The Ark

Here's a glimpse into a typical afternoon at our house. Granted, rain in July is an usual event, so I guess it was a worthwhile topic. 


"What would happen if it rained for a long time, like maybe a month? Would it flood?" asked the question queen.
"Maybe. It happened once before, you know. With Noah and whatnot."
"Who?"
"Noah. The ark? The animals? You've seriously never heard about this?" 

I thought we owned every Veggie Tales show ever made. How had this lapse occurred?

"Okay, so a long time ago, there was this guy named Noah who--"
"How long ago? The olden days, like Little House in the Big Woods?"
"Nope. Even before that. Actually, way before that. So--"
"Like the dinosaurs? The cavemen?"

Well, crud. How would I know?

"Sure, yes. Around that time. Okay, so--"
"What was everyone wearing?"
"What?"
"Well, if we knew what they were wearing, maybe we'd know how long ago."
"Togas. They all wore togas."
"And crowns of leaves?"
"Oh, yes. Definitely. May I continue?"

I'd now completely lost my train of thought. I was going to need some help here. How did that song go?

"The Lord told Noah, 'There's going to be a flood--'"

"Why only Noah? Why not everybody, like an announcement at church or something? Isn't that something everyone should have been told?"
"No, because God was feeling really sad because all the other people were not being good listeners, and they weren't showing their respect and taking care of the earth."
"Were they littering?"
"Oh, yes. Litter everywhere. It was awful. That's why God sent the rain. You know, to wash away the litter and stuff."

I paused to wonder exactly how much long-term damage this was going to cause. Should I just end it here? Maybe I could still save this.

"So anyway, God gave Noah an important job because he was so good at following directions. He told him to build a really big boat, and then he asked him to round up two of every kind of animal--"
"Why two? Why not as many as he could find?"
"Because the boat was medium. And please stop interrupting."

"So, two of every animal-- a mommy and a daddy to keep the species alive for when it was safe to get off the boat."
"What if the animals already had a baby? Would the baby drown? That doesn't seem fair. Do baby koalas litter?"

How do these conversations get so out-of-control so quickly?

"I don't know what the plan was, but I'm sure God had one. Everyone always says so."

Maybe that should be my go-to answer!

"Okay, so it rained and poured for forty days. Nearly drove those animals crazy."
"So it was just Noah and his family? What if there'd been other good people and God just didn't see them in time?"
"Oh, he would have seen them. He's like Santa. Or Rozz from Monsters, Inc. Always watching. So it rained and rained until all the litter and bad choices were washed away and then, the sun came out, and God gave them a rainbow."
"To tell them it was safe to get off the boat?"
"Exactly."
"What if it happens again?"
"It won't. The rainbow--" Oh goodness. Not sure where to go from here. "See, the rainbow was a promise, and--"
"So the rainbow told Noah that it wouldn't happen again? It just... talked to him? Did it say anything else?"

God save us all. Please.

"I'm not sure. It was a very long time ago. Nobody really remembers because they were all so happy to be off the dang boat."
"Oh. That makes sense. Mom, I love spending time together with you."

Me, too, kid. 
Me, too.

The Photography Class: Act III

The drama continues.
Are you all caught up?
The Photography Class: Act I can be found if you click here.
The Photography Class: Act II can be found if you click here.

***


Hour three involved applying what we’d learned by practicing outdoors. We had four tasks to complete in the parking lot, which was literally sizzling in this tragically-triple-digit evening.

I tried to capture the waves of heat rising from the pavement, but it didn’t show up on my point and shoot. Not that you were wondering. That would be ridiculous.

What must all the other shop owners be thinking as these hoards of people descend on their parking lot during the evening hours three times per month?

I tried to break free from the crowd—it was a big lot—but as usual, I was the pied-piper, a regular misfit-magnet, and I had more company than I’d have preferred. While I tried to balance my lighting manually, I realized two of them were taking pictures of me.

I glanced down at the task sheet:

Flower, landscape, portrait, waterfall.

I had better be the portrait.

It would have been nice if they’d at least asked, but I didn’t want to mess this up for them. I tried to hold still and did a subtle feminine suck-in and push-out maneuver that would’ve made Marilyn Monroe proud. I was relieved when they finally turned away, but at that exact moment, I felt a sting on my foot and realized I was standing among several colonies of fire ants engaged in a turf war.

My patience was wearing thin.

I snapped a few quick shots on my way back into the building without worrying about the fourth task. Because I was pretty much the first to arrive inside, I had time to consider the waterfall situation.

A sink is like a little waterfall—I could improvise. That’s when I realized there was also a drinking fountain at the back of the room.

Problem solved.

But soon, the others came back inside and saw what I was doing, and of course they wanted to try, too. So I was stuck holding the drinking fountain in the 'on' position because they all need both hands to hold their massive cameras.

It was only moments before I was soaked.

So many great ideas end this way.

The Photography Class: Act II

To fully appreciate this drama, make sure you've read Act I of The Photography Class. (Click Here)

***

The instructor introduced himself, and it was obvious there would be some distractions to overcome. He spoke with a strong accent, familiar yet unidentifiable, and wore a fashionable hat, which would have been fine if we were outside.

But we weren’t.

Two more distractions made their presence known: his personal tendency toward distraction and his quiet, quiet voice, despite the professional-grade performance microphone he was using in this tiny space.

“I must apologize for speaking so quietly today. Normally I am more bubbly, but today I am flimsy, for this morning I had to put my dog to rest.”

Flimsy?

Of the forty people, I was the only one who did the “Awww, I’m so sorry,” murmur appropriate for this type of classroom situation. Everyone else just sat there and said nothing, doing remarkably convincing wax museum impersonations.

They looked so real, and yet…

“We are here to discuss the art of photography. The kind of camera matters not,” said the instructor. What was that accent? “It is a tool. Do you read an email and wonder what type of keyboard was used during the composition of the message? Of course not. Do not be ridiculous.”

Balki Bartokomous flashed to the forefront of my mind and just as quickly faded.

The next nearly two hours were spent discussing technical aspects of cameras that the lone 2.3% of the population—me—with the bargain Canon point-and-shoot cameras wouldn’t be able to apply. I watched as the others zipped and unzipped their cooler-cases, murmuring to themselves and turning their cameras over and over in their hands.

I suspected they were searching for the power buttons.

The f-stop and aperture portion of the lesson was interesting, and memories from the high school course from PHS began to develop in my mind.

Right when I finally started warming up to the things--5:58--we dismissed for dinner, and the instructor scurried to the lobby/office area.

“SO, WHAT KIND OF DOG IS IT—I MEAN, WAS IT?” a woman hollered in the front lobby during the break.

Oh my word.

Only one thing made sense: the event that the Bible had prophesized had finally happened. Jesus had come down and collected all the good people and left all the annoying ones behind.

Even more alarming, it appeared that I was one of them.

Surpisingly, Old Yeller was not the pickle lady. She’d remained in her seat and was unscrewing the lid of the jar and pouring the contents into a plastic tumbler.

Hey! Those green things bobbing around in there weren’t pickles after all. They were limes. Limes in a pickle jar. Brilliant! 

Jealousy coursed through my veins. I wished I’d had the presence of mind to pack a flask of something.

***

Will it get better? Find out by reading The Photography Class: Act III (click here)

The Photography Class

“How was the photo class?” Katie asked. She’s a fellow Groupon-junkie with a secret passion for photography. I wasn’t sure how to respond. Too much had happened to express it all in one conversation.

The photography class came about after I finally got the bimbo-settings straightened out  and convinced Groupon that spray tans and botox weren’t my idea of fun or necessary. I’d purchased the class in January and then promptly forgot about it until Groupon sent an email about its upcoming expiration. Thankfully, I managed to register for the last available class before the voucher expired.

Four and a half hours on a Tuesday evening seemed like a big commitment, but the studio was a mere three miles away, and I was secretly eager for a break from the family. Summer’s lack of alone time can be very overwhelming.

The directions said to arrive 15 minutes early to get settled, so I left at 3:15 to play it safe. It’s true I could have walked the three miles in the minutes before the class would begin, but it was already over 100 degrees outside. Besides, crosstown traffic is highly unpredictable, and I do not like surprises.

I wasn’t sure what to make of the studio, which was twice the depth of a standard garage and not quite wide enough to park two cars. Despite the high ceiling, it was already making me feel a little claustrophobic. How many people would be in the class? Six? Twelve?

I stepped out of the lobby toward the classroom area, where I counted forty folding chairs set up in neat rows.

Oh, brother.

As I scoped out the seating options, I quickly identified the folks I would not be sitting near. There was a timid teenager with her tank-top tag sticking out. I may not get out as often as I used to, but I knew it would not be appropriate to lean over and tuck it into her shirt for her. There was no way I could resist that for four and a half hours if I sat within arm’s reach. 

Nearby sat an unusually confrontational yet impeccably dressed woman with a big glass jar of pickles at her feet. 

Nope. Not going to be a part of that disaster-in-the-making.

The remaining class members seemed harmless enough. There were even a few I vaguely recognized, although the possibilities in this Metroplex of 6.6 million made it seem improbable.

Still, I was certain I knew the man in the front row—the cross between Richard Simmons and Pauly Shore with the deep voice.

I chose a seat where the tag-teen would be out of view, but the pickle-lady was still in focus. I just had to see what was going to happen with that jar.

While I waited for the class to begin, I continued to wonder about the man in the front row. Who was the Simmons-Shore fellow, and from where did I know him? Instinctively, I reached for my phone, but really—how could I google that? The recognition persisted, and the memory continued to tug at me.

Was it that creative writing course 14 years ago?

Who was he?

Not Bobby Corbett, whose writing brought me to my knees.

Not Devout David, who introduced me to the kolaches at Czech Stop in West, TX, fourteen years before this past April’s heartbreaking explosion.

Not Silent Sam, the lacrosse-playing poet by day and techno-rave dj by night, whose roommate and team captain later became my boyfriend for the duration of that year.

I smiled, remembering their most-excellently named cat, Ferrari. Boy, could that cat purr.

The other class members filled in, each arriving with a camera in a cooler-sized padded bag. It was immediately evident that 60% of them had no clue how to use them. The other 38% appeared to have just enough knowledge to be dangerous.

To themselves and others.

Every seat was now occupied.

I could not decide whether to allow my body to go on full-blown high-alert mode or tune this out and count down the minutes until it’s all over mode.

I wanted to do the latter, but I was forced into the former because everything I had witnessed so far had been just too unsettling.

As deeply unsettling as a driving class for geriatrics with cataracts and Maseratis or a course in target shooting aimed for the blind...

Ready for Act II of The Photography Class? (Click Here)

Integrity

Sometimes keeping your mouth shut is not the best advice. After all, silence implies consent.

“So-and-so’s aunt used to be an instructor, and she mailed him a copy of the life-guarding exam. We’ll memorize the key, and then we’ll party. The ice luge is already on the way and everything. Come over; it’ll be great!”

This didn’t seem great.

This was very not-great.

I needed to buy time to think.

“Maybe,” I stalled. “Hey, there’s some stuff that I need to take care of. Can I call you back?”

It seems appropriate to mention here that for years I have been mistaken for someone of above-average intellect. This is not accurate. I do not think quickly. I think hard. It is not gifted intelligence, it is diligence and tenacity. My ‘gifts’ are effort and obsession.

If all my classmates cheated on this test, they’d receive their certifications. People would hire them because they were certified to save lives, but they might not be able to do that. They’d get a perfect score on the exam, but who knows if they’d have the skills to back it up?

Then again, if everyone really was there except for me, and I told the authorities what was happening, and there were consequences, it would be obvious that I’d been the rat.

If I went to the party and avoided the answer key, but somehow someone did find out about the situation, I’d be an accessory to the crime. Or at least guilty by association.

If I didn’t go to the party, I wouldn’t have proof that the cheating had even happened, so trying to alert someone would be futile.

Hearsay.

Was anyone else from the class having this internal debate at that moment? I hoped so.

I couldn’t be a part of it, so I made up some lame excuse as to why I couldn’t attend the festivities. I don’t remember what it was, but I’m sure it was awful—I’m an atrocious liar. It’s the whole lack-of-thinking-quickly thing.

After the exam the next day, they all high-fived their way out of the classroom in record time. I was the last one to finish, and I left alone.

They probably got 100s. I didn’t. I earned an 88.

The injustice stung, but the pain was temporary. The burn was soothed by the reassurance that if I had to save a life, I could do it. It was the first time that I really started to question the validity of numerical grades.

Despite the certification and the confidence that I could save a life, I never sought a lifeguarding position. I didn’t want to cross paths with any of those people ever again. We could never be teammates—my trust in them could never be restored.

Not participating in the cheating ring was the honest decision. It was not the honorable decision, though. The honorable decision would have been to speak up and tell someone. I have no idea to whom I should have revealed this knowledge. The instructor? The dean?

To this day, I don’t know.

I say ‘to this day’ because I’ve thought about it many, many times since it happened. Guilt stains my heart, for silence implies consent, and my reluctance to speak up endorsed the choice of the cheaters.

Sometimes my mind runs wild, and I wonder if any lives were ever lost because I didn’t have the courage to speak out.

For years and years I've confessed this personal indiscretion to my students, and not just to illustrate that guilt can have such a profound impact on one’s conscience.

I’ve told them because I want them to understand the way that integrity protects honor and cheating compromises it.

Cheating steals away pieces of a person’s life-long honor. No assignment, no project, no evaluation—NOTHING I could ever ask of my students could ever be worth losing even a tiny piece of their honor.

People sometimes forget (or overlook) that cheating is not a symptom of apathy. The apathetic don’t have the desire to cheat. Cheating comes about when there is a reward for proficient performance and the person being measured doesn’t have the knowledge and/or skills (or confidence in the knowledge and/or skills) to perform independently.

The greatest external danger in cheating is the way that it misrepresents a person’s capability. 

In a purely academic setting, misleading an instructor removes the opportunity to remediate, forfeiting long-term understanding.

When the stakes are higher—professional exams and certifications—cheating could be the catalyst for a life-or-death crisis. 

Completely Made Up

High up on a shelf of the closet in the bathroom, my mother kept a big plastic bin of all the makeup that hadn't worked out for her. It was bigger than a shoebox, and it was always full to the brim.

People often say my mother and I look alike, but one of the main differences is our skin-tone. She is deeply golden and I am peachy-pink.

Makeup that didn't work out for her might be a good match for me.

In theory, at least.

One fine Saturday, my cousin and hero Sarah--two years older and infinitely more mature-- came over to play. I had plenty of cousins exactly my own age, one of whom was her younger brother. Naturally, this meant we were all lumped together into the pest category, which was understandable given her sophistication and our penchant for climbing trees. This opportunity to hang out (as she'd called it) was an unexpected treat.

I'd like to think we were 8 and 10 at the time, but we were probably closer to 12 and 14.

When my mom offered up her makeup box for our entertainment, Sarah and I were ecstatic. We set the box between us on the counter in the upstairs bathroom and leaned toward the mirror, applying in the silence of deep concentration.

We worked like this for hours.
Or at least that's how it felt.

At last it was time to step back and reveal our handiwork.
We faced each other and gasped.

She looked beautiful, as though she'd just stepped out from the pages of a teen magazine. And me? I looked like Bozo the Clown. By design. 

Wasn't that what we were doing? Playing with makeup?

Not much has changed in the last twenty-ish years. I still feel like a clown when I wear makeup, so I seldom do. Even then, it's usually just mascara and chapstick.

I can't escape the feeling that makeup misleads. How can you know me if I'm hidden beneath a layer of mass-production made to mimic my own skin tones?

I couldn't laugh until I cried or step out into the rain if I had to avoid making the eyeliner run, and my smile wouldn't be sincere and spontaneous if I had to worry about lipstick on my teeth.

Suprises

Last October, we surprised the kids with a trip to the Dallas Museum of Art. On a school night, no less! 

Wrangling three kids in an echo-ey place with lots of valuable and breakable items might be a challenge for some families, but our kids really dig art so it wasn't that bad.

We were in one of the largest galleries when Mia pointed to a painting on the far side of the room and proclaimed it a Pollock. I wasn't sure... the style wasn't consistent with what I'd studied in college. The geometric shapes were well-defined, and it didn't have nearly enough splatters.

She was adamant.

We crossed the cavernous room to read the teensy weensy label.
To my great surprise, it was indeed a work of Pollock.

Do you remember when you first learned about Jackson Pollock? I do, and it was not in preschool.

I am semi-embarrassed to admit that it wasn't until an Art Appreciation course in college that I learned of the splatter king.

You, of course, are not surprised to hear this. You have not forgotten that I mixed up Rottweilers and Studebakers until a few short years ago.

I'm not exactly a fan of Pollock's work, but it is distinctive, which is why the cover of the book in the bargain bin at Hastings caught my attention on a lonely, rainy night long ago and far away.

It was 1999 or maybe 2000 and I was feeling very homesick and quite sorry for myself, so I went to the bookstore. Always familiar faces there, even if they're only on the book covers.

Crammed into the bargain bin with the other cast-offs values was a book with a very Pollocky cover. Having only just learned about him and his method, (which I still think is very brutish and careless, but I know the artistic word for this is expressive) I picked up the book.

I did not recognize the author or the title, but I opened it anyway, and here is where my eyes landed:

Well, that was a weird coincidence. 
I checked the publishing info.

Hmm. Texas does have a lot of towns with unusual names. Maybe there's more than one Pomfret in America. The paper was pleasantly thick and nubby, so I resumed flipping.

And that's when I saw this:

Antiques and knickknacks in Putnam... Okay, what was going on here? I flipped to the back, fingers crossed for information about the author. Look at what I found:

She was a professor at my old school? She really did live in Pomfret, Connecticut?!

I bought the book and left. It was probably too late at night to call my mother, but I did it anyway.

"MOM! I was at the bookstore, and there was a book, and the cover looked like a Jackson Pollock, but the inside said Pomfret, but the publisher was Texas, and then it said--are you ready for this?--Putnam. It said Putnam, Mom. And the author, she teaches at Eastern. Have you ever heard of a," I paused to read from the cover,"Gray, um, Jacobik?"

"Oh, yes. Gray Jacobik. Lovely woman. I think we've had tea together, actually, though I'm not sure of the circumstances, but yes. Gray Jacobik. She has a book?"

My mother had tea with the very lady I whose book I found in the bargain bin on the night that I was in a state of homesickness, two thousand miles from the town that sounded like worried apples.

It was too spectacular. Naturally I had to share all this with Gray Jacobik. I emailed her the following morning. I have no idea how I obtained her email address, but I did. I told her everything-- the rain, the homesickness, the Pollocky cover. I left out the part about the bargain bin and also the tea because I didn't want to make her feel bad if she didn't remember my mother the way my mother remembered her.

She replied right away.
She said I was her ideal reader.

She said a lot of other things, too, several paragraphs, if I recall. It's all in an email account I abandoned long ago. But those were her exact words: ideal reader.

I blushed and gushed for days. A real author said I was the ideal reader.

I was so surprised by all of the things that had happened in this string of coincidences and events that I forgot about the homesickness entirely.

***


The other day I wrote about Elizabeth Berg and her beautiful, beautiful sentences. Boy, was I surprised when this message arrived from Michelle:

Angry? I was not angry at all. The Gray Jacobik incident had shown me that authors are people, too,  and I've learned--especially after all this writing--that regular people can become authors with very little rigmarole. Though I'm not sure I would have ever thought to mail it to Elizabeth, I agreed with Michelle that she might enjoy knowing the scope of her impact on her reading community.

For me, the greatest surprise came in learning that someone would go to such sweet lengths to connect my writing to the author who'd inspired me. (Especially someone with six kids to keep up with!)

Michelle and I graduated high school in 1997 from the thriving metropolis of Putnam in a senior class of less than 100 students, but we were never close friends.

At age 17, 18, 19, 20, we know we are going forward into the world, and we know we'll make new friends. Still, we cling to the hope our connections with the close friends from our previous lives will last. 

I never considered the idea of developing new bonds and friendships from my previous life.

Yet that is exactly what has happened.

It seems like as we get older and gain more experience, things should be more predictable and less should surprise us, but that has not happened.

Each day just keeps bringing more surprises.

Your friends are surprising you, and you're surprising them, and everyone is surprising themselves most of all because this isn't what we thought growing up would be like.

No matter how much I contemplated thirty-four from the safe naivete of those years of late-teens and early twenties,  I never could've envisioned reaching out to an old friend about spiritual faith or trading secrets--dark and light--with a new friend, or staying up all night to try to bring comfort and reassurance to friends old and new. 

Yet that is exactly what has happened.

Waking up and realizing that there is no longer even a trace of homesickness in my heart, and that friendship can exist outside distance or time-- all of this has been such a surprise.

I've found that I no longer need to wonder about what my future may hold, because that time can be better spent appreciating the everyday surprises that surround me today.