Friday, April 15, 2016

Searching for Blue on the Freedom Trail


It's a yearly tradition - this thing we do every Spring; we search out Bluebonnets, that Lupine of the southwest, our state flower. Any native Texan knows the drill. Don't start your search when they pop up in patchy scrabbles of weed off the exit the ramps leading into town. This is a ruse, though there are plenty of native Texan wannabe's risking their lives (and their kids) trying to iphoto the shot off the roadside. No. You wait. You wait until it rains and then heats up and rains again. Then you look at the calendar of all the Bluebonnet festivals in the state and go the week before.
Go, as in get out of town. Go, as in to Washington County first, taking the lazy back roads along the freedom trail, or farther west, to Burton, maybe even Fredericksburg. Maybe you have family in Dallas and you head North, to Ennis or Waxahachie. Go, before the hoards of northerners come and trample the Indian blankets; before the city-slickers discover the hidden jewels of farmland covered in brilliant blue; before the children pick them all to pose in family photos destined for the fireplace mantle.





The Chapel Hill Bluebonnet Festival is right around the corner and the weather on Saturday predicts sun and 75 degrees. We pack a picnic lunch and drive the 90 miles northwest from Houston. Our favorite destination is Washington-on-the-Brazos, the site where the Texas Declaration of Independence from Mexico was drafted then signed on March 2, 1836 at peril of life and property. That echoing protest would usher in a sovereign country for ten years and a sovereign sentiment that has lasted until today. One hundred and eighty years later, we stand on historic ground. Farmland flanked by Goldenrod. Cows standing in fields of Indian Blankets. Horses running through bluebonnets. God wielding an Indian Paintbrush. Truth.


We eat the pbj's and pasta salad under a grove of century-old Pecan trees, not yet leafed out, then head down the path toward the old Brazos River ferry, site of the Runaway Scrape. The Mexican President, Santa Anna, was mad as a hornet at the Texian uprising and marched through the new republic, laying siege to the Alamo and Goliad. Terrified, the civilians and interim government burned their towns behind them and used this ferry to escape east. Sam Houston, newly appointed commander-in-chief, didn't even have an army but bought time to train one on the run and was accused of cowardice by the fledgling government. Today there are only large stones, brush and vines marking the mass exodus to the river.

Still in search of our own jeweled plot, we leave the bank of the Brazos and strike out through the woods to the pond. We've brought so many friends here over the years: my sister's family and my mother fighting off the sun and mosquitoes; Allison and her family poking sticks into fire-ant hills; scores of my students, even one from my teaching days in China when Bethany was but six months old. I have a picture of me pregnant with Hannah, roundness pressed against a thin white t-shirt. I am flanked by a group from Sinopec, flush with their new adventure.

Santa Anna marched forward, executing his prisoners-of-war and bands of retreating soldiers. As more and more people fled, new recruits joined up with Houston's green army of pioneers escorting the civilians out of the hill country toward Louisiana. Meanwhile, the Texian government fled to Galveston. Emboldened by their retreat and strengthened by more platoons, Santa Anna advanced, gathering his flanking generals.

The first time I saw a rural field of bluebonnets was the year I applied to teach in China. I'd been firmly entrenched in a bright urban life devoid of color. I took a journal with me on that short road-trip and sat on a rock surrounded by God's artistry. I pondered my motives for going to China. Wondered what I'd bring back, how I'd change, what my future held. Or was this my own, private runaway scrape?

In the rainy April weather, Santa Anna and his army of nearly 900 moved through the plains and lowlands toward the border to reclaim the renegade Mexican state, and Houston inexplicably turned and followed, taking only his best men, a straggling army of 500. As they trudged day after day through marsh and mud, reinforcements swelled the number to 910.


We reach the path to the pond that meanders through more woods to flower-decked fields beyond. But we are blocked. Too much rain has muddied the path and swamped the fields. For the first time in all our treks here, we do not sit in bluebonnets. We find another path back up the hill, stopping to examine two small snakes rustling in a thicket.

The Mexican army crossed the rain-swollen Buffalo Bayou by bridge and camped in an exposed plain. The Republic's army camped only 3/4 miles away in a thicket of trees. Reinforcements arrived and swelled the Mexican army to 1400 so Houston ordered the bridge destroyed thus locking in both armies.
April 21, 1836, dawned bright and blue. Convinced he outnumbered the revolutionary band and with no movement from Houston's troops, Santa Anna allowed his troops to take a siesta in the heat of the late afternoon. Silently Houston and his men belly-crawled through the marsh. It took them 18 minutes to win the battle of San Jacinto and another day to track Santa Anna, who fled dressed as a common soldier. Brought back to camp, he declared himself "Napoleon of the West" and demanded Houston's allegiance. Eventually he signed the peace treaty and was escorted out of the new Republic of Texas.

 The fields and prairies that Spring of 1836 were ablaze with the colors of the sky and sun and flame: Bluebonnets, Coneflowers, Verbena and Larkspur; Milkweed, Daisies and Buffalo Clover, Goldenrod and Mexican Hat; Indian Paintbrush, Squawfeather, and Indian Blanket....  We end our trek where the republic was birthed, in the clapboard meeting house with windows thrown wide and muslin curtains billowing in the April winds. The girls find other wildflowers in a patch of prairie grass they have played in every year we have visited Washington-on-the-Brazos. As they make bouquets, my husband rests on the steps of our adopted home, and I celebrate the lovely.

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Allogamy


My nightly ritual of allogamous reading keeps a number of books near my bedside at any given time. Some hapless books have been known to hang out there for a year as I read a paragraph or two like a devotional psalter. Some come and go before dawn.

This practice befuddles my husband who believes in doing one thing and doing it well. My daughters are mystified that it takes me longer to read the best books. I often wish I could take them all in faster and once even bought a do-it-yourself Evelyn Woods course. (So many books, so little time!) But chewing the cud is part of the fun for me. I've camped out on one page of Mary Karr's book for the last two nights (page 11-12) and I've been reading Osnos' book (a 2014 Christmas gift from my husband) out loud for a year with one of my ESL students. It is excellent, by the way, and as my student's allotted hours are almost over, I hope to finish the book soon!

Death by Living, on loan from Julie, will be returned to her when I visit this weekend. Wilson's book is a rollicking ride, a fast read that simultaneously slows me down to appreciate my own life while spurring me on to do more without fear. This memoir's mantra is, throw caution to the wind and dare to live with one hundred percent attention to the world surrounding you.

Anam Cara, because, like Allison, I didn't finish it the first time around.

Marilynne Robinson, because, as an exasperatingly difficult read, I need to - like cod liver oil.

Daily Rituals has been eye-opening and hilarious. It's a compilation of great artists and their work habits. Need I say more?

Robert Cording, one of my favorite contemporary poets, just released this book. Allison knew I'd love it for Christmas. I read it like Psalms. So good.

Cross-pollination: because it would be fruitless to do it any other way.


Monday, April 04, 2016

Progress Report


Soak in the writings of Moses. These last few weeks, I have been struck by the wealth of imagery and import. To be a priest in the lineage of Aaron was a fearsome thing! On the first day of consecration of the temple, that magnificent and splendid feat of architecture and artisanal skill which the entire desert encampment helped to build (not out of compulsion but with joy and generosity), two of Aaron's sons decided to do things their way. Fire erupted and burned them up in front of Aaron, Moses, and the entire camp who stood trembling and unsure of what God would do next. He said proceed - with care. And the requirements were stringent. At any moment it would be so easy to get things wrong, again. I can't fathom the heaviness of heart that Aaron must have felt, or the deep awe and respect for God's power as he continued his priestly duties.

UT Austin
Thus the service in the temple began - a service that would mark and make all future generations. Everything Aaron did, had to be performed as prayer with excellence and attention to both his inner condition and his outer comportment, year after year, generation after generation. And what were his duties? What do you imagine they were? Here is a partial list: trim the wicks of the golden lamps and fill them with oil to keep them burning; slaughter the sacrifices and dispose of the ashes; bake the bread cakes, carefully measuring the flour; meticulously cleanse the temple and the priests.... Nothing short of butcher, baker, housekeeper, maintenance man. The nitty-gritty menial daily tasks performed so a people ever so beset with more and more stubborness could be close to God. The rituals and cleansings, the sacrifices and the expectations, the light and bread and oil and incense, every day, every year. And in the end, Aaron, like Moses, was prevented from entering the promised land.  So I ask, do the priests sanctify the work, or does the work sanctify the priest?

I recently read an illuminating book by Nancy J. Nordenson entitled Finding Livelihood: A Progress of Work and Leisure. Nordenson, a medical writer, explores the meaning of work and those seasons when work ceases. It is an evocative and meditative book that unflinchingly examines who we are in relation to what we do.

Nancy writes, "I don't spill blood for my work; I don't even break a sweat. I write and take my diminished breaths. Expand, contract, expand, contract, expand, contract. I sit and think and write and my work gets done. Beat, pause, beat. here is a sentence about transfusion requirements; here is a paragraph about complications. I wonder about the physicality of the blood in the bag versus the electronic document on my computer screen, both in the service to the same disease. Inside me, 3 million red blood cells expire for each second the document grows. Have you anything to fill you back up?" (page 63)

Under the Camponile
There are layoffs happening this week here in Houston - an expected death that has kept many of my students on edge for months. Some of them will go home to other countries and continue to work. Some will uproot their High School students with only one year left to graduate. Some will be out of a job. When the work is tedious and long and doesn't make sense. When everything goes wrong and burns up in smoke. When the layoffs keep coming and you might be next. When she is old and the benefits don't match the expenses. When his strength fails and he is forced into retirement. When I do one thing wrong and watch someone else inherit my reward. Who are we then and where next?  Have we anything to fill us back up?









Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Continuum Mysterium

I have this day at home, a full morning to stretch out the limbs of the usual: I switch on the cracked ginger-jar lamp and with a Mudlark match, light the votive candle called Mediterranean Sea. It flickers inside the silvered glass on my dad's carved-oak coffee table. I lift my books off the floor because there is no room on the bookshelves monopolizing the room and then pick up the pen from my mother's gilt tray. I open this month's journal, a gray one, and then the bible - the one LeeAnne gave me for my birthday at UGA which, twenty years later, was stolen by Andrea, who secretly sent it away to have it re-bound. All that time thinking I'd lost it and mourning, until my birthday when I unwrapped the heavy box and there it was, now gray leather, instead of wine, pages with coffee stains and decades of notes bleeding into the margins. This book I open, and wince at the memory of the previous day's reading. Too many unanswered whys.

I take a drink of coffee - mixed with cream and sugar and cold-pressed because my aging stomach cannot take more of the anxiety induced acid it churns - and I sip it from the blue and white tea mug that Brad and I bought at the dirt market on the ChiangJiang Bund in Hankou. The light is dawning as I nibble on a piece of waffle from my favorite plate which was once my grandmother's, and when I look up I see photos of my family underneath the large gilt mirror that Marie gave me for Christmas before I left for China; in that mirror, I see reflected the portrait that Cheryl painted of Brittany after her death.

I am alone and the sun rises and the cat has squeezed herself underneath my arm. This long, stretched out daybreak in which I read and pray and write; is it because it feeds my soul or my flesh - these feelings of contentment and calm - in the wake of anxiety or dread. Where am I in this continuum mysterium? Am I more in love with the trappings of this quiet time or with the One whom my soul seeks? Am I more enamored with the words on the page than with the sayer? And what if I begin to sense the answer is yes? What if I have missed the mark? Should I remove the trappings? Change my temperament? Do more and be less? I am indeed a selfish sinner who craves the presence of God for selfish reasons. Would I withdraw my devotion if the ambiance changed? Is it wrong that a ritual sustains the quest? or that I am associative by nature?

But the omniscient, omnipresent God knows this. Knows me.

He woos me with this: deep calls to deep and word calls forth action and I want more of that presence Moses breathed, in smoke and fire, at the tent of meeting; more of that presence fogging up Solomon's thoughts; more of that presence sung from David and swallowed up with Jonah. I want the breath of God in my nostrils, the whirlwind on my face, the taste of his words like honey to set my hair on fire.

Of all Annie Dillard wrote, did you ever read these lines from her poem Tickets for a Prayer Wheel:

The presence of God: 
he picked me up
and swung me like a bell. 
I saw the trees 
on fire, I rang 
a hundred prayers of praise. 

I no longer believe
in divine playfulness.

I saw all the time of this planet
pulled like a scarf
through the sky....

....Why are we shown these things?
God teaches us to pray.





Thursday, February 25, 2016

Moving Forward

Life has a way of moving forward and sometimes we don't give it a backward glance. Thanks to Jill Kandel, who asked to interview me about my cross-cultural marriage on her writer's blog, I looked back, dusted off this blog and realized what a beautiful, boatload of memories it holds! The girls are in Jr. High and High School now and I've been working oh, so slowly, on a memoir these last few years. It's time to re-enter the fray of public blogging. Five years ago there were 160,000,000 blogs to vie for your attention. Now there are way more than 250,000,000 according to Robin Houghton's book, Blogging For Writers (Writer's Digest Books, 2014). If you choose to spend time here, thank you. I know you could easily pass by.There is a lot here about China because I love that massive chaotic mess of humanity. There is also much about my family because I love that chaotic mess even more. And since this is my blog's tenth anniversary year, there is much more to come. I keep my promises.