Is There a Lesson Here?

Yesterday, my Bible study directed me to witness God’s creation by taking a walk and observing what I saw. What a great change from quiet contemplation, I thought, and scrambled to get some sandals on, so that I might begin the day’s journey.

I decided to focus on nature rather than manmade structures although that’s not easy to do as I live in a rather crowded senior neighborhood with dozens of condos within sight. And it was hard not to notice the rather steep driveway as I climbed up it.

The first thing that caught my attention was just to the left of the driveway. It was a honeysuckle plant showing off its full summer foliage as a bird might its plumage. I was happy that I could look at its abundant buds but saddened by the fact that I couldn’t smell it very much. My nose has been the first of my bodily parts to fail me. Nonetheless, I buried my head in the bush and tried to remember how lovely it smells. And I picked up a flower that had fallen to the ground and held it to my nose and smelled a slight, but lovely fragrance. The flower was the first of my treasures that I picked up to journal about my “creation walk.”

              The next thing that caught my attention was odd indeed. At the top of the driveway, I turned to the right to venture further up the hill stopping to admire the old gnarled tree that grows there with huge branches practically hugging the ground that tempt one to climb – even one as old as I am. The nearest branch stretches some 8 feet from the trunk just a couple of feet off the ground and would be lovely to at least sit on if the tree weren’t perched on the side of a hill with an incline of 10 or 15 feet. Even so, I was tempted as I always am when I walk by.

            In fact, I was giving the idea of a little climb considerable thought when I spied a piece of paper caught in the ground cover below the branch about 5 feet from the sidewalk just where the slope really begins. Normally, I wouldn’t be interested in a piece of paper, but this piece of paper looked oddly familiar and I thought for all the world that the handwriting looked like mine. Of course, it was too far away to really see, but…

            Curiosity kills the cat, and it caused me to risk my neck, literally. I tried to get a good foothold  with my right foot in the ground cover – wishing that I’d put on some proper walking shoes instead of a flimsy pair of sandals – while stepping out and down the very steep slope with my left. It was an unstable stance and I would have to lean way over to grab my prize. As I did, I knew that I was just at the tipping point. If I leaned one degree too far, I was going to tumble head over heel down the side of the hill and probably break my damn neck. Breathe in, reach, gently grasp. Now what? I ever so carefully asked the right side of my body to pull the rest of me back to an upright position. Phew. That was close. And stupid.

            Except that the piece of paper was one that I had written on and torn in half before throwing it in my recycle bin which had been picked up by the trash company the day before. How had the paper blown out of the truck? And when? Had it just blown out yesterday or had it been hiding here a week? And more importantly, what other papers had blown out with it? I’m not the last condo on the road, so how could my note make it to the top of all of my neighbors’ stuff and float down into the bedding underneath this big old tree. Although there was nothing private on it, finding it gave me the willies and made me think that I may start using a shredder more often.

            Breathing a bit easier having survived my escapade, I jammed the note into my pocket when I saw another manmade object; so much for focusing on God’s creation. Just beside the sidewalk right where my grandson parks when he comes to visit, I saw a rusty screw about an inch and a quarter long – just lying in wait to puncture someone’s unsuspecting tire. I put that in my pocket as well.

            Breathe.

            Walk.

            Another 100 yards or so up the street, I stopped beside the meditation garden that some folks had apparently built some time past. What I noticed today, though, was that the sign which indicates that this gathering of rocks is a meditation garden was missing. I’m sad the sign is gone. Without it one might not realize the purpose of this little piece of land although it is clearly of human design rather than the delightful randomness that nature prides herself on.

            Feeling adventurous after my earlier near miss, I decided to step into and beyond the collection of carefully place rocks. As I did, I must admit that it felt a little as if I were walking in a cemetery, so I quickened my pace and walked toward what appeared to be a path. However, as I looked down, it was obvious that the clearing I was in had been planted with a groundcover that hadn’t done well although there were still a number of bees buzzing about. I decided to check out the path ahead anyway, until I realized that it petered out in about 50 feet giving way to quite a bit of dry underbrush growing under the trees.

            I turned around to start back and then decided to check out a piece of a fence that I’d noticed before on earlier walks. It looked like the chain link you see along golf courses except that it was in the middle of nowhere on another side of the slope I’d just tried to kill myself on earlier. There’s nothing to fence in here, but the truly off thing, I noticed as I grew closer, is that the portion of the fence was actually two pieces that stood at about a 45 degree angle from each other – a triangle of fence pieces missing one third of the triangle at the top of the hill.  Still don’t know what a fence is doing out there, but I left it behind and meandered back thru the dried ground cover when yet another manmade object caught my attention right in front of me.  Since reaching for it posed no threat to my health, I bent down and dug out the golf ball embedded there. There is a golf course just at the entrance to this development. I wonder if this hill used to be a part of it somehow.

So what is the take away here? I was directed to go out and ponder God’s creation on this beautiful late spring day. I hear the birds and even spy a hummingbird although the huge crows are loudly demanding one’s attention. I shiver a bit in the ocean breeze which is blowing briskly making my tank top a less than ideal choice, but I bask in the soft morning sunshine that has parted the clouds of the customary June gloom. It’s a perfect day. What is not to admire?

A fallen flower petal my only natural treasure. This plus my own handwritten note. A thick rusty screw lying in wait for its victim. And a long ago buried golf ball. This I take back home. There must be a lesson here, but I’m durned if I know what it is.

Finders Keepers

Last week, my Bible study had us look at the three parables contained in Luke 15:1-32. The first is about a man who had a hundred sheep, but when he lost one, leaves his flock to rescue the one lost sheep. When he finds it, he calls his friends and rejoices with them. The second is about a woman who had ten pieces of silver and loses one and when she finds it she calls her friends and rejoices with them. And for some reason these stories make sense to me.

The third story is the parable of the prodigal son. And I struggle with this story. I find myself empathizing with the older brother who stayed home and didn’t understand why his Dad would celebrate the younger son’s return after he squandered his inheritance on wine, women and song. Although it’s more likely that I would have been the wanderer, I get why the older brother was upset.

But losing things is something I understand all too well. I hate to lose things, and the older I get the more often I do. I lose my glasses about 5 or 6 times a day. And the only reason I keep a landline phone in my house is so I can call my cell phone when I lose it. I’ve designated a drawer in the kitchen for keys and that seems to be working. And if I lose my car, my key has a panic button that I can hit and the car will flash its lights and honk its horn, so that I can find it. Here I am, mom.

            I take in stride now, this losing of things, but there is one thing that I hate to lose and that is an earring.  In point of fact, I don’t like to lose a pair of earrings, but that never happens. And on the rare occasion when it does, I shrug it off. They’re gone. Mourn for a bit, perhaps buy another pair, and get over it. But when I lose one, it makes me crazy and I keep the sole survivor for years - expecting - as if by some kind of magic - it will miss its mate so much, that it will come back. Viola!

            At the moment, I’m down to three favorite former pairs: one small white pearl earring and one little black onyx earring in silver and a diamond and silver rectangle that is quite lovely. It has a great sparkle although not too much for daytime wear.  I lost its mate a few days ago.

            Sometimes, I don’t remember how I lost the one, but this time I do. I’d fallen asleep with my earrings on and one was poking me, so I groggily took them off. And I had them both in my hand when I fell asleep again. When I woke up in the morning, I remembered them. And I found one right away as soon as I rolled about of bed. Then, I rummaged around in the sheets and blankets for its partner, but no. I got down on all fours and searched under the bed. I double checked the three (yes 3) little crystal containers on my nightstand that double as jewelry boxes. No. It’s gone.

            Until yesterday. Yesterday, I did a load of white clothes – some panties, a blouse, and a few tank tops along with a pair of socks. Happily, both of the socks made it out of the washing machine, into the dryer and ultimately into the clean laundry basket. That in itself is amazing, but don’t get me started talking about the missing sock syndrome. I think it has to do with ufos and government secrets. But this time, as I pulled out one of the socks from the washer, something poked me and I instantly recognized that poke. That is the same poke as the earring that had poked me last week. And sure enough, inside the sock was the missing little diamond rectangle – with all the stones intact perhaps even a bit shinier having survived a trip thru the washer.

            So, I’m blogging about it – which I imagine is the new millennium equivalent of telling my friends and rejoicing.

            Hallelujah!

Please Give Me Some Leeway

          

As an ESL teacher, I try to be careful with my pronunciation. The sounds of English are frustrating enough without the teacher botching them up.

     CA speakers are said to be "accent" free which I believe is the linguist's polite way of saying "boring." We Californians have little use for many sounds, like the a in father or bath, so we simply substitute the schwa sound which isn't a written vowel at all and has earned a bad but deserved rep as the lazy vowel because when English speakers find a word a bit difficult to pronounce, they often use the schwa instead. Phonetic alphabets use an upside down "e" to indicate the sound. I wish I could pronounce it for you.

     I think teachers ought to set an example, so I do try to be careful with both my pronunciation and my enunciation although not as grand as my friend, Dale, who once was a radio announcer and "h-a-d to be q-u-i-t-e" careful to speak deeply.

     That was years ago, though, and I actually became interested in pronunciation years ago, too, when I got my first full time job at BofA where they insisted we call our customers by name.

     In those days there was no roped off line where folks were sent to the first available window. No. In the good old days, one was free to line up for whichever teller one preferred. And there was one Japanese guy who always managed to get in my line. Truthfully, it wasn't so much that he liked me as much as it was that the other tellers didn't like him, so they would find a variety of things to do when he came in because they didn't want to have to greet him by name - which I rendered "Take shit a."

     Years later I studied Japanese and learned that the sounds of language often differ not just because of the individual sounds of the letters (or in this case symbols) but also because of the placement of syllables. Thus, the capital of Japan is

To Kyo rather than the way we generally pronounce it as To ky o. Likewise a Toy o ta is really a To yo ta.

     But I didn't speak Japanese back then, so when he would come to my window I would smile and say as kindly as I could, "Hello Mr. Take shit a." Of course, I know now that his name should have been pronounced Ta ke shi ta.

    My struggle with names continued long after I was in grad school and teaching my first classes. I had the cutest female Chinese student whose name was spelled Lui Hui and for most of the semester I'd called her Luey Huey as if she were a niece of Donald Duck. And she would politely answer me. It wasn't until the semester was almost over that I realized my error when I heard a friend call to her across the parking lot. "Lee Way!"

    I'd seen others struggle with English pronunciation, of course, especially as a student at Cal Poly were many of our profs were foreign born. We had one statistics teacher who got quite angry when we didn't understand one day as he kept repeating so-me-thi-ing. On this particular afternoon when he tried to say it the twittering got louder and louder. I was quite a bit older than the other students, but I could barely control myself. I too found it hard not laugh at this increasing frustration eventho I empathized with him. Finally, he scrawled the word across the board in big huge letter SOMETHING and said again so-me-thi-ing. By then the class was roaring, but it wasn't at all funny. Statistics is a hard enough subject without having to struggle to understand the prof.

     Many of my students - recognizing our difficulty in pronouncing their names - often give themselves English nicknames, but even then they are often funny. I've had a Korean girl nicknamed Boom, a Thai girl named Stop and a Chinese fellow who called himself Water.

     Some students stick to their guns and want to use their given names, but I've found that even when I learn to pronounce their names correctly, it's hard not to giggle because some still sound funny in English. Thus I will probably always struggle to keep a straight face when I have a young man introduce himself as Long Dong.

As Time Goes By

I trust it's okay to title a blog entry after a song - as long as you love it.
It's impossible for me to believe that a year has gone by since I added to this space.
One excuse which was given to me by the teacher who taught the last class in my MBA program is that "life gets in the way." She was cautioning us not to delay getting our projects (or thesis) done. And I scoffed. I thought I was going to have all the time in the world. After all, I'd no longer have to go to school. I'd no longer have tests to study for. I'd no longer have homework. The idea that I wouldn't get it done when I would have all this time was ridiculous. This year, several years after my class with her, as I slid into home plate just ahead of the throw, I understood. Life does get in the way.
I once worked for a small town newspaper that was published weekly, and I never got used to the idea of a deadline. I mean we all have them - due dates, time frames , to do lists - but a newspaper has a real one. If it wasn't at the printer's by a certain time, it wasn't going to be printed - period. There would be no newspaper delivered to people's doors, there would be no newspaper in the racks around town, there would be no newspaper.
I didn't like the pressure of a deadline. And I didn't like not having holidays off either. I'd never thought about it before, but my daily newspaper is delivered everyday. Every day. Amazing. I must say I much prefer teaching with week-ends off and long summer breaks. This world of electronic publishing is very laid back and - I can see now - may just require more discipline than I have.