Staycation

 In the company of two budding little photographers, 

who are now equipped with birthday cameras 

from their grandparents,

I see Chicago with new eyes.

This week is spring break for our girls.  

We've had our own Little family 'staycation' 

to enjoy some of the many things Chicago has to offer.

  All the following photographs were taken by Rynn and Eleanor with their own cameras.  I love seeing the world as they see it, and the cameras give me a snapshot of what their little eyes find interesting.  Below are some of my favorites from the week.

The Tell-Tale Heart

I held a human heart in my hand today. Her name is Rose.  She is about my size.  She is dead after almost one hundred years of life, and her heart lay still in my hand today.  I watch my hand, pulsing with life in its veins under a blue rubber glove, hold another human being’s lifeless heart. As I hold her heart my mind goes blank of all the tidy artistic renderings I’ve spent so many hours studying.  I can’t think of which vessel is the pulmonary vein, because I’m too busy thinking that this lifeless heart once pulsed with life.  This heart was beating when Hitler took over Germany, when the first atomic bomb exploded, when people first sang the Blues, and even when the Cubs first played at Wrigley Field (1916).   Spraying her body with water and pushing her intestines aside to identify vital organs, arteries, and veins in her body, we knead and probe our way through Roses’ skinned body to understand its mysterious and marvelous design.  Somewhere between trying to find the hepatic portal vein and her spleen, I notice that her fingernails are still painted a rose colored shade of pink. Carefully and tidily her hands have been prepared.  She is a woman.  A woman whose heart beat in love, in sadness, in excitement, and in rest for one hundred years. Now, today, I stick my gloved hand into her body and lift out her still heart.  

I’ve seen a lot of naked bodies.  Going through CNA (nurse assistant) training last spring I changed, shaved, clothed, and bathed more naked bodies than I’d like to recall.  I’ve studied dead people in countless history classes.  But never, until today, have I gazed so long at the deep depths of the human form.  I’m not sure what I thought studying cadavers would feel like.  I guess I thought it would be like staring at those human brains floating like alien spaghetti in jars of formaldehyde.  I wasn’t quite prepared for the double doors of our Anatomy & Physiology lab to swing open and reveal four body bag laden gurneys.  We are instructed to leave a damp towel across the face of our assigned body as we work.  My fellow students begin to dig and probe Rose’s body while my mind races with the theological, philosophical, and spiritual questions that come flooding in a giant cataract.  Where is her soul?  When will Christ return and reunite this woman to her body?  What kind of life did she lead?  What will happen when she is restored and enjoys a new body?  Philosophers and theologians have spilled much ink on these questions.  Why didn't I read more in seminary?  The Heidelberg Cathecism begins rolling through my mind in its answer to the question -“Christian, what is your only hope in life and in death?.”  I begin to recall the words in my mind, "That I am not my own...but belong with body and soul to my faithful Savior..."

The Marriage Plot

“I tell my students, language is music.  Written words are musical notation.  The music of a piece of fiction establishes the way in which it is to be read, and, in the largest sense, what it means.  It is essential to remember that characters have a music as well, a pitch and tempo, just as real people do.  To make them believable, you must always be aware of what they would or would not say, where stresses would or would not fall.” 

-Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books

The music of Eugenides new book, The Marriage Plot, is set at a pitch and tempo which sings out that the author’s voice and experience is the primary voice.  In fact, I would argue that this book is probably based more on Eugenides personal experiences than any of his other novels.  His voice comes through most loudly in the character of Madeleine.  Madeleine is the apex of a love triangle that provides the relational geometry of the book.  A passionate but bipolar biologist, a spiritually searching and philosophically sensitive mystic, and a Victorian literature loving, sexually needy Brown graduate make up the primary characters in the novel.

Back from Oregon!

Sometimes one of the best parts of a great vacation is coming home.

Of course it helps when coming home means dumping my suitcase in the laundry room, pulling out my flip flops and sundresses, and basking in the EIGHTY TWO degrees that it is today!

For most of the day yesterday I had spontaneous smiles all over my face.  The warm breezy air that wrapped its soft summery arms around me only made me want to spend the day daydreaming instead of paying attention to my science professors.  I tried to concentrate, but then the breeze would blow and something from our week spent in Oregon would pass across my mind... a rainy coastal hike covered in moss and ferns... quietly reading with jason....the pounding Pacific ocean greeting us in a violent stormy welcome.... hugs from family and friends who took time out of their busy lives to welcome us and all around make us feel quite loved...olive oil ice cream with salt... beer... conversation....cups of coffee ...time with Jason... a quiet walk under my favorite cherry tree in my old neighborhood...the way I felt taking the Lord's Supper at our old church... thick clouds pulling aside their foggy veil to reveal Mt Hood...the faces of people I miss... conversations... daffodils and fragrant daphne...damp earth...rain...

A Poet I am Not

Going on a little holiday.
To where I've yet to say.
Trees and seas I'm bound to see
with one I love and he me.

A poet sadly I am not
but books to read I surely got.
This little blog will have to wait
until some food carts I have ate.

So if you see a plane overhead
smile and wave at the girl in red
That'll be me looking down
waiting to land in my favorite town.

Before the Beginning of Time

Sometimes it is hard to watch children grow.  It is not that I want them to stay little forever.  But each morning, as I hug them and watch them walk into the doors of their school to a life separate from me, I feel a little pang of letting go.   I can't run in and make sure they are happy.  I can't be there at lunch to make sure they have someone to talk to and tell them they are special.  Their lives are becoming increasingly independent as their horizons expand.  Sometimes life feels so fast and so fleeting.  I want to hold onto the days, but then they slip by and it is night again.  While life feels so fast for some, for others it can feel so long.  I spoke with a woman in our church who lost her nine year old to cancer and she said, "Life just feels so long.  The days stretch endlessly in front of me until I can be with my daughter again."

We miss people who are not in our daily lives anymore, and sometimes we even miss the ones who are as we let our children grow.  This morning I read this verse which makes me think of that day when we will sit by the river of life and really know people, love them fully and purely, and worship because of what has been planned since before the beginning of time.  May you know the love of the One who is before and outside of time and yet came into the limits of time that we might know Him.

...God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life- not because of anything we have done but because of His own purpose and grace.  This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. - 2 Timothy 1:9-10

Tuesday

 I love these little people.

Today the temperatures climbed into the sixties for the first time in a LONG time.

Where was I?  Stuck inside in a windowless room taking a Pharmacology midterm.

I know, whine, whine, whine.

But the rest of my family went outside after school to enjoy the sun and 40+ mph winds.

 My brain has felt pretty jammed full lately with Biology.  I think my cerebral cortex might be made with a special sort of Teflon that makes scientific facts slide right off it- like NOTHING wants to stick.  When I think about becoming a nurse some day I get excited.  When I think about the hospice floor I visited with a very committed volunteer who goes to our church, I get hopeful of future opportunities.  When I think about memorizing lists of drugs I sort of want to poke my eyeballs out. This is what I've been doing lately (the memorization attempt...my eyeballs are still intact). That, coupled with retaking Anatomy & Physiology after dropping it during our last month in Portland (arrghh !@#%!*?! why did I do that???), has meant lots less time for reading good books and writing.  

But 

A little break is in sight!  One more midterm to go and let spring break begin...

I need a good book.  Suggestions anyone?