Travel

Travel does not bring out the best in people. The first really big vacation Beaven and I took was to Alaska. We kept adding and adding options until the trip was far more complicated than usual. It had a whopping twelve days in Alaska, including five days in the interior and seven days on a cruise at sea. We were thrown together with 1,200 strangers who were, to put it mildly, pretty strange. By the time the trip was over we had been on a crowded bus over 20 times as well as a train, trolley, tram, ocean liner, kayak, raft, motor boat, canoe, and a helicopter. Yes. Let’s all go on vacation and REELAAX.

The first day I was ready to throw Beaven overboard. The second day I wanted to sink the ship and all 1,200 people I was travelling with. By the last day, I was ready to jump into the ocean myself.

Part of our trip was two days on the train. Beaven loves trains. We were looking forward to this being the highlight of the trip; a quiet and peaceful ride through beautiful scenery. Wrong. A woman we later dubbed the “Moose Lady” sat three rows back. But her voice projected so well that we could have sworn she was directly behind us. Not only was she loud; she had a grating accent that was part screech and part nasal and a whole lot New York. Moose Lady carried on a four-hour non-stop monologue of moose jokes. In between the jokes, she would call out the window “Here, moosie, moosie, moosie!”

We knew that the following day we would get back on the train for not four, but eight hours. The thought of repeating another day with the Moose Lady sent us into earnest prayer. Knowing what a sense of humor God has, I was not surprised to see the Moose Lady gone the next day and replaced by the Cackler.

The Cackler had a laugh that was even louder than the Moose Lady. Where the Moose Lady depended on projection, the Gackler went for sheer volume. Instead of dumb moose jokes we were treated to every detail of every member of her family’s life. A lot of details I didn’t need to know. As interesting as it was, it was distracting. The conductor finally asked her to hush.

Another one of my prayers that God apparently got a laugh out of was that we would have quiet dinner partners on the ship. I knew we would probably be assigned to a table for eight for the entire cruise. I didn’t really want to spend my time with a bunch of loudmouths telling me how smart or successful they are. Instead, we ended up at a tiny table for four with a very nice but boring couple. The most interesting conversation we had was his story about installing gutters. I almost fell asleep in my Baked Alaska several times.

The trip did include one of the most awesome things I’ve ever done in my life. It was a flight on a helicopter to a glacier. The glacier itself was surreal. It reminded me of what the moon must be like. The surface was total deserted and gray from pollution but had deep, frightening cracks that went God Only Knows how deep. And inside the cracks was a gorgeous azure blue. This was a popular spot for tours so it looked like the opening scene from MASH with helicopters coming and going. And the flight in the helicopter to get to and from the glacier was a carnival ride in itself. I was a little distracted however because I was scared to death of the height to start with and couldn’t stop noticing how young the pilot looked. I’ll bet the guy wasn’t a day over 14. I kept watching his face for any sign that he was old enough to shave. I kept thinking “Please, dear God, just a little stubble on the chin.”

On Sunday, the last day of the cruise, there was a worship service on board the ship. I figured there might be maybe 12 people, thinking most people aboard were shallow and materialistic and not interested in worshipping God in the slightest. I was surprised to see the room filled to its 200 capacity.

As we stood and sang the first hymn, I became aware of the gentle motion of the ship beneath my feet. I was reminded of how vast and powerful the ocean is compared to even a huge boat like ours. This ship was over 10 stories high-a regular floating hotel. Yet the ocean was bobbing it around like a cork. Then I looked around at the people in the room with me and realized, “We are all in the same boat together.”

This included the couple at dinner who didn’t meet my standards for conversation; it included the Cackler and yes, even the Moose Lady. We are all in the same boat together. Even on dry land.

Washing a Possum

I washed a possum in the washing machine once. It wasn’t on purpose. I really don’t care how clean the neighborhood animals are. And I rarely invite them into my home for social functions. No, it was totally by accident. Years ago the house we lived in had the washer and dryer in the garage. And we lived close enough to a vacant field that we occasionally harbored wildlife. I guess I left the door to all the wrong things open. Our friend must have wandered into our garage, fallen in the washer and started on a good nap when I came to add a few clothes, shut the lid and start the machine. No, I did not grab him and say “looks like you need a dusting off old boy, hop in.”

And I certainly did not realize what had happened when I opened the machine the next morning. Half-asleep, I reached out to move the wet clothes into the dryer. I was stopped by the strange odor. My clothes don’t normally come out of the washer smelling like the landfill. Then I saw what appeared to be either a very large rat or a very ugly cat. And a very dead one. After examining this sight for about a billionth of a nanosecond, I slammed the lid shut and went inside the house to write my husband a note. It read something to the effect that I loved him and would do anything in the world for him and hoped he felt the same way about me because there was something dead in the washer and would he please get rid of it. Then I left for work.

I wasn’t a completely liberated woman at that stage of my life. God help me, I probably will never be that liberated. I’ve always agreed with the great television sage, Suzanne Sugarbaker from Designing Women, who decreed that “the man always has to kill the bug.”

When I talked to Beaven later that day, he assured me that the possum was gone from my life forever and went to heaven in a very clean condition. But that wasn’t the end of the story.

My brother was in the Navy on a nuclear submarine at that time. They were on a secret mission somewhere at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Each family member was allowed to send him two letters which would be radioed to him. The rules were very strict: no more than 50 words and you couldn’t send any “coded” messages. This sounded simple but, actually, the 50 words was a real challenge. That’s not enough for a real story. But I wanted to use every word available and send a little bit of “home” to him. And to cap it all off, my life at that time was actually pretty boring. The most exciting thing that had happened to me in months had been Super Panty Day, when the youngest had finally gone all day with dry underwear. I couldn’t really expect Doss to get excited about that. Somewhere between “We’re all fine.” and “Take Care, We love you” I had to give him something interesting. So I included the sentence: “I washed a possum in the washer today.”

Somewhere in the Indian Ocean, in the middle of the night, my brother was summoned brusquely from his bunk to see the Captain. I’m sure he was concerned and intimidated at the same time. The captain handed him the cable to read and demanded an explanation. “Allard, you know you can’t receive messages in code” My brother read the letter, threw back his head and laughed. “Captain, this isn’t a code, it’s just my sister. She probably DID wash a possum in the washer.”

Maybe in that quirky message I sent more of home to him than 50 words could say.

Becoming Peaceful

I decided that I need to be a little more peaceful. After all, here I am in the wilderness surrounded by trees and birds with quiet dirt roads leading to nowhere. What better setting for a peaceful life? So I bought a bunch of books about being peaceful and began to read up. I decided I’d be peaceful, dammit, if it killed me. Somehow that didn’t work.

A couple of weeks ago I was mad at everything because Chad Kueser got hurt in the war. I went to church to pray for his healing but I forgot to pray for myself. Chad is doing fine. But I was still mad.

Then World Communion happened.

We don’t always have a worship service as great as we had this year. Some years and in some churches World Communion Sunday is just a footnote to worship as usual. The year of 2001 certainly wasn’t a good year for World Communion anywhere. On that date in 2001 the United States began the invasion of Afghanistan. Think about that one for a sec. Our country began a war on World Communion Sunday.

But this year was different. All you had to do was visit my church that day.

I can’t imagine any church ever had as much diversity in one sanctuary as we had in Garland, Texas that morning. We had a panoply of colors: colors of clothing and colors of skin. It was a living stained glass window.

About a year ago we committed to share our sanctuary on Sunday evenings with the South Asian Presbyterian Church. This is a congregation of about 40 people who live all over the metroplex but who want to be Presbyterians together and needed a building for worship. It was just the most natural thing in the world to let them use ours. We discovered them to be mostly from Pakistan. And one of the first things we decided was that we would share world communion Sunday together.

So on October 2nd we had a bunch of people from Pakistan in the sanctuary with us. They dressed in the traditional dress of their country: gorgeous saris for the women and flowing robes for the men. Their pastor had been installed the week before and our church gave him a very decorative stole with bright colors. But it was our pastor who “stole” the show, wearing an elegant shimmering aqua sari they had given her in return. You just have to feel sorry for male pastors at times like this; women pastors really have more options when dressing up.

Another international touch came from the Mbaku family who were born every bit as Presbyterian as I was but in French Cameroon. They wore their traditional African robes, with matching robes for married couples. Gwen and Geoffrey wore emerald green with intricate gold embroidery; another couple was dressed alike in orange. Gwen’s mother, Martha Domanju was in a bright blue robe with matching hair wrap. The Mbaku boys had matching robes of gold. Other friends of ours who came were Esther Nkwenti and Mercy Tatang in bright robes and head wraps. And there were another assortment of about 4 relatives I didn’t recognize who were wearing African robes.

We were still hosting a few relatives from the Hurricane Rita affected areas so even among the wasp-y looking folks you couldn’t tell who were “family” and who were just in town visiting because they had been evacuated. That was the part I liked: you couldn’t tell who was a refuge and who was somebody’s sister so we just treated everyone like family.

On top of it all, we were going to renew our covenant of friendship with the churches in the Norte Presbytery of Guatemala. So the communion table was covered in a bright woven fabric in Guatemalan style. The liturgy for the day was a group effort that included the Guatemalan churches and the South Asian church. We had songs in Spanish and one in Urdu, which is basically unpronounceable except for “Hallelujah.” Everybody could sing Hallelujah.

I looked around while we were singing in Urdu to see this gorgeous mosiac of faces and colors with some slightly bewildered gray haired white folks doing their best to take it all in. And, bewildered or not, they were making it.

At the end of worship our pastor ask for Mrs. Domanju to come forward and we presented her with a peace candle for her to take home to her church in Cameroon when she leaves next week. It originally came to us from Russia.

Funny, isn't it? When I was a kid we spent a lot of time worrying that Russia was going to blow us up. Now they're sending us peace candles.

All of this left me thinking maybe we might figure this peace thing out. I have lived long enough now to have seen a lot of changes in the world. Certainly when I was growing up my church never had worship like this.

Two generations ago Martha Domanju couldn’t have come to spend a couple of months with her daughter because there was no airline service between our countries. Maybe even two generations ago Gwen and Geoffrey couldn’t have come to live here and raise their boys here. Certainly two generations ago we never would have shared our sanctuary with a group of Pakistani Presbyterians. And two generations ago we wouldn’t have had members of our congregation with solid personal friendships in Guatemala. My grandmother had a lot of friends in her church but she never had any friends whose last name was Nkwenti or Tatang or Velasquez or Rodriguez.

I’m still mad about this war and I still disagree with it. But every once in a while I noticed the progress we’ve made. At these times it seems like we’re getting a little closer to finding the Kingdom of God right here under our noses. I constantly struggle with the idea that God has eternity to continue the vast creation God has envisioned for us while I only have just this one lifetime. I get in a hurry and forget to be peace-full.

Every Sunday we pass the Peace of Christ. On October 2, 2005 we lived inside of it.

My Life with Big Tex

Going to the State Fair is one of our family’s greatest traditions. Beaven and I both go back three generations in fair history – all the way back to the Centennial of 1936. When he was a kid Beaven used to live a few blocks from the fair and remembers climbing over the fence at one of the remote corners to get in free. A few years ago we bought one of those fund raising bricks and had it installed along the walk by Big Tex. We took the grandkids there to see it on Monday and I think we have the next generation hooked. While Beaven was in line for a corny dog Sarah plopped herself down directly in front of and below Big Tex and spent a good bit of time listening and watching. She is absolutely convinced he’s real.

Going to the fair with Beaven is something new to our marriage. For years he would go because his job required him to be at the fair grounds televising stuff and I went separately with the kids. It’s also just a lot more fun at the fair without the men. They tend to slow us down with side visits to see the tractors and trucks. The women I like to go with always know the reason we’re there: food. It’s the equivalent cost of a really fine restaurant and, in it’s own way, is haute cuisine. I like to follow a set route each year and move with a vengeance that only Sherman marching across Georgia could match: We’ll start at the pizza stand by the parking lot and aim for the Museum of Natural History, eating our way across the Fair. I usually don’t stop until I’m about to throw up.

I used to go visit the alligator in the Natural History museum but they got rid of him when he broke. This was my favorite part of the fair after the food. It was in a dark room and had benches to sit on with a looped tape recording of nature sounds. Of all the chirps and tweets on that recording there was one certain bird whose call was magic to me. It had a way of making me feel safe and secure. My whole day, midway included, was put into a better perspective. The call of the Chuck Will’s Widow can make me feel like I’m sitting around the campfire after a day’s hiking. I can become totally at one with Gods creative genius. It’s that single note of purity and innocence in the midst of chaos and sham. That bird’s call can return me to the calm of the womb. Since very few people ever visited the alligator I could lie down on the bench in the dark and listen to the soothing nature sounds as long as I wanted. It made for a small spot of peace and quiet in the midst of the heat and noise.

I remember one year particularly, when the girls were in middle school. Middle school is a time when they liked to think they didn’t have parents; that they were dropped here from above or that they were adopted and that I wasn’t their real mother, Oprah was. My only role was to drive them to the fair and then disappear. I was thus gloriously alone that year and could do and eat whatever I pleased. I’m not sure about the details but I think it was something like a Belgian waffle with coffee, a corny dog and coke, a Rueben sandwich with extra sauerkraut and a beer, a couple of tamales, cotton candy, nutty bars and Jack’s French fries. That killed about an hour and then I felt the need for a rest. I stopped at a park bench in the shade on the route to the alligator and lay down for a nap. What woke me was the sound of my daughter’s voice: “Oh God, that’s so pathetic. Pretend we don’t know her.”

It’s not just the kind of food or the amount you eat at the fair that’s magical; it’s also the way you eat it. Fair Food should be eaten with enthusiasm. Neatness counts against you. Neatness says you were able to take your mind off what Big Tex is saying long enough to pay attention to the little drip that fell from the corner of your mouth onto your shirt. It is my firm belief that Fair Food inoculates you from most of the common diseases the winter will bring. Once you get a good layer of root beer, mustard and catsup on your hands as a base coat; then add fluffs of cotton candy and snow cone juice plus a few animal fibers and chicken feathers then top it all off with assorted sneezes, coughs and droolings from the kid in line ahead of you, then you’ve just taken in most of the germs you will be exposed to in the coming school year; maybe even your lifetime. And you know that at some point during the day you will lick your fingers but because it’s the Fair, God gives these germs a special dispensation and they don’t make you sick. Trust me on this one. My kids were never sick.

As far as cerebral offerings, the Vita Mix machine is a standard. How often do you get to watch someone make bread, soup and ice cream in the same machine? Or try a fake tattoo. Get a really wild one like “Born to be Bad.” Wear it to church the next day. Try to time your visit to Big Tex to hear him talk. Watch for the Marine Corps band.

One last tradition: On the way out the exit, scout out a deserving looking kid who is coming in and pass along your left-over coupons. They’re only pieces of paper and you’ll never use them again. And the smile you’ll get in return will last you the rest of the week.