Thoughts About Clemson's Current Struggle

There is a lot of turmoil on my university’s campus right now regarding the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Here are some of the things I’ve been reading and thinking about in connection with these events:

http://activistmillennials.com/clemsondiein/

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/local/pickens-county/2014/12/07/campus-clemson-party-sparks-backlash/20054675/

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/07/1350027/-Clemson-University-Doesn-t-Care-about-Black-People-ClemsonCripmas#

http://thetigernews.com/an-open-letter-to-clemson-university/

I tend not to address situations like this very much, either in writing or in conversation. This is primarily because I’m terrified of saying the wrong thing, and I honestly hate conflict. When the topic comes up (as it has fairly often recently) I listen, and I nod in the right places, but I don’t say anything. I think I've been wrong to do that. I write now under a sense of compulsion, a feeling that to be true to what I believe, I have to speak.

I've been transferring notes and underlinings from my old, tattered Bible to my newer one; I spent some time Sunday in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Lamentations. As I was working my way through Jeremiah, I found something I’m not afraid to say (or something, perhaps, that gives me enough conviction to push through my fear). Jeremiah 6:14 talks about the sort of people who speak messages meant to gloss over issues: “They have treated my people’s brokenness superficially, claiming: Peace, peace, when there is no peace” (HCSB) The NIV translates the first part of the verse this way: “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious.” As usual I feel the necessity of pointing out that Jeremiah was written in a specific historical and cultural context that I can’t just use willy-nilly. But the principle of the thing is pretty clear.

Why did these words strike me so deeply? I’ve been thinking lately about oppression, and about the silencing of voices as a kind of violence. I don’t think I’d quite processed, though, what my silence can say: it proclaims peace where there is no peace. It treats deep wounds as though they’re superficial.

I’m not writing here about the decisions of grand juries. I’m not writing about politics. I’m writing about responses to people who are wounded. To look at someone who is wounded and say, “You are not wounded” is wrong, and it’s cruel, and it’s false. To presume to know the depth of someone’s wound without listening is deeply prideful.

Here is my attempt to do something other than be silent (or speak peace where there is no peace). To those on Clemson’s campus who are wounded: your wound is deep. I’m sorry for your pain. I’m sorry if my silence (or anyone else’s) has added to it. I don’t know how to help, but I’m willing to listen.

The Best Egg Salad Ever

*Note: life has gotten (remained) crazy since I started chronicling my summer adventures, but I decided this morning that I'd give it another go. This post was actually written a little before I started school at the end of August, but I never got around to publishing it until now.*

The Best Egg Salad Ever. Really.
I might sound like a little bit of a megalomaniac. I suppose all I can really say is that it's the best egg salad I've ever made. However you want to put it, the egg salad was delicious. 

It was the morning of my 25th birthday. It's probably the only morning of the year (besides Christmas, of course) that I actually feel excited when I wake up. I had planned to meet my beloved friend Stacy for lunch that day. She spent a year living the just-out-of-college-working-a-tough-job-single-girl life alongside me, and then she up and moved to DC over a year ago (Two years ago now? More?). Needless to say, I was super excited about having her present for my birthday. We planned to meet for a picnic lunch at Falls Park in downtown Greenville. This called for a legendary picnic lunch. Don't get me wrong: I love a good peanut butter and jelly. But it was, after all, my 25th birthday. 

How did I make The Best Egg Salad ever, you ask? I took some pictures along the way for the very purpose of showing you just that. Part of making The Best Egg Salad Ever is making The Best Boiled Eggs Ever. You know how sometimes when you boil eggs too long the yolks get hard and dry and kind of green? My method has allowed me to avoid that outcome and get fluffy light yellow yolks every time. Yeesh, that sounded like some of the cooking blogs I read. Anyway, the point is that you have to start with cold water. Put your eggs in, then turn the heat on to high. 

While you're waiting for it to boil, fill a bowl with ice water and set it next to the stove. Keep an eye on your pot, because as soon as you get a good steady boil...

...you're going to cut off the burner and remove the pot from the heat and cover. Set a timer for 15 minutes. When the timer goes off, scoop your eggs out of the hot water and drop them straight into the ice water. Let them cool off, peel them, and chop them up.

See how pretty?

Part of why it was really awesome egg salad is that I had fresh dill; my mom bought me a dill plant, along with some other fun herbs. I like fresh herbs, but pretty much on principle don't buy them in the grocery store. It's highway robbery. But since I had some on hand, I chopped it up for my egg salad. 

Then I chopped up some red onion (it's my favorite). 

Besides those three ingredients, I used as little mayonnaise as possible (I don't like to taste it, but I like for it to hold my salad together) and some mustard. 

There you have it: The Best Egg Salad (I've) Ever (Made)!

My Birthday Season: A History in 26 Volumes

Just kidding. Sort of.

No, I don't actually intend to chronicle my birthday season in 26 ponderous tomes. I do, however, have some stories to tell. I don't feel particularly apologetic about the fact that these stories will consume the next few posts (or more), or the fact that I have a lot to tell and I plan to do it in detail. I always believe in the importance of story, but in certain seasons that conviction grows. People need to tell stories, and they need to hear stories. That's why I do this.

So here's the story of a girl who loves her Birthday very, very much. That's me, of course. My birthday is June 9th. I start thinking about it in February. I start talking about it in March. The celebration (at least in my mind) begins two weeks before the actual Day, and pretty much continues until June is spent. That's why this is a long story. And this year, it's something of a legendary one. Adventures galore, as befits a 25th Birthday.

The pre-Birthday (that two week preliminary period) is not much to tell about. It mainly consists in joyful anticipation and going to the Dollar Tree and buying myself things because "it's basically my birthday." I choose the Dollar Tree because I can do my budget less damage in there than I could in other stores.

Because this post launches such a momentous series of stories, I'm only going to chronicle the very beginning of The Day. And not in very many words, because you know what they say about pictures. This one was taken within moments of my awakening on that day I turned 25.

Crazed look in my eye? You betcha. It's not every day I achieve a quarter of a century! It's not every day I'm half of fifty!

The first thing I did was tear into the amazon package that had been positively taunting me every day for nearly a week. It was from my brother and his wife.

That's right: they gave me every thing I need to become an expert Artisan Breadmaker! Those of you who live in the area, expect to be my guinea pigs.

And then, because it was my Birthday and I could do whatever I wanted, I made a cup of coffee and read Better Homes and Gardens.

Ok so not super exciting yet, but JUST WAIT! Anyway, that's all for this evening. For next time, brace yourselves for something never seen before at Small Happenings: a recipe post! On the day I turned 25, I made THE BEST EGG SALAD EVER!

Sneak Peek:

This is a great day

Tonight I'm happy.

A couple of posts ago, I wrote out of a sense of deep restlessness and anxiety about my life. Tonight I'm seized with the conviction that my life is wonderful. The stark contrast between these two reminds me that even the hard seasons don't last; that truth is really worth pursuing because it's there all the time, both in pleasant times and painful ones. 

I spent this weekend making new friends. I never get over the thrill of liking and being liked by new people, of deepening new friendships. I love moving past the basics and addressing the great questions. "Who are you, really?" There is so much life in that. 

I returned on Monday to what I thought would be the humdrum of everyday life. Then I went to my nanny job and took my boys (6 and 3 years old) to the pool, and the 6 year old was so excited that I'd brought my swimsuit so I could get in the water with him. He kept saying, "This is a great day!" I don't think there's anything more humbling in my life than being loved by those boys. They give love so simply that it overwhelms every twisted notion the world concocts of earning and deserving. 

Today I went in to my tutoring job and returned to the project of calculating and recording final grades, sorting and organizing papers, and filing the aforementioned papers. Doesn't sound super exciting, but I'm good at it and I love it and I rocked it today.

Then came House Church. House Church is always wonderful, but tonight was especially so. For each person's birthday, we go around and everyone says something he or she loves about that person. Everybody always pretends to hate it. I even pretended to dread it a little bit. But the not-so-secret secret is that everybody loves being known, and a room full of people telling you the things they love about you, even if it makes you blush a little, gives so much security and comfort. It's ridiculous. People need to talk more often about why they love each other. Then we talked about prayer requests, and we talked about Narnia, and about a ton of other hilarious, wonderful things. After we were done, I went into the kitchen to wash some dishes. Monica sat down at her piano and started to play and sing. 

I don't know why I have epiphanies when I'm washing dishes, but I do. I stood there listening to Monica sing, and I realized I was just ridiculously happy. I decided I'd write about it when I got home, and from that moment until this one, I mulled over my wonderful things, and I collected some more.

When I finished the dishes, I went to sit next to Monica at the piano, and picked out some bits of harmony to the song she was singing. When I left her house, I could hear frogs singing, and the air was cool and soft, and there was a crescent moon in the sky. On the drive home, a song kept running through my head, one that my mom's friend, Aunt Kay, used to sing to us in her beautiful, classic soprano:

Make new friends,

But keep the old;

One is silver

And the other gold.

At home, my cat was waiting for me at the door (she comes running when she hears the key in the lock) and she reproached me vociferously for leaving her for so long. 

And now I'm here at my desk, and the light is dim and dreamy. The clock is ticking and the world is quiet, and I'm pretty sure there are bunnies out on the lawn. I'm surrounded by books, and I'm so aware of how loved I am. 

I'm happy tonight.

On the Joys of Solitary Tromping

First things first: a tromp is not just a walk. I think that since I started using the term, I've known that I meant something different from it than just going on a walk. It wasn’t until my last tromp that I started to try to work out precisely what distinguishes tromping from casual perambulation.

My first tromp (or at least the first so designated) was in Michigan with my friend Amanda. We set off through the late spring woods crunching ice-rimmed puddles, nearly losing boots in mud, and climbing deer stands. We even found a perfectly good abandoned fork! The other tromps with Amanda almost always involved snow (no school...nothing else to do but tromp!). We’d head up along the train tracks, or down into the Ravine. Things that thread these memories together: places you don’t normally go, unscheduled time you don’t normally have, good company. But then, I figured, tromps are also wonderful with no company at all. Or the company of children (any child, anywhere knows how to tromp). All of these things fit within my notion of tromping, but I still couldn’t isolate a defining feature. 

Keep in mind, I was mulling all this over as I tromped happily out to the little airport that lies five or ten minutes’ walk from my house, camera in hand. As I mused, I bent down to look in the grass at a little (tiny!) flash of red. And then I hollered inside my head, “LOOK AT THAT TINY RED LEAF!” 

It was smaller than half of my pinky fingernail. I get excited about things like this. I don’t know why.  So I took a picture of this tiny red leaf, and it dawned on me that discovery is one of the most beautiful things in the world. Discovery is the heart of tromping. A tromp is a walk with the purpose of discovering things. This is why children essentially tromp everywhere they go. This is also why I pretty much believe photographers are people who tromp for a living. 

Without further ado, here are the rest of my discoveries from my solitary tromp.

“Here is a small, bright green tuft of grass. We’ve marked it for you with an arrow.”

“Emily, why do you take pictures of grass and dirt?”

Three words: Fresh Spring Grass! (Bambi, anybody?)

Mandatory self-documentation.

Yellow Jasmine (SC state flower) growing wild. 

And the discovery that never gets old.

Thoughts on Peace and Weariness

I'm out of sorts tonight. That's not quite the way to put it. I'm sad tonight, because I'm so terrified of the future. But I'm scared of the present, or at least I was when I thought I'd be stuck here forever. I still don't know if God's going to show up, but that's all I want to say in terms of Spiritual things. I drove home tonight crying, and I couldn't precisely say why. I'm sad, I'm sad about--I don't know. Everything sounds so melodramatic. But I got home and didn't turn on any lights, and I went out onto the back porch and looked at the stars out in the cold, and was overcome with this longing to be somewhere alone, like a cabin in the mountains, looking at the stars at night. I knew immediately that I wouldn't feel any less lonely, but the desire to escape remained. I seriously considered just taking off for a few days. 

I'm sitting here writing with that awful tightness in my throat that comes when I'm fighting tears; oddly, my best writing seems to happen in those times. It occurs to me that so many writers have just had lives that never ceased to be dysfunctional and tragic. And I worry that I'm going to have the dysfunctional, tragic life without ever producing anything of value. That will be the tragedy. If I voiced this to somebody, that person might ask me why I don't just sit down and write. I couldn't say why. I don't know why. There are just times that all the things I want to do overwhelm me. I can't do anything I want to do. I know the word "can't" is untrue here. It's not a matter of ability. It's just that as I go through my daily life, the things I want to do fly at me in swarms (and if one more person tells me to make a to-do list, I'll be convinced that I'm not explaining the feeling adequately) and I end up going home and doing nothing. I end up wasting every bit of time I have because I'm too incomprehensibly weary to do anything. 

It has occurred to me during my ruminations this week that peace is akin to stillness. I have no stillness in my life. I have a great deal of time, but no stillness. I tried to see if I could manage a single car ride somewhere without speaking aloud. Still hasn't happened yet, because I process everything aloud. I think this constant narrative of thought is part of why I never had to struggle to "find my voice" as a writer. My voice never gives me any peace. Don't take that statement for the melodramatic, negative dribble it seems to be. What I mean is that my voice gives me no stillness. The effort to still that voice is herculean, and leaves me more weary than when I began. I am bone-weary. I'm weary of talking to people, I'm weary of working, I'm weary of being alone, I'm weary of cleaning my house, I'm weary of writing, I'm weary of knitting, I'm weary of all the good things that I love to do. I just want to sit and be still, but even that wearies me.  

I am afraid to post this. I'm not afraid of honesty, but I am afraid of perception. I'm afraid of being perceived as a total wreck, or someone who just makes excuses. I'm especially afraid of being perceived as that blogger who posts edgy, ultra-emotional material to try to look genuine. I'm also afraid of people I love being really worried about me, and it makes me want to say "Don't worry, I'm fine." Which would not be entirely truthful. I guess if I just left it at "Please don't worry," it might more closely express my thoughts. Aside from the truth of the things I've just expressed, my life is full of good things and good people who look after me well. That's one of the reasons my feelings right now puzzle me. 

Snow Day

Snow Day

Snow is falling, 

Kettle's humming,

Kitty's curled up,

Heater's thrumming.

Cups of tea

And stacks of books,

Blankets in my

Reading nook.

Louis Armstrong's 

Throaty croon.

Snowy, quiet 

afternoon.