Corky's Crossroads

Lil' T's Top Ten Books of 2005

2005-12-14T07:05:00.000-05:00

I didn’t read ten books this year, but I’ve read these ten (over and over and over).

Where Are Maisy’s Friends? by Lucy Cousins
Who will be hiding under the table? And in the closet?

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
The mystery of transformation captured in a little book has the hungry caterpillar eating through a piece of chocolate cake, one ice cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake and one slice of watermelon before he gets a tummy ache.

Where is God? by Lawrence and Karen Kushner
Of course, Cowboy Buddy reads it to her saying, “I am God . . .”

Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown, pictures by Clement Hurd
Read Psalm 139 and tell me it’s not the same thing.

Prayer for a Child by Rachel Field
Mommy’s favorite.

Good Night Gorilla by Peggy Rathman
How does Zookeeper Joe NOT know there’s a gorilla, an elephant, a giraffe, an armadillo, a hyena, a mouse and a lion in his bedroom? I personally like how the little red balloon drifts further and further away.

Tails by Matthew Van Fleet
Sometimes tails can be stinky . . .

Brown Bear by Eric Carle
A classic.

Snuggle Puppy!: A Little Love Song by Sandra Boyton
Sung to the tune of “My Baloney Has a First Name.”

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, pictures by Clement Hurd
I just read somewhere that they’ve photo-shopped the cigarette out of Clement Hurd’s hand in the picture on the back cover. About time, I say. We love, love, love this one.

The Peaceable Kingdom

2005-12-12T07:05:00.000-05:00

Or cold, drafty house.

This is a bitter-sweet time for me. Two weeks ago I announced that I'll be leaving the church I've served for the past ten years for a new parish. I'm excited about the move. I'm ready for my own church and feel like it is time to spread my wings. But I've been with the same church for a decade now, and it's hard to imagine anything else. Yesterday, after our main service, there was a reception to honor my ten year anniversary. I had just preached a sermon on the Magnificat, Mary's prophetic speach in Luke 1. There was lots of music in the service, including one anthem some of the our youth, just the girls, sang. Little did I know at the time, but the anthem had been commissioned in my honor. Here are the words:

She was so young, not yet mature

an undistinguished youth;

yet from her mouth came poetry

with life-affirming truth.

"My soul is bursting!" she exclaimed.

"The Lord of heaven and earth

has looked with favor on a girl

of common, humble birth,"

She said, "The proud have had their day!

The mighty are undone.

The poor and hungry eat like kings.

The rich are on the run."

They might have scoffed in her own day

"Who cares what you believe?

You're no one, just a troubled teen

as mutable as Eve."

Will we allow this youthful voice

to penetrate our core?

May Mary's briliant freedom song

inspire our faith to soar.

The lyrics were written John Thornburg, and Jane Marshall wrote a tune to accompany it. Needless to say, I was moved to tears. I'm just glad they waited until after the service to tell me about the anthem, or would have NEVER made it through the service. It's a good but emotional time, and I feel nothing but gratitude for the past ten years.

Where Are You, Wesley Downs?

2005-12-07T07:18:00.000-05:00

He almost always sat next to me in class because I followed him alphabetically. In high school, he and about six other brainy guys saved my ass in AP Calculus. It took a village. Wes was pure-T-odd-ball. Even though he was brilliant at math, his passion was a story he continually worked on, a handwritten, illustrated manuscript called “The WesCon Delta,” a story of a kid named Wes who, after the destruction of earth, was the only surviving human and was trying to make his way alone in the galaxy. Even then, I knew it was a sad thing for a teenager to write about. He gave me his book to read once, which I’m pretty sure I pretended to do. I was nice to him, but not too nice. One day he gave a beautifully drawn picture of a cross on a hillside in a sunset. I Googled his name last night and found nothing. I don’t know what made me think of Wes, but now I can’t stop wondering what happened to him.

By the way, I think these guys are slackers.

And here's a lovely gift idea for the clergy-people on your Christmas list.

Our Morning So Far

2005-12-06T07:17:00.000-05:00

I simply was not going to get out of bed before 6:00 am. Lil’ T was none to happy with me, but that was my decision, and I fancy myself in charge. Cowboy Buddy is conveniently out of town for our morning dance of juice, Wiggles and now ever-present tension between Rufus (the dog) and Lil’ T, who gives him toys and then screams when he actually takes them. And then there’s Ditty, T’s knitted blanket, her companion through thick and thin. She’s standing at my knee as I write this, Ditty held up to her nose, middle two fingers in her mouth, head against my leg. Very sweet, but sometimes I feel like I have an extra appendage. I know there will probably be a day when I’ll long for the time that she wanted to be with me, so I try just to let it be. But having an extra appendage makes it hard to type.

Lil T’s Ditty was lovingly knitted for her by Sandee, our favorite baby sitter, who nannied for T for about nine months after I went back to work part-time. We love Sandee and Sandee adores T. She made the first Ditty as a shower gift for me while I was still pregnant, and since then has made two more: School Ditty (for day care naps) and the newly-arrived Car Ditty, which she just brought over the other day. Both school Ditty and Car Ditty are smaller versions of the original. Car Ditty lives in the house and travels back and forth to the car, so right now we just call them Big Ditty and Little Ditty. Sunday after noon I found myself at the Verizon Wireless store purchasing a new cell phone after Lil’ T dropped mine in a glass of water. Usually I like to buy new gadgets, but I was not thrilled about having to make this purchase. Anyway, T was in her stroller in the Ditty position, fingers in mouth, blanket held to her nose. Another customer looked down at her and said, “She’s all about that blankey, isn’t she?” “If you only knew,” I said. “If you only knew.”

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

2005-11-23T07:18:00.000-05:00

We're headed down the mountain today to spend Thanksgiving with my folks. Hope everyone has a great holiday. Check this out if you have a minute. A friend sent it to me, and I think it's a hoot (or rather, a gobble.)

Procrastination

2005-11-17T12:23:00.000-05:00

I’m sitting here at my desk trying to write a prayer for Sunday morning, and all I can think about is how much I want a bagel with cream cheese. So I do what I often do when I’m procrastinating, I hit that little blue “e” with the ring around it at the bottom of my screen. I’m on the CNN homepage, and I see an article “People names its ‘sexiest man alive.’” I’m thinking, they do this every year. Does sexiness change from year to year? Matthew McConaughey won’t be the “sexiest man alive” next year. He’s not the sexiest man alive, he’s just the flavor of the month (or the year). How dumb. And then I flash back to the fifteen minutes I spent in the dentist’s waiting room this morning, fifteen minutes spend pouring over an office copy of the latest People magazine, how all these stars who’ve just had babies have lost all their weight in like, six weeks after giving birth. Again, not very helpful. But so seductive.

I’m off to get a bagel.

Blogging 4 Books Submission: Woodlawn Avenue

2005-11-14T20:50:00.000-05:00

There are some neighborhood streets where I live that, if word got out a minister was moving in, the residents would be pleased, thinking that such a person would surely be an asset to the community. And then there are other streets in other parts of town where, when it became known that a pastor was buying the house on the corner, apprehension would settle in like fog. There goes the neighborhood.

I couldn't have been more clueless about this potential tension the day I walked across the front porch of that little bungalow on Woodlawn Avenue and through the door. At that moment I knew like I know my mother’s face that this was my house. It smelled like my grandparents' home, a blend of old furniture and gas heat, a scent buried in the recesses of my brain for over twenty years, but apparently ready to rise to the surface when recognized. I burst into tears. My realtor immediately called her engineer husband. “I need to you get over here as soon as possible to take a look at the foundation of this house.” There was an anxious edge to her voice. “I’m dealing with God here! I don’t want to sell my pastor something that’s got structural problems!”

I lived in that house from October 25, 1996 until September 12, 2002, four months after I married my husband and moved into his home, only four blocks away. I knew that I loved him when I realized I was willing to move. That house was mine the way my dog is mine, and even how my child is now mine. The imprint of belonging is there, waiting to be recognized and known and lived into. All you have to do is trust your gut and just live, which is exactly why I knew I had to move. That house would never be ours, and even though I grieved over the choice, it was obvious. Our marriage deserved a better start than that.

What I didn’t know back in the fall of 1996 is that Woodlawn Avenue would be a delightfully insane place to live. Once my neighbors realized that I wasn’t “wacko” religious and I believed in nearly all things liberal, we did just fine, for the most part. Today, on this beautiful Saturday afternoon, we had a reunion tea-party. We still call ourselves the “Woodlawn Witches,” even though Sharon technically lives on Flint, Kathleen is in Arizona taking care of her parents, and I’ve been gone for three years. Clare couldn’t make it. There was a peace rally this afternoon, and later a panel discussion about stopping the transportation of nuclear materials through the mountains. Such are the demands of Clare’s life these days. She’s a celebrity now, having gained notoriety for spending eight months at Alderson Federal Penitentiary for an act of defiance. She “crossed the line” at the School of the America’s during a protest rally. Oddly enough, her story gained more publicity once Martha Stewart was sentenced to that very same prison. I’ll never forget the morning I got a 6:00 phone call. “Clare’s on TV!” Irene was way too excited for it to be only 6:00. But sure enough, there was Clare, being interviewed by Charlie Gibson on Good Morning America. She looked all glamorous, giving Martha unsolicited advice about how to cope, encouraging her to get to know the other women at the prison and to listen to the stories they have to tell.

Peggy is a bit of a celebrity, too, known widely for her life-long devotion to folk music and protest movements. Someone told me years ago that she once had an audience with Chairman Mao, and to this day I think about the fact that I have had conversations with someone who had a conversation with Chairman Mao, and it overwhelms me a bit. She and Irene are a couple; they initiated the first gathering of the Woodlawn Witches. The circumstances at the time were far from fun. Mabel, down the street, had been abused regularly by her husband Scott for the first two years I lived there. He knew we could hear them, he knew we called the police, and he didn’t care. Clare, who lived right next door, talked to Mabel the day she left, which was the day after the night he took a belt to both children. That night, Mabel called the police herself, and when they arrived, she showed the officers the strap marks on her children’s backs. They took Scott to jail and Mabel packed her bags and took her kids in the car to her sister’s place in Louisiana. She left Clare with the address, and we all wrote to her asking how we could help. She responded, requesting that we appear with her in court the day of Scott’s trial. The first gathering of the Woodlawn Witches was a strategy session for Mabel’s court date.

Today’s gathering was a sad one, too. Peggy has gotten a job teaching at a university in Boston, and Irene, after a failed attempted at starting a coffee house, is moving back to England because her visa has expired. Kathleen is only around for another week or two, at the most, if her parents can handle her being away that long. She and I stood on her porch as I was leaving, looking across the street to my old house. Two of the ancient maples are gone, cut down by the new owners to the devastation of the rest of the folks on the street. Kathleen lamented inevitable change. I looked at that house, still feeling it call to me, grieving the loss of my single years on my crazy street. One life comes to a screeching halt when a new life begins. I wouldn’t trade the new one for the world, but I am also very aware of what I left behind.

If you are interested in "Blogging 4 Books," check out this site.

Tonight

2005-11-12T20:14:00.000-05:00

Tonight I am home alone. Yesterday afternoon I packed up Cowboy Buddy and Lil’ T and sent them down the mountain to his mother’s home on the family farm. Let describe to you my present setting. The only sound I hear is the gentle spinning of the dryer and the occasional jangle of Rufus’ dog collar. I just finished a favorite meal of Campbell’s Chunky Chicken soup with cheddar cheese on saltine crackers. I’ve spent the evening working on my “Blogging 4 Books” submission, which may get finished or may not, I don’t care. I remember a weekend a year and a half ago. I was so very pregnant, and CB had to be out of town. A good friend offered to spend the weekend with me, but I declined, having this strong and undeniable sense that it would be a long, long time before I would be in this house alone again. I am in some recovery from the past week. Lil’ T has not been sleeping well lately, and as a result, neither have I. And then there was the poor parenting incident on Thursday night when I decided it would be fun to take a bubble bath with her. She didn’t like the tub (we still bathe her in the kitchen sink—it’s big), she didn’t like me in the tub, and she definitely did not like the bubbles, which I could not for the life of me get off either one of us once she made this known.

Tonight I’m going to take a bubble bath all by myself, and then be asleep by 9:00. Here’s to the good life.

Results

2005-11-09T07:09:00.000-05:00

Go Holly, go Holly, go Holly, go Holly. Go Robin, go Terry.

Lil' T's Lesson Plan

2005-11-07T06:22:00.000-05:00

This came home from “school.”

Monday: Counting blocks while dropping them in a bucket; act like animals; group art; “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” song; obstacle course, follow the leader

Tuesday: Build tower with legos; pretend to go camping; sponge paint hand turkeys; water play; “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” song; balls

Wednesday: Build houses for people (that’s nice, I think); play where does this belong?; coffee filter art; story time/finger plays; exercises; basketball

Thursday: Baby dolls/pretending to take care of baby; crayon drawings; noodle table; jump up and down song; balls; slide down the slide

Friday: Free play (finally!); puppets; paper collages; dancing with a partner; poppers; leaf collecting

Hey, EM. I wrote a paragraph. It’s pretty bad; I only had about 15 minutes. But I did it.

It's finally come to this:

2005-11-05T08:54:00.000-05:00

I go to bed at 9:00.
I have watched my child eat crayons and dirt without trying to stop her.
At 37, I still acquiesce when my mother asks me to “call when you get there.”
I only get angry with my husband for staying out late if he wakes me up when he gets home.
I expect my dog to understand me.
I try to fix stuff with duct tape and paper-clips.
I get angrier about loosing time than loosing money.
I need my friends now more than ever.

Our Ever-Lovin' Dog

2005-11-04T17:15:00.000-05:00

Thanks to everybody for your comments. It’s great to get going and have so much feedback so soon.

Here’s a picture of Rufus, the ever-lovin’ dog. He turned nine years old yesterday. Still acts like a puppy, and I’m so grateful for that. Someone told me during my pregnancy that I should begin to “detach” from my dog, so that he wouldn’t blame the baby when the baby got more attention than he dog did. I was appalled at the thought! Rufus was my companion all during my single years. He deserved better than that. Besides, I knew we’d be home A LOT with a new baby, and that is his idea of heaven. He hates being left alone. Rufie’s claim to fame was being Best Dog at our wedding. He didn’t actually come in the church, but he was there to greet folks as they came in the front door, big bow tied around his neck, tongue hanging out. Priceless in my eyes.

Rufie’s life, like mine, is much different than it was nine years ago. We've both had to cut back significantly on our morning runs and trips to the river and the dog park. Still, I watch him with Lil’ T, patient and trustworthy as she takes away his chew bone, only to give it back, over and over, and I know he’s happy. When I find myself picking dog hair off of every raisin, cracker, or sippy cup that hits the floor, I know without a doubt that I wouldn’t change an ever-lovin’ thing.

My Lurking Days Are Over

2005-11-02T15:03:00.000-05:00

Big thanks to Eddo and Edgy Mama for getting me going on this site that I think is so adorable and fun. Happy to be out and about in the blogging world. Lil T is home with a cold today, so our schedules are all turned upside down. But it's a beautiful day and she's down for a nap (I just had one). All is well.

Here is Lil T in this adorable bear suit that was a hand-me-down from G.J. who got it from K.B and G.B. I've just passed it on to a friend who will be giving birth any day now. Hand-me-downs have such good karma. A friend of mine's wife died several years ago. She had a lovely wardrobe full of fine clothes, and he let me bascial have whatever I wanted (and I took most of it). I felt funny about it at first, but then I realized that everytime C saw me in something that belonged to N, his face would light up with a big smile. A week rarely goes where I don't wear several pieces of her clothing. And every time I do, I remember her.