying on the ground.

I walked into class three minutes late.

With my head throbbing, I hadn't noticed that my knee was scuffed and bruised, and I was further surprised when a student asked, "Woah, what happened to your elbow?" Suddenly I became aware of that part of my body, too. It was bleeding.

None of the injuries seemed overly serious, though, so after explaining the embarrassing encounter and getting my bearings, I ran the class as usual. 

Partially through the session, one student quietly got up to leave the room. I thought little of it, until he came back a few minutes late holding a CVS bag, which he handed to me.

He had ordered a box of Band-Aids and Door Dashed them to our building. Let me repeat this:

He had ordered a box of Band-Aids and Door Dashed them to our building. When he left our classroom, it wasn't to use the restroom or water fountain, but rather to meet and pay the Door Dasher outside.

Class stopped. Students clapped for him and this extraordinarily kind gesture. I nearly teared up, and I'm pretty certain it's not even because I might be concussed.

You see, over the past few days, I've left campus feeling discouraged. Attendance has been spotty in one of my classes, and that's extremely unusual for me. Even though I mentally know that college students are responsible for themselves, their actions, and their attendance, I've felt like I'm failing.  

Then I go and hit my head off a brick wall, walk into my classroom with a bloody elbow, and get a gift of Door Dashed Band-Aids and so much compassion from my students that I realize maybe, just maybe, summer classes are actually going just fine.

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Mid-Stride Moments

Apparently, when a person is actively running, there comes a point when they're suspended in air. Neither foot is touching the ground. They're temporarily untethered to the earth in this mid-stride moment.

My incredible friend told me this fact when I went to visit her in West Virginia a couple of weeks ago. She was making a point. I imagined that she was referencing a hypothetical runner who might look like this: strong and fit, toned and capable, disciplined and determined.

However, given my current stage of life and fitness, I temporarily ruined her moment (and the valid point she was making) because I instead envisioned a runner like this: someone who tries hard, but drags their feet and probably trips a fair amount.

While I was mentally pondering the mechanics of a human stride, wondering if all people experience both feet momentarily lifted off the ground while running, or if some people awkwardly shuffle without achieving actual liftoff, my friend continued. 

She was in the process of moving across country. (That's why we had gathered one last time for a rapid-fire visit that spanned from 1 PM to 1 AM one Saturday where we talked and laughed incessantly, prayed together, ate takeout, went shopping, and took a hike where she sprained her ankle in the West Virgina wilderness. I digress, but we covered a lot in 12 hours.)

Back to the cross-country move. As she sat on her couch, ice bag on her swelling ankle, she told me that she felt like that suspended runner. Neither of her feet felt grounded in place. Metaphorically, she was mid-stride, hovering in the air, wrapping up one era in one location, headed 800 miles away to another place, no longer fully in one place and not yet fully in the other. She was just waiting, just hovering.

How exhilarating! Also, how terrifying. She and her husband had built a life, a great life. Successful careers, great friends, an amazing church family, neighbors, connections. They knew all the back routes while driving. They had a favorite grocery store and hiking routes and paths to walk. So familiar! So many great memories!

Yet that foot of the familiar was lifted from the ground, and the next foot was about to land in a new location. There would be a new career with new challenges, new colleagues, new neighbors, new friends, and a new house. Everything ahead was still unknown. They'd need to discover all new routines, routes, and rhythms.

In that moment, even as she sat on the couch with her leg propped out in front of her, I knew what she was saying was true: my friend was mid-stride. Was it going to be a perfect run? Probably not. After all, when you come to think of it, most running feels messy and hard, even if you're doing it really well.  

This week, she officially moved, all of her earthly possessions in tow. I write this now with tears stinging my eyes. My friend is even farther away, far enough that I no longer can drive there and back for a weekend visit. But mostly, my tears come because her foot has finally landed. She's running a new path, blazing a new trail.

I am deeply, profoundly proud of her. This new journey might be messy and hard, but I have no doubt she's going to do it really well.

2

The Gift of Not Knowing It All

Several years ago, the university where I teach selected Dave Eggers' novel The Circle as its common text, meaning that I had to incorporate it into my Rhetoric and Civic Life curriculum. I didn't like the book. Neither did the public at large, apparently, with its film adaptation garnering a weak 16/100 rating from Rotten Tomatoes.

To be fair, you're not supposed to "like" The Circle. Its plot isn't characterized by warmth, enjoyable characters, or redemption. One student said, without a trace of exaggeration, "This is the scariest book I've ever read."

The novel wasn't in the horror genre; it was dystopian. Yet, I understood my student's comment. The Circle was terrifying. In an effort to excel at her new job at a tech company called The Circle, the main character, a recent college grad named Mae, agrees to pilot their emerging technology: a 24/7 body camera that captures and broadcasts every aspect of her life. On the surface, this premise might sound more intrusive than downright terrifying, of course. But I still remember the evening when, stretched out on my couch reading a particularly harrowing chapter, I roughly tossed the book onto the floor because I needed to take a break. My stress level had ratcheted.

Despite The Circle's promise that the complete transparency of their social networks would create a more honest society (and even a flourishing democracy), Mae's life — and the lives of those around her — were destroyed. With every lived moment, millions of followers zinged Mae with messages, commenting on her every conversation, action, and decision. As an employee eager to please The Circle, Mae fully bought into the company's ideologies, yet she shattered privacy, blurred every possible work-life boundary, and ruined real relationships.

But amplify this further and imagine the premise scaled not only to one person (Mae), but to the entire world. The Circle wanted every single person's life to be continually shared, known, consumed, connected, and broadcast.

Even typing this, my cortisol spikes. I want to go sit by a lake, off the grid.

In certain ways, we already experience forms of this. There's infinite content to consume, millions of sound bites to swallow, and abundant ways to share. You have something to say? Our culture would encourage, by all means, blast it. Say it all, read it all, follow it all, absorb it all, respond to it all, know it all.

But this is impossible. No human perfectly can manage every one of their own thoughts and interactions, much less to perfectly manage the continual reactions of every other human to their thoughts and interactions, or to perfectly manage hearing and knowing everyone else's every single thought and interaction.

That much knowledge vastly exceeds our finite human capacity. We can't follow, absorb, respond to, or know it all. It's dizzying.

I haven't thought about The Circle for years, so why did I remember it now? It's because I recently heard a message about God's omniscience. He knows all — all things macro, all things micro, all things past, all things present, all things future. He knows every thought we have and every word on our tongue before we speak it. He knows when we sit and when we stand, our comings and our goings. He hems us in, behind and before. He knows this about us. He knows this about everyone.

He knows all. It's well within his capacity.

In response to this omniscience, David writes in the Psalms, "Such knowledge is too lofty for me, too wonderful for me to attain."

This is a beautiful acknowledgement. It reinforces how our thoughts are not like God's thoughts and our ways are not like His ways. We can't know all.

In fact, I often can't understand myself perfectly. I struggle managing relatively small-scale things, like accurately keeping on top of group text threads with my friends. I'm utterly non-omniscient. In moments when I feel like I have to know it all, respond to it all, share it all, consume it all, I'm crushed by the claustrophobic cognitive and emotional weight.

Sometimes limitations are gifts. Not knowing everything is a gift.

God didn't create us to know everything. Some might be angry that God adamantly withholds this ability from us, as if he's like Jack Nicholas in A Few Good Men declaring, "You can't handle the truth!" But I see the limitation as merciful, like a kind father not forcing a child to carry a suitcase that's impossible for the child to lift, saying, "That's too heavy for you. That's my bag to carry, not yours. Set that burden down. It's mine to lift."

Whether or not Eggers would appreciate this spiritual interpretation is debatable, of course. Still, one of the many reasons The Circle arouses such stress in readers is because it captures not only how impossible, but also how devastating, it is for humans to attempt omniscience.

Granted, like many people, I'm hardwired to figure things out, reason through arguments, mull over conversations, interpret nuances, and make sense of it all. I like knowing and understanding.

But as a follower of Jesus, this isn't always what's required of us. Thank God.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:5-6

0

End-of-Semester Ninja

Ninja-Level: can perform complex tasks in conditions of high uncertainty, stress, and conflict.

If we consider the above definition (which is 100% accurate since I found it on the Internet), I've officially leveled up. I'm a ninja, dear readers. In the midst of high uncertainty, stress, and conflict, I'm still performing complex tasks.

Am I scaling walls? Launching metal stars with great accuracy by swiftly flicking my wrist? Lunging athletically while wielding an imposing sword? No, on all accounts. But, if you saw me with a rubric right now, you'd definitely think, "Dang. She's a ninja." (That is, if you could see me at all. Ninjas reside in the shadows, invisible.)

So far this week, I've listened to approximately 70 final student presentations. I've graded slightly over half of them. They're my air and sustenance right now: I breathe and eat final speeches. These are the walls I'm scaling.

It's all I do: I listen, I take notes, I think, I grade. I sift rubric criteria with swift flicks of my wrist, lunging in an imposing manner with my audio podcast feedback that's personalized to each and every student. Ninja-level, I tell you.

I also keep sharp in other ways, asking myself tough questions like, "Wait, why did I walk into this room?" and "What was I supposed to be doing right now?" Apparently, if I'm a ninja in one aspect of life (work), I'm a goldfish in all other areas.

In the moments when I'm not grading, I daydream about everything I want to do when I have a break from grading. So far on my list:

• Organize my entire closet by holding each piece of clothing to my heart and asking, "Does this spark joy?" while deliberating all the fashion choices I've ever made.
  
  
• Read books. What books, you ask? All of the books. ALL of them.
  
  
• Paint my dining room. Or maybe change the pictures on the walls. Or perhaps swap out the table cloth. I'm not sure. Something is off in that room. I can't put my finger on it,.
  
  
• Become a professional garage-saler, like those guys on American Pickers. Imagine me driving a van off into the distance like a modern-day treasure hunter. 

I'm so close. I can almost taste it.

Once I submit my final grades this upcoming weekend, I'll have two full weeks before classes start again. And during those two weeks, trust me, not only will I remember why I'm walking into rooms, but I also plan on being a ninja-level master at closet organization, book reading, dining room decorating, and garage saling.

You won't see it of course, because I'll be invisible. That's just the ninja way. 

0

You Always Feel This Way

I have pressing news: there are less than two weeks of classes remaining. Students and professors alike feel the heat. I check my inbox cautiously, opening it with a quick glace, narrowing my eyes as I scan for troubling subject lines. The process reminds me of when I work in my yard and need to dig up a rock. I always flip that thing over gingerly and spring back a foot or two, hoping there's nothing creepy-crawly underneath.

That's me with emails right now. I poke at them with a stick before engaging.

I've been ending semesters forever, though. Shouldn't I be better at this? Shouldn't I be impervious to the mental and emotional toll by now?

I asked myself these exact questions this week because I've been frustrated for not feeling "more together" (whatever that means). Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that not only do I always feel this way at the end of a semester, but also that it's okay.

It's okay to feel this way. A handful of students are clamoring for extra credit even though they haven't done the regular credit. Other students are hitting the panic button for reasons that have nothing to do with me or my class. Some are enduring legitimately extenuating circumstances. I hear about it all. It's all right there: messages in my email inbox, clusters of students waiting to talk with me after class.

Sometimes my head spins. It's impossible to manage all their things on top of all my things.

This is why I need to step back and remind myself that this is the norm. The last two weeks of the semester always feel this way. I repeat to myself this phrase: You're not doing anything wrong: you're just in the tunnel. This will pass.

And it always does. The semester always ends. The scrambles always unscramble. So right now, I simply take some deep breaths and ride it out.

0

Adorable DIY Earring Display Hanger

I made a new friend last year. She's beautiful and kind, spirited and joyful. She wears dangly earrings adorably and naturally, versus how I feel when I've attempted the feat: oh look, here's a person trying to pull off dangly earrings.

She's utterly charming, right down to her earrings.

Today is her birthday, and in order to celebrate her, I created a earring holder so she can display her collection in a streamlined fashion, versus keeping them tucked in a drawer. I started by finding a simple square picture frame. (From Goodwill, of course — I'm a thrifter by nature.)

After disassembling the frame and removing the glass, I used needle-nosed pliers to detach the metal prongs that held the original frame backing in place.

I carefully wiped the frame clean to remove any debris, let it dry, then spray painted it with two coats of ultra matte black paint.

Then the real fun began. I cut a piece of plastic mesh to fit the dimensions of the frame (mesh is carried at any craft store), then carefully used my staple gun to tack the mesh to the back of the frame. This ensured that the staples wouldn't be visible from the front.

The result: a streamlined and sleek frame that can be perched on a dresser or hung on a wall so my friend's dangly earrings can be displayed as artwork.

Dangly earrings are too cute to be hidden in a drawer, after all.

Wishing my sweet friend a very happy birthday!

0

Geese, Golf Carts, and Unexpected Laughter: A True Story About Depression

For a fair stretch of time a few years ago, I was depressed. I still functioned in the ways that you're expected to function when you're an adult. I worked. I parented. I showed up. But I was a shell of myself.

I'm a positive person by nature, and I have strong faith in the Lord. These factors aren't mutually exclusive from depression. With every bit of resolve and emotional fortitude left in me, I tried to not appear like I was struggling, even to myself.

I still remember the afternoon when I realized how long I had been lurking in the shadows and how dark those shadows had grown. My husband had invited me to ride along in the cart when he went golfing. (If golf were a love language, Joel would speak it fluently.) I accepted the invitation.

I don't recall if he played all 18 holes or just 9, but I do remember that we encountered a flock of geese wandering the course, which apparently is common on a golf course. Flying rats, Joel had called them. Then he steered the golf cart toward the next tee box, cutting through the middle of the gaggle of geese so they parted ways, honking and lifting a few feet off the ground, as we drove through their midst.

Something about the scene, I'm not exactly sure what, struck me as comical. I smiled. It was a genuine smile. Then, inexplicably, the situation morphed from mildly comical in my head into oddly, irrevocably, ridiculously comical. I mean, all those flapping geese wings! The honking! The random way they scattered! My smile brimmed over into a laugh, and the laugh wasn't forced or fake. I couldn't stop my shoulders from shaking and my chest from heaving in laughter simply because Joel had driven our golf cart between some geese.

While Joel walked to the tee box and I wiped tears from my eyes from my weird display of laughter, I noticed the blue of the sky and the green of the grass and the pleasing way the fence edged the side of the golf path. My breathing felt fuller, as if my lungs had been released from constriction. More than I could express in actual words, I felt something in my heart: I'm feeling a real feeling right now, and that feeling feels happy. This feeling had been absent for so long I hadn't known if I was capable of feeling it again. 

That's the moment I realize that I had been depressed. The resurgence of a normal feeling — in this case, happiness — even from such a peculiar source (honking geese, really?), highlighted that I hadn't had normal feelings in quite some time. I had been wrung out, hollow, numb. But here I was, shoulders shaking and tears brimming from laughter.

None of it made sense, but it was something, and something felt better than nothing, which had been my default.  

Since then, life hasn't been all rosy, of course, because life is messy, and people are messy, and circumstances can be hard. But I confidently can say that it's much better — or, more aptly, that I'm much better. I talked with my doctor to address the physical elements of depression. I sought guidance from a trusted counselor. I'm in much closer community with an amazing group of faithful friends than I was then, which has been invaluable. (Good friends love you through your things, and in turn, you love them through their things right back.) 

And God. Oh, the care and goodness of God to handle all my feelings and prayers, all the chaotic emotion and numbness that I flung his way and cast at His feet. What healing he's brought to my heart. Along with the psalmist, I can testify that the Lord is the lifter of my head.

The void of feeling, the numbness, the dearth of happiness — it wasn't permanent. It was temporary. I'll never forget that first glimmer of hope, one that came in the weirdest of ways: geese, a golf cart, and unexpected laughter.

0

Just Go to the Concert

Have you ever listened to the band NEEDTOBREATHE? Even after over twenty years of incredible music, they're sometimes described as the "biggest band you've never heard of."

I've always wanted to see them in concert. A few months ago I had the chance. My oldest daughter texted me when the band released their upcoming tour dates, asking if I'd be interested in going with her and two college friends to see them. The catch? The concert was scheduled for a Wednesday night in a city three hours away. Even so, I checked my work calendar. It was the worst potential Wednesday of the semester to do such a thing, but after a few minutes, I texted her back:

"Absolutely. Get the tickets."

Was it a long day of work, followed by six hours of round-trip driving? Of course. Was I tired the next day? Undoubtedly. After gushing for a half hour about the concert, did the three teenagers with me fall asleep in the car on the way home, leaving me alone with my own thoughts for the rest of the long drive? Yes, they most certainly did.

Was it worth it? Absolutely.

Even now a few months later, I occasionally reflect upon that night. It's the only Wednesday evening of the entire fall semester I specifically remember. It would have been easy to skip if I based my decision on convenience alone, but really, how could I have passed up the opportunity? 

Of course, I've missed other opportunities, like one night in college when my roommate asked me if I wanted to go Christmas caroling at Joe Paterno's house, which was slightly under a mile from our dorm at Penn State. Of course I wanted to go, but it already was late and I had been studying for a final exam I had at 8 the next morning.

I still remember how my roommate and friends stomped snow off their boots as they entered our dorm two hours later. I hadn't moved from my desk. "How was it?" I asked.

The group was so excited that each person talked over the others:

"It was amazing!'

"We were so nervous to ring their doorbell that we stopped at three other houses to practice."

"Sue Paterno opened the door and she was in her bathrobe. She stepped outside in her slippers to plug in their Christmas lights!"

"Coach Paterno asked where we were from and we all said, 'Penn State' at the exact same time. He laughed and said, 'I gathered that. Where are you girls actually from?'"

"I can't believe it started snowing as we were singing. It was magical!"

This took place over two decades ago, but I still remember particular details, like how Joe draped his arm around Sue's shoulder as they stood in their front doorway, backlit from the warm glow of light in their house, and snow started to fall while my friends sang Silent Night.

For the life of me, the one thing I can't remember is what class I was studying for.

Sometimes you need to choose the less convenient, but better, option. I don't remember the final exam that happened then, and I won't remember run-of-the-mill Wednesday nights that happen now. But I'll always remember this one particular Wednesday night when I traveled to Pittsburgh to watch NEEDTOBREATHE in concert with my nearly nineteen-year-old daughter and her two friends. 

If there's ever another opportunity, I hope I'd do the exact same thing again. Just go to the concert.

Never heard of NEEDTOBREATHE? It's high time to remedy that. They've released too many incredible songs to list even a fraction of them, but you can't go wrong with this sampling of seven. Seriously, pause everything else you need to do today and do this first. Do it. Do it now.

Brother (perhaps their most widely-known song, for good reason)

West Texas Wind (sung poetry that'll make you feel all the feels)

Banks (a love song with a growl at 2:56 that's absolute perfection)

Hard Love (amazing vocals, amazing lyrics)

Carry Me (sounds like a prayer I want to pray daily)

Lay 'Em Down (one of their oldest, but what a wildly satisfying drop at 2:15)

Multiplied (also from the archives, and one of my personal favorites)

Actually, let's make it a sampling of eight songs, with this incredible, stripped-down, ruggedly live version of Survival (featuring Drew and Ellie Holcomb) that, as the kids these days say, absolutely slaps:

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Perfect Peace

A few days ago, I watched the opening episodes to season four of The Chosen at our local movie theatre. I heard about the series in passing a year ago, but I only began to watch for myself last fall when three separate people told me how deeply the show was impacting them over the series of three days.

After a few episodes, I understand why its reach is wide and profound. (If you haven't watched, I can't recommend it enough.) In the most recent episodes, we witness a brief exchange between Peter, the disciple, and Gaius, a Roman centurion. As Peter leaves, he offers the customary Jewish departure, "Shalom, shalom."

Gaius asks a question that we, as viewers, might have asked ourselves, "Why do you say it twice?"

Peter responds that "shalom" once is peace, but "shalom, shalom" is perfect peace, complete wholeness.

I've followed Jesus for thirty years, and I'm still in awe of His gift of peace. A few weeks ago, over an Olive Garden lunch of soup, salad, and breadsticks, a friend told me about her husband's recent surgery which removed a malignant tumor. During the whole process — the discovery of the tumor, the leadup to surgery, the waiting for results on the tumor's malignancy, the post-op checkup — both she and her husband had remained in complete peace.

She told me, "I knew it was serious, but somehow I never was upset. Neither was my husband. I wondered whether we should be more worked up about it." As my friend reflected, she only could attribute it to the perfect peace of God, a peace that passes all understanding, a peace that guarded their hearts and minds.

What kindness from the Lord. 

I've had many days when I'm grasping for whisps of peace in the midst of turmoil, confusion, or grief. Many times, my level of peace feels like the "shalom" (not "shalom, shalom") variety: peace-ish, but not quite perfect in its wholeness. 

But peace isn't the absence of struggle, pain, or hardship. It's the presence of God, even in the midst of a storm. I can trust a God who is both powerful and close, both all-knowing and intimate, both unsearchable in His greatness and deeply caring.

Whether or not I see it in my circumstances or feel it in my emotions, God's peace is perfect, complete, and whole. It's deeper than what's happening around me or even within me. It's a peace anchored in the Lord himself, who doesn't shift like shadows, who remains a strong tower and fortress, who understands and comforts those who grieve, who upholds us with his mighty right hand.

Shalom, shalom, indeed.

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Walking in Winter

There's no bad weather, only bad clothing.
Scandinavian Saying

I'm grateful I live in a location where I experience all four seasons. Some people love winter. Others hate it. I fall into the category of people who tolerate winter well. Trust me, in a few months when the weather finally breaks, I'll welcome spring with arms wide open, but now, I'm holding steady and enduring with good cheer. 

I've never been into winter sports, though. I don't ice skate, I don't ski, and I don't snowboard. Given this, most of my winter exercising has been done indoors at the gym to shield myself from the weather. But given some current troubles with my shoulder, I can't go to the gym or do much vigorous movement, which leaves me with one main option: walking.

I've always enjoyed taking walks when the weather is warm, but I've never been a person who takes daily winter walks. It's not as bad as it seems. For one, last Christmas my husband bought me a heated vest, and this thing is legit. It feels like I'm wrapped in a heated blanket, yet in a socially acceptable way. On occasion, I've even been known to describe it as "life-changing." You might think I exaggerate, but I've said what I've said.

Besides the heated vest, there's another reason why winter walks aren't bad: winter is surprisingly beautiful when you're exposed to its beauty. This evening, for example, I witnessed this sunset: 

Even on days when the sky looms dark, there's something tranquil and serene about its starkness. It's hushed and peaceful. I catch whiffs of the wood stove smoke from the house on top of the hill, which just might be one of the best smells this earth has to offer. 

When I'm warm and comfortable inside, I sometimes want to stay that way. Inertia is real. Still, I head outside because I know this to be true: I've never taken a walk and felt worse for it. Especially not now with my heated vest.

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Snow Days

At the risk of sounding old, I'm going out on a limb to say that schools these days are getting soft. Even the university where I teach — a university that used to never, and I mean never, cancel classes — canceled classes this week. 

Did we actually get snow? Well, yes. We got some snow. But did we actually get SNOW, like real snow, full-on drifts and piles of snow, or pelting onslaughts and avalanches of snow that would necessitate a cancellation? Not even close.

So what's a girl to do? I'll tell you: I'm going to wear sweatpants, and I'm going to stay cozy, and I'm going to drink tea and pet my cats and read a book. I'm going to utterly enjoy whatever cancellation is granted, whether it's warranted or not.

Life is hard enough sometimes. If snow cancellations is one area where it feels a little softer, so be it. I'll manage in my slippers.

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Celebrating Cat Adoption Days

On our refrigerator calendar, today's square is flanked by two special days: yesterday marks the one-year anniversary of adopting our cat, Chip, and tomorrow marks the three-year anniversary of adopting Peanut. As someone who never owned a pet until adulthood, I'm still surprised by how much joy they add to life.

Peanut, a diminutive cat who fits her namesake, continues to be sweet and shy and (in my humble opinion) the most adorable thing ever. Chip continues to behave like a dog. They're a good mix. 

Of course, Peanut often guards my laptop when I need to work. 

And, on occasion, she tries to fit into a lunch box.

Most recently, Peanut has taken to extending her paw and gently placing it on my bad shoulder, as if she senses I'm hurting. How she knows this, I can't fathom, but it's comforting.

In contrast, Chip has no such internal sensor, but he's delightful, too. He's relentlessly friendly. He runs crookedly, like he can't entirely figure out how to propel himself forward in a straight trajectory. We occasionally ask him, "What are you thinking about Chip?" and then playfully answer that he doesn't think. This seems to fit who he is. If he spoke, he very well might sound like a middle school boy. Bruh. 

Happy adoption days, Chip and Peanut. I'm grateful you're in our lives.

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Frozen Shoulder, Why Hello Again.

Once again, I'm going to have to put my dreams of competing on American Ninja Warrior on hold. I've been diagnosed with frozen shoulder. Again. 

My first bout of frozen shoulder occurred pre-pandemic, five falls ago to be exact. It started with minor pain and stiffness, but within two months, I had lost all ability to raise or rotate my right arm, making daily tasks like getting dressed, washing my hair, or sleeping a painful challenge.

For the sake of diversity, this time my left shoulder is affected. In good news: I'm right-handed, so I can still use my prominent arm freely. This is a plus, although with my left arm out of commission, I'm unable to normally reach for my seatbelt or, as I discovered last week, to pay the hourly fee at a parking garage kiosk without first opening my door and climbing out of the car.

Over the holidays, I had a conversation at a college football function with friends of ours, a former NFL player and his wife. He shared how he recently strained his shoulder while lifting heavy equipment into his truck bed. I winced, asked what his diagnosis was, and told him that I had frozen shoulder. He replied, "Frozen shoulder? I don't know how to say this, but that sounds not real."

I get this. The phrasing sounds benign, but saying adhesive capsulitisis, the official term, not only sounds fake but also pretentious, so I'll stick with the colloquial "frozen shoulder," as if Elsa accidentally "let it go" with a chilly blast toward me.

The internet hasn't made me feel better, either. A quick Google search on "frozen shoulder recovery timeline" shares depressing things like this:

Stage 1 (Freezing): Slow onset of pain last from 6 weeks to 9 months. As pain worsens and radiates down the arm, the shoulder loses motion, hindering mobility and daily activities.

Stage 2 (Frozen): Slow improvement in pain, but immobility remains 4 to 9 months.

Stage 3 (Thawing): Shoulder motion slowly returns to normal over a 5 to 26 month period.

Essentially, given where I currently am in this freeze-thaw process, if I level out immediately, I could "return to normal" as soon as November or at some point 39 months from now, which will be right around when my college freshman is a college graduate. 

Give or take, of course.

When I saw an orthopedist last month, he asked if my pain stemmed from a sports injury. I was tempted to quip, "More like a sports bra injury," but given that he was a young male doctor, I didn't think he'd find my womanly perimenopausal humor funny, or even understandable, but gah, have you ever tried to put on a sports bra with frozen shoulder? Impossible.

So now I stay the course. I move more gingerly than I'd like to move. I see an excellent physical therapist twice a week, do exercises morning and evening, and have a nightly appointment with a heating pad before awkwardly propping myself up on pillows to attempt sleep. I also I remember the valuable lessons I learned last time and sweet moments of care, knowing that all things, including frozen shoulder, are temporary.

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The Second College Drop-Off

This past weekend, my oldest daughter moved back into her dorm for her second semester of college. I wrote about the first college drop-off: a process filled with rolling carts and stacks of clothes, desk lamps and extra-long fitted sheets, Command-hooked twinkle lights and posters for the cinderblock walls, school supplies and four-by-six area rugs between the beds.

I wasn't prepared for it, but this second drop-off hit harder. I hugged her goodbye in the parking lot, then watched as she wheeled her suitcase and hoisted her backpacks, one on her back and one on her front, as she followed my husband, who carried her laundry basket of winter clothes.

You see, the winter break had felt so incredibly normal. All five of us had been under one roof. We resumed the familiar rhythms: I bought snacks that she liked, and she immediately reverted to her habit of leaving her dirty clothes on the bathroom floor after she showered. On evenings when she hung out with friends, we waited until she returned home to turn off the outside lights and lock the front door. It was just like old times.

But as I watched her recede from view down the sidewalk, I realized that her default absence, not her daily presence, is the new normal for our family now. The winter break was a break from the routine, but this? This is the reality; this is the routine. 

That's why the second college drop-off hit harder than the first. I know how quickly semesters pass, which is why I know how the breaks between those semesters pass even more quickly. Even though I've always known it, this second drop-off reinforced that our time with our kids is finite. We raise them so they can leave and live their lives, as it should be. Circle of life stuff.

Still, I'd like to add that before she turned the corner and disappeared from view entirely, she looked back over her shoulder and smiled. I'll take it and treasure it in my heart.

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Let's Chat: Hello 2024

Happy New Year, dear readers! The end of 2023 slipped away with a host of activities: wrapping up a semester and submitting final grades, traveling and returning home, preparing for Christmas, actually reaching and celebrating Christmas, more traveling and returning home (again), then ringing in the new year. It's now 2024. Let's go!

And by let's go, I mean, sit right there and don't go anywhere. Make yourself comfortable. Join me on this first installation of a Let's Chat post, 2024-style. We'll meander between topics, letting the conversation take us where it wishes. 

Changes of Scenery. I mentioned that I traveled twice around Christmas: once from Pennsylvania to Florida and back to visit my parents, then from Pennsylvania to Georgia and back to attend the Peach Bowl. When I first arrived in Florida, my immediate response was that it wasn't real. Blue skies, sunshine, and palm trees in December? Is this some wonderful hoax? After a day, however, the tables turned and I began to believe that my real life in Pennsylvania where I'm an employed person who does mundane things like making grocery lists wasn't real, either. 

All of this was very confusing. Reality and alternate reality were working at odds. I chalked it up to the fact that, apparently, I'm like an infant who can't remember that her hand exists when it's covered up by a blanket. When I'm in Pennsylvania in December, places like Florida don't exist. They're covered by a blanket. And when I'm in Florida in December, places like Pennsylvania don't exist. Blanketed, all the way.

I'm back in Pennsylvania for the long haul now. Hello darkness, my old friend.

Another Semester Starts. Another semester always starts. That's just the nature of semesters. They're like tides, either coming in, or going out, or occasionally pulling you under. We start on Monday. I'm not going to endeavor the mental gymnastics to tally how many semesters I've started, and I'm certainly not going to bother with the distinction of how many of those were in the role of student instead of instructor, but suffice to say, it's a lot.

Everything is prepared, as it should be. This is not my first (or tenth, or twentieth) rodeo, given that semesters come in fall, spring, and summer varieties and I've taught all of them for a gazillion years. I've finalized my syllabi. I've published my Canvas sites for each class. I've visited each of my classrooms, walking up and down each row, running my hand along every desk to pray for each student who will be sitting in them next week. I'm ready to go.

Goals and Stuff. I've never been a person to make New Year's Resolutions, but this year, I have a few. For the sake of accountability, let me itemize them:

• Give up Dr Pepper. Granted, I've given up Dr Pepper before, but I fell off the wagon so hard during the pandemic that I would have taken Dr Pepper through an IV if you would have offered it to me. You might be like, "But Robin, wasn't the pandemic four years ago? Haven't you gotten past that yet?" and I would say yes (to the pandemic being four years ago) and no (to not getting past it.) But now it's time. Even though a part of me is crying as I type this, I'm prepared to swear off happiness in the form of delicious liquid sugar running through my veins.
  
  
• Write more. Years ago, I wrote amply and effusively. It was a practice, a discipline. Let's blame everything on Covid at this point, because at the same time the pandemic (and my Dr Pepper usage) spiked, my writing tanked. Of course, goals need to be concrete. You can't just "write more" or "get healthy" or "eat better," but rather you need a plan. Given this, my plan is to form a habit of posting twice a week on this humble blog. (Mondays and Thursdays sound nice.) 
  
  
• Use a planner. Why I'm blaming this on Covid, I don't know, but somewhere along the line I went from a person who had a planner (think: organization and structure!) to a person who wrote things down on scraps of paper, to a person who had occasional thoughts that flitted in my head like Post-It notes being rustled by an oscillating fan -- tentatively sticking there, but potentially blown away at any moment. Somehow, in my currently hopeful January frame of mind, I think a planner will definitively change things, that it will revive the best and most disciplined parts of me that have been dormant. I'll keep you posted.
  

How about you, dear reader? How has your new year started? I hope you are well in every way possible, and please let me thank you for joining me here at Robin Kramer Writes. You could be reading anything, but you're here. I'm honored.

And now, 2024. Let's do this!

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The New Calendar

A glimpse into my uncensored thought process when buying my 2024 calendar:

Practical Me: Choose the black and white option.

Decorative Me: But this other calendar is more colorful and has whimsical drawings of plants along the borders.

Practical Me: Black and white always works. Are you sure you like plants that much? This is a 365-day commitment, you know.

Whimsical Me: You're in a rut. You should try something new besides black and white. Plus, plants are cheerful. Live a little, woman!

Practical Me: But that font on the plant calendar is ALL WRONG. I mean, it's not as bad as Papyrus or Comic Sans, but clearly, it's not going to win any typography awards. Can you emotionally commit to a bad font for 12 months?

Decorative Me: Point conceded.

Practical Me: I should note that the black border will blend nicely into your refrigerator. You won't even notice this version once it's hanging up.

Decorative Me: But isn't that too predictable? Won't you want some life and color during those doldrum months? On top of that, can you even consider this a "transition" to a "new" calendar if it looks just like last year's calendar?

Practical Me: Oh. Ooof. I hadn't considered that. (pause). Really, Robin. This is just a calendar. Just. A. Calendar. This is not a lifelong commitment.

Irrational Me: Well, technically, it's still a pretty big commitment. It is a whole year, after all. You better get this right. You're going to be dealing with this choice for 365 sequential days.

Detail-Oriented Me: Actually, try 366 days. It's a leap year, you know.

Exhausted Me: I can see you're stuck, so let's simplify things. Look here at this entirely new third calendar option for you to consider. That'll help.

Every Other Part of Me: That doesn't help at all.

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