Christmas Project

Wow. I can't believe that we made this!

Yup. Dad and I started building this clock as a Christmas present for my parents. (Part of Dad's present was the time we spent together doing this.) We didn't quite finish in time for Christmas, and eventually more of the family joined in with us (sanding around the kitchen table on New Year's Eve while telling memories about Jordan was certainly enjoyable). Mom got to make the final decision about the stain.

Actually, they finished putting it together and stained it after I was gone. :( Oh well... we almost finished it while I was at home! Silly school...


It has a music box in the bottom part of the case (the tune is "How Great Thou Art"), and the top is a lid that opens up to a little storage compartment that goes down to about halfway through the clock.

Definitely a neat thing to be able to do as a family! I really enjoyed spending this time with my dad (and I always love wandering around Home Depot with him, anyway) and the rest of my family.

I still can't believe that it looks so amazing!

On Perspectives and Trials

I've been thinking today of one of my cousins. He's several years older than me, and has different ideas about religion than I do.

It's interesting, because when my brother died in October, this cousin told his mom (my aunt) that now he knows that God doesn't exist, because Jordan wasn't healed, even though we had prayed for him.

Funny. It's the same set of experiences that convince me, more firmly than ever before (not that I ever doubted, mind), that God does exist.

I have seen miracles. They just aren't the obvious ones that we wanted. That doesn't make them any less real--just, perhaps, less provable by scientific/non-religious means. I don't need that sort of proof, though, because I know that God exists, that He loves us, that my brother's death was no chance happening.

My brother has not left my side since he passed away. The hardest time was the couple of days between when I was with him, saying good-bye, and his death, because that was the last time I felt his absence. I have not felt that sort of emptiness since.

Hm....

There have been a lot of family injuries and such lately. I was telling my friend James about them, and he asked if someone broke a mirror.

I didn't. Did you?...

Gladys, Take Two

As submitted to a writing contest, this is a retelling of Gladys:

Clclclclcl!

“Hi, Ralph!” I responded cheerfully. My roommates and I had long ago become fond of our fridge’s periodic rattling. We joked that Ralph was our guard fridge, ready to scare any burglars away. However, we had yet to discover how true this really was.

“Ralph, dear,” called out a creaky, yet sweet, voice that I had never heard before, “you know how it startles me when you bark out all of a sudden like that!”

I looked around, perplexed. Was someone hiding inside Gladys? I opened the door to the coat closet that was her west side. No one there. No one was hiding behind her, next to the shelves on her south side, either, and no one would fit inside the pantry on her east side.

“Gladys? Was that you?” I called out in disbelief. After all, she was just a great big block with doors and shelves, separating the kitchen from the front room.

“Oh, dear! I wasn’t supposed to talk while people were around.”

Ralph hummed cheerfully, as fridges will, as if to say, “You know very well that you did that on purpose.”

“Oh, all right, Ralph, dear. I admit it. I’m just so tired of sitting here, day after day, without anyone knowing my story.” Then, addressing me, “You don’t mind listening, do you, dear?”

I was not always part of your apartment (Gladys began). It is only through an enchantment of a jealous fairy that I am here. I am, in truth, not a princess, no, nor a fairy, nor a banished goddess—but a goose girl.

One morning, I was idly playing with a twig as I watched my 23 geese, just as I did every day. Ralph, who was then my dog, not your fridge, was making sure that they behaved themselves. I had just sighed and wished, yet again, for a more exciting existence, when I heard a rustle at my side. It was my fairy godmother.

I smiled up at her and nestled down at her feet, for I was, I fancy, a rather charming little girl at the time.

I wiggled in my chair as Gladys told her story. It sounded like this was going to take a while. Why can’t these enchanted goose girls learn to tell a story straight through, for once?

My fairy godmother smiled in return (Gladys continued, after coughing sharply at her not-completely-attentive listener). But it was a sad smile, so immediately I sat up.

“Whatever could be the matter?” I asked, dropping my twig on the ground beside me.

“I have bad news for you, child,” Fairy Godmother sighed. “Do you remember Arietta, my evil twin?” I nodded, for I clearly remembered Arietta’s cross face and domineering ways, as I had met her the year before at a wedding reception. “Well,” my fairy godmother continued, “she has become jealous because you’re sweeter than her goddaughter—so she has placed a curse on you.”

I gasped (and Gladys proceeded to demonstrate), not feeling quite satisfied with the excitement that was rapidly taking over my usually-dull existence. I immediately wished that I could be idly watching my geese again, instead of living an adventurous life.

Fairy Godmother continued, “Well, Arietta has declared that before you reach your twentieth birthday, you will prick your finger on a twig and die.”

I think that at this point I turned rather pale, but being a poor goose girl who did not even own a mirror, I can’t be sure. I implored, “But isn’t there anything you can do about my curse?”

“Well, um…” Here Fairy Godmother began sheepishly looking everywhere but at me and rubbed her right foot on her left leg. A sheepish fairy is a pretty impressive sight, by the way. I would highly recommend meeting one some time. Anyway, she continued, “I’m afraid that my solution isn’t quite as romantic as some, but you see, a goose girl pricking her finger on a twig isn’t nearly as appealing to fairytale lovers as… as a princess pricking her finger on a spindle. The fact of the matter is that the fairy queen won’t cut me much slack. So one hundred years of enchanted sleep broken by a kiss… isn’t allowed.” I was growing rather tired by Fairy Godmother’s choppy excuse by now. “Instead, you will turn into a handy, well, not very attractive, rather big block… you will serve as coat closet, pantry, and bookshelves in an apartment. The spell will be broken when fifty people have learned of your spell, or when the apartment complex is torn down. Whichever comes first.”

For some time now, Ralph had been looking up at my fairy godmother, with a pleading look in his big, brown dog eyes. She finished her announcement, glanced down at him, and added, “Oh, and I was forgetting… Ralph will turn into a fridge, so he can watch over you. I’ll take care of the geese and return them to you, good as ever, when the spell is broken.”

Naturally I was far from being thrilled at this adventure before me, but I decided that I liked my fairy godmother’s solution better than being kissed by a guy I hadn’t even met. Still, I pouted, feeling rather indignant, so I turned to stomp away—only to prick my finger on the twig I had dropped by my side.

My last memory of my beloved life as a goose girl was the honking of 23 geese in unison, all of them frantically trying to avoid my fairy godmother, who was chasing them with her long wings trailing behind her.

“I’m technically not allowed to tell this story unless someone guesses that I am enchanted,” Gladys concluded, “but as you asked if I had spoken, well, I suppose that it was all right to bend a few rules.”

Evidently, from what Gladys told me, her curse will soon be broken; she has already managed to convince many of the former tenants of this apartment that she is, indeed, enchanted.

So if you ever walk into our front door and can see right into Weixin’s room, you will know that Gladys is back with faithful Ralph, her dog, and all 23 of her geese. You will also find that there is nowhere to put the milk.

I won NaNoWriMo!

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) takes place every November, and the goal, as my cool little web badge says, is to write a 50,000 word novel in the 30 days of November. 50,000 words has never seemed so little!

Did I mention that I wrote the last half during the last week of the month? And somehow I even finished before bedtime! Yes! (Not that I got to bed on time, anyway, but that's another story...)

Hands

(Drawing copyright 2009 by Mariah James)

In memory of Jordan.

Angel Brother

Amy and I sat on either side of Jordan's bed, rubbing his chilly feet and marveling at the heat we felt when we touched my brother's legs, half a foot above his swollen feet.

Jordan was dying.

It was Saturday, October 10, 2009, and my cousin Amy and I had flown to see my big brother before the end came. Amy had recently become engaged, so we had hoped to see each other in more favorable circumstances, but Jordan's cancer had rapidly and unexpectedly spread too far. As it turned out, neither of us would have passed up that short weekend with Jordan for anything.

As we talked quietly by the side of the hospital bed in the front room, trying to hide our tears so that Jordan would not feel worse about leaving us, we watched Jordan drift softly in and out of sleep. The peace on my angel of a brother's face was astonishing, like he was once again the little boy two years older than me, rather than a twenty-two-year-old man with a mustache. He smiled in his sleep.

Those of us who were gathered around Jordan--my parents, my two sisters and my other two brothers, my dad's parents, Amy, two of Jordan's college friends, and I--found that it was hard to be anywhere but at home. True, it was hard to see Jordan hurting and not be able to sooth his pain, but the peace that overflowed in our home could not be found anywhere else. There were a lot of tears, but so much more laughter.

As Jordan would reach up to Dad with his thin arms, wrap his arms around Dad's neck, and let himself be slowly drawn to his feet, just to sit in a wheelchair and be with the rest of us, I could not help but think of a little one, just as helpless as Jordan, holding up his arms to be held and loved.

By the time Amy and I had to leave on Monday morning, Jordan wasn't able to get up as often, and it was much harder for him to move. Amy and I helped Jordan get untangled from his clothes and covers, and then we could do nothing more than to just say our good-byes and remember the pure life he had led.

Wednesday morning, the 14th, Jordan passed away, on our brother Nathaniel's sixteenth birthday. I watched him sleep, the sleep of death, with a look of immense peace on his angelic face, before we buried him.

Yet, I did not lose my brother. He is with me still; I feel him there, by my side, every hour of every day, and he is happy now, no longer trapped by his weak body. God is so good.