character (noun) - the distinctive nature of an individual

The second time I stood inside Grand Central Station was much different than the first. Then, it was the wee hours of the morning on a holiday, and I could stare around to my heart’s content, taking in the tall ceilings and sweeping archways as long as I wanted. The next time, it was 5:00 on a Friday, and if I would have looked up for a second I would have been swept away by the swarming rush of people bulging around me. As I stood tucked against one wall while Eric got our subway tickets, one hand clutching my purse and the other wrapped around the handle of our little suitcase, all I could do was watch the tide of people passing me. 

Stories. Thousands of stories.

If I could sit down for an hour with every single one of the people I saw in those few minutes, what could they have told me? What stories were they living? The young man with the scarf and the guitar… the woman with the spiky heels and wild hair… the wispy old man with the square glasses and green cane… what adventures were they all racing off to?

Then Eric came back, triumphantly flourishing two loaded Metro cards, and we joined the sweep of stories flowing through the station, cramming into subway cars, pounding up stairs, and spewing out into the streets of the city.

Later that night, we sat in a café near a Whole Foods grocery store, sharing some ice cream. It was crowded, of course, and people all around us were eating, so it was a while before I actually noticed the peculiar meal the man a few tables away from us was enjoying.

You know Clarence, George Bailey’s guardian angel from It’s A Wonderful Life? That’s what this guy looked like. He had a bag of buns and box of several sticks of butter on the table in front of him. Very methodically, he would take out a bun and tear it in half. Then he’d slice one half, cut a chunk of butter, and sandwich it between the bread. Once he’d eaten that, he would cut another chunk of butter and smear it across the end of the unsliced bun, then eat it. After two buns, he put what was left of his meal into a bag and stood, buttoning his long jacket. Then he left, and I watched him go, perplexed.

Why? Why eat that? Why in that strange, deliberate manner? And why in the café? Why not take it home? He was too clean and well-dressed to be homeless, and he didn’t have the beaten-down air of someone without job or family, either. Over and over, the same question spun through my head as Eric and I finished our ice cream.

What was his story? 

Was there some strange, sad significance about his chosen meal and manner? Was it a hopeless tryst he kept, or the last meal he planned to eat? Maybe there was some reason from home that made him pause to eat it then: perhaps it was a strange act of spite directed toward an unhappy wife.

I didn’t get answers from the bread-and-butter man, of course. And I didn’t get answers from any of the other people we saw in during our weekend in New York City, either. Not from the man standing across from us on the subway, wearing colorful pants with faces all over them. Not from the tourists taking pictures in Times Square, laughing and talking loudly in heavy southern accents. Not from the dancing street vender we bought kabobs from, who knew all the words to the Black-Eyed Peas song “The Dirty Bit”. Not from the owner of the bagel shop where we ate lunch among paper menorahs and dreidels and “Happy Hanukkah” banners. And not from all the women we passed who all looked the same:  wool coats and tall boots, wool coats and tall boots, wool coats and tall boots.  Over and over again, the questions stumbled through my mind, badgering silently.

What is your story? 

It wasn’t until a man in Times Square tried to sell us tickets to a comedy club that something else occurred to me.

“It’ll be fun!” he said, talking fast as we tried to slide past him. “Great date night, even for a gal with a coat like yours.”

Now, I know bright blue coats are not exactly city fashion, as most people seem to prefer more subtle, neutral colors: black and brown and grey. But this man’s insult to my favorite jacket stopped my writer’s brain from taking notes on the characters around me long enough for a new thought to lodge in my head.

He was people watching, too… and he thought I was a curiosity! Suddenly our roles were reversed: I was the character, he the writer taking notes on people. On me! What questions would he have for me if he had an hour to talk with me? Would my real story match up with his guesses? Maybe, in places, but I doubt he’d guess all of it.

The man with the flyers probably saw me and thought, “Tourist”. When I refused his brochure, he may have been able to guess from my accent that I’m not a native of the east coast. I was holding Eric’s hand, so he knew we were a couple. But he couldn’t have come close to guessing the deeper things, the ones that really define who I am, any more than I could for any of the characters I took mental notes on.

Really, I know that he didn’t give a darn about my story: he was probably just trying to get the attention of an obvious tourist long enough to persuade us to go to his show. But now, seeing myself as the object of another’s people-watching entertainment, I knew there was no way he could have guessed every detail of my life any more than I could know the thousands of stories I bumped into that weekend.

I don’t know the bread-and-butter man’s sense of humor. I don’t know who the singing, dancing street vendor is in love with. I don’t know what the bagel shop owner’s hopes are for the future (does he want to own that bagel shop forever?). I don’t know if all the women in wool coats and boots, wool coats and boots, wool coats and boots are hopeful or depressed, healthy or sick, spiritual or unreligious, dreamers or cynics. But I know that their stories are as multidimensional as mine, and I cannot just laugh at the man on the subway wearing the pants with faces on them. His soul is as rich as anyone’s, capable of the same growth, full of the same beautiful potential… and I just wish I had an hour to hear a little bit of his story.

amazed (adjective) - filled suddenly with wonder

Color. Bits and pieces of color, their edges blurred by the speed at which I passed them. That’s the first thing I started to notice, once I’d settled into our bike ride. 

You can’t pay attention to that at first: not until you’ve found a rhythm for the pumping legs, for the breathing that turns to panting by the second or third slope. Not until you’ve managed to get a grip on the nerves heightened by adrenaline to almost-fear.

But after that… after that, you start to notice other things. Like the small, teardrop leaves smeared into the mud of the trail, so bright red they’re almost glowing. I think they would have spelled something, some mystery of the fall, if I had slowed enough to really look. If I had stopped to understand the meaning behind the brilliant contrast.

But I was past them before I really saw them, flying down the narrow, twisting trail. Here the path went up along the edge of a bank, and then it squeezed between two trees so close together my handlebars scraped some of their bark away, now it whipped down and around a hill.

And then I was reminded again of the ruby leaves on the trail behind me, because now I was rushing though a different kind of treasure. Here, the woods were growing up out of a bed of ferns that, last time I saw them, were the shade of green only growing things can be. But now, days into October, they were dying in a haze of gold. Not yellow-gold like aspens in the fall, and not brown-gold like dead, crunching leaves, but gold-gold. Gold like a wedding band. One that’s been worn a while and doesn’t gleam like it used to, but is all the more beautiful for its dimmed surface.

I almost braked. I almost pushed my bike aside, off the trail, and crouched down in the ferns. I wanted them to be all around me because I knew that if they were, the steadiness of their color would crumble under my cautious examination, and I would find a million more shades in every fringed leaf.

But before I could curl my fingers over the brake handle and back toward me, my tires skidded sideways on a wet, slippery root, shattering the gold vision like glass and forcing my attention back to staying upright on my bike. When I looked again, we were past. But for the rest of that ride, I saw color.

Green in the slippery moss on the dark logs I jolted over.

White, in the wispy threads of a spider’s web, spun in the crack of a tree tilted across the trail.

Blue, in bits of the sky glimpsed on the way up out of a ravine.

Orange in bright maple leaves, glowing like stained glass, lit by the day’s late sun.

And then it wasn’t just color I noticed. I wasn’t just seeing: I was soaking up more sound than just my own breathing, more than just the click and catch of shifting gears. I heard the steady rush of traffic whispering insistently on the other side of the fence, hidden from sight but so close to the tangled trees through which we rode. I listened for the crackle of underbrush that came when I startled a squirrel crouching too close to the path. And I smelled the rich, bittersweet smell of autumn: the decay of wet leaves, and the ripeness of a season of scattering out and gathering in.

We crossed a creek after that, and for a while I was caught up in the strain and whoosh of short, steep climbs and dips. But though I was focused on the ride, the sights and smells and sounds of the brilliant fall world around me washed over me in a delightful blur. I couldn’t tell you exactly what the mottled yellow oak leaves looked like, or how the wet, crumbling tree fallen along the trail smelled, or what the shrill call sounding in the distance was… but I was wonderfully aware of the beauty of the world I was in. The thrill of the difficult trail heightened my senses so I could notice these things, and it kept them precious by the haste with which it propelled me past them.

Has there ever been a fall like this before? Have those trees ever shuddered with that exact shade of red? And when was the last time the earth breathed out such an alluring autumn breath? The mix of sounds from people and nature soak the world’s ears in a harmony that, until now, this very moment, has been unheard. On this one adventure in this one afternoon of this one fall, I have been blessed. I have been blessed by the sight of this particular kind of vibrant grace, by the sound of this single note of quiet joy. I have been given the chance to breathe in the offerings of a kind of passing beauty that will never come again. And it makes me wonder, then, about the countless other graces and joys and beauties that are bursting to life in tiny explosions all around me. I only pray that I would somehow be made aware of them the way a bike ride has tuned me in to the glory of this fall afternoon.

grateful (adjective) - pleasing to the mind or senses; warmly or deeply thankful

Lately, I’ve been laughing a lot. I’ve been laughing because of the subtle differences between me and Eric, of which our marriage has made even more aware. I’m not talking about differences in values or morals or anything like that: I mean when he picks out plain strawberry yogurt at the store, and I’m torn between key lime pie and cherry vanilla. Or when we’re playing “Word on the Street” (an AWESOME word association game!) and with the keyword "box", my mind immediately goes to the creative, artistic possibility (“Crayola”), while he’s thinking about materials and construction (“cardboard”).

I laugh and shake my head when things like this happen, because it is very obvious that God has a vivid sense of humor, and I know Eric and I must have him in stitches on a regular basis at our opposite personalities. But it’s also pretty clear to me that God had me squished into the backseat of Eric’s Alero three -and-a-half years ago on purpose. (Don’t know that story? Just ask. I love telling it. =))

The short version of my take on this purpose is that God made Eric to make me a better person, and he made me to do the same for Eric. But that’s cliché, and so I think a little color and explanation might make it less worn out and more meaningful.

Life is about change; or rather, it is change. It’s a constant tension of adjustment, of the possibility of either growing and maturing OR shrinking into ourselves when this change comes. Eric sees life (change) in a very different way from me, and since I married him, his perspective has started to widen mine… and vice versa. When change hits, I don’t just react according to my own narrow instincts anymore: I can see a bigger picture because I’m seeing what TWO people are seeing. I understand more. And as a result, I’m more likely to grow, rather than shrink, when my world starts changing on me. And that’s how we make each other better.

Make sense? Sort of? Well, maybe a specific example will help.

The other day we were sitting around, talking about life as we do sometimes, and Eric made an interesting observation. “You know, Kate,” he said, “I think you spend a lot of time thinking of how things ‘should’ be, or how you want them to be. And I just kind of take things in stride.”

What? No way! was my first thought. I love life, and I take joy in every day—I don’t stress about the way things should be! But then my head caught up with me, and I stopped.

I’ve always considered myself a dreamer, and that always had positive connotations. People are always being encouraged to set goals, right? To build up “castles in the air” and then work to put the foundations under them? Hope is good, dreams are good, goals are good. Right?

Right… but only so long as they leave room for being thankful. And I don’t mean the surface-level kind of thankful that you feel when you sit around a groaning table on turkey day, and everybody goes around and says what they’re thankful for. I mean the deeper kind, the kind that takes up your whole heart and mind; the gut-gratefulness that makes you want to laugh and cry and sing (and maybe, if you’re me, dance) for joy in celebration for what you DO have. For what God has given you; for the changes that make up your life.

And that’s when I realized that my down-to-earth engineer had a very insightful theoretical point. Yes, goals are good. Hope is beautiful. And dreams are vital to the human soul. But so is thanksgiving… and we need to deliberately make room for both in our hearts and minds. Besides, as well-planned out as our dreams may be, the reality will probably be “a little off-kilter and not nearly as tidy and poetic” as we imagined. (Niequist, 129)

As obvious as this revelation may seem, it would not have occurred to me if Eric hadn’t made that offhanded comment. I would never have seen the negative side of my airy hopes and dreams. We make each other better, he and I, because we see life so differently. We open each other’s minds to things that may be too cliché to really get otherwise… like this lesson in gratefulness. 

And besides that, we keep each other laughing. =)

Niequist, Shauna. Bittersweet. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010. (Yay, I still remember how to cite sources MLA style!)

abide (verb)- to be part of; to be in proper place

I. Trees are some of my favorite things in the world. I like the slow-motion waving of their big branches, and the excited quivering of their little leaves. I like the shade they spread across the grass and the rustling, creaking laughter they make when the wind tickles them. I like the birds and squirrels and cicadas that hide in them and call out from their hidden perches in the green foliage. I like the metaphor of the seasons they illustrate so perfectly, and how they are always beautiful, whether in new bud and bloom or naked against a bleeding winter sky. I even think there’s a certain subtle loveliness in the shades of their brown branches in November. And I love the secret they hide underneath, in the ground.

The roots of trees are just as wonderful as the branches: just as strong and wide and spreading. But usually they get forgotten until a storm comes up and blows the trees down, dragging the roots clear out of the earth. Only then do we notice, and “oooh” and “ahhhh” over the impressive grip they must have had on the ground

.

But I like to think about the roots all the time. When I walk under the tree, I remember that I’m walking over the roots. And I imagine the branches of the tree clinging to the sky as fiercely as their underground cousins clutch the dirt.

II. Barely two weeks ago, Eric and I moved into our dear little apartment, which we have affectionately deemed “The Patchwork House” due to its cobbled-together interior (take, for example, our living room with the mismatched furniture including a dark computer desk, a light oak end table, and a reddish-brown TV stand).

The day we got our keys, we were there, even though our stuff hadn’t been delivered yet. After a day of cleaning, we ate a pizza on the floor, picnic style, and toasted our new home with Coca Cola in plastic Wisconsin Badgers cups. Since our bed was still packed up in a van, we had to go back to the hotel for one more night, though I would have been quite content on the floor in a sleeping bag. I didn’t want to leave our little house, because it already felt like it was ours.

See, up until that moment, Eric and I hadn’t really had the chance to feel that sense of belonging. After our wedding, we honeymooned in Maine, then bounced back and forth between our parents houses while we waited for Eric’s security clearance to go through. When we arrived in New York, we lived in a hotel for a month. None of this was really that awful, of course. We had everything we could want and more, as far as physical needs go… but my soul was starved for that sense of belonging. I was craving it, whether it came in the form of new friendships, a fulfilling job, or in a secondhand table set with wedding-present dishes that we still hadn’t gotten to use yet.

  

III. Fast-forward to the next night. The Patchwork House is a maze of half-unpacked boxes, but our bed is made. The blinds are drawn against the night, but I peek through, out at the dark street. The ceaseless songs of crickets fall against my ears, and I can see the stars if I press my nose against the screen and peer upward. The trees sprouting out of the newly-mowed lawns wiggle their branches at me, a welcoming wave to the new neighbor. With a glance over my shoulder to make sure Eric is still brushing his teeth and not around to think I have gone crazy (though he would probably just laugh and kiss my forehead) I flutter my fingers back at the friendly trees.

In a flash, then, I think of their roots: those muddy, invisible branches that stretch deep into the ground and make that place home. A smile cracks the corners of my face: an easy, happy smile, and I curl my toes against the carpet, imagining that I am sending out roots of my own.