Author Archives: Janell

A Walk in the Park

01 Wednesday Apr 2009

Posted by in Home Restoration, In the Garden, Life at Home, Mesta Park

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

This old tree-lined neighborhood is made for walking.  With such a small back yard, our poodles lobby heavily for their daily walks.  They get a bit of restless leg syndrome without one and so do their owners, whether admitted or not.     

 

When I take them, we always walk in the park and then wind around the streets of my favorite houses and gardens.  Like the senior citizens they are, some homes have aged gracefully while others need tending to, as they suffer from a few cracks and sags.  The worst is the poor house missing its front teeth – its chimney has lost its top bricks.  I wish its owners would invite a mason to take care of this poor old snaggletooth.  

 

I am faithful to seek out one old house on every walk.  Its gardens are still neatly outlined in vintage scalloped wire edging, but the plantings they keep are scraggly or overgrown.  The grass resting in front of the gardens has some big bald spots and the bird bath beneath the tree is inhospitably dry.  On the porch sit some vacant melon green vintage chairs.  The closed door and drawn shades shut-in its occupant, who no longer gardens or watches sidewalk traffic.  The house invites me to prayer as I pass by.      

 

Sometimes a house tells a story, to any who attend to its changing condition.  Upon first introduction, the home is in a state of decline.  Then, the house goes up for sale.  An estate sale may follow.  Then big dumpsters appear as the home goes through reconstruction.  With each passing walk, you can detect small changes to the home’s exterior that hints to dramatic changes taking place inside.  Finally, a new family moves in and plants a new garden.  It’s always out with the old and in with the new as landscapers make more money with complete makeovers.  I wish they would hold estate sales for the old surviving plants – I bet they long for a fresh start too.     

 

Three times a year guests descend in mass to visit this old neighborhood.  Later this month, folks will line the sidewalks and curbs to cheer on running athletes as our streets turn into a race course for the city’s annual Memorial Marathon.  In September, the neighborhood hosts a big party they like to call ‘Mesta Festa’.  City residents are invited to drop in and enjoy a little old fashioned hospitality, as Mesta Park becomes a playground for both old and young, with food, drinks and live jazz.  The final mass visitation occurs in early December, when a carefully selected collection of modest bungalows and stately two-stories dress up for the holidays and open their doors for public viewing.  What is officially called the Holiday Home Tour my husband calls ‘Mesta Besta’.    

 

Mesta Park is home to many wonderful people and dogs.  But it’s the old homes, whether on tour or not, that are the best of Mesta.  The rest of us are just passing by.   

Name Calling

31 Tuesday Mar 2009

Posted by in Far Away Places, Life at Home, Soul Care

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

                                    –Shakespeare

 

I just spoke with a nice man named Chris at St. Francis of the Woods.  He took time to tell me about the retreat center and to offer me driving directions.  And then, ten minutes into our call, he surprised me by remembering my name.

 

How often do people actually take in your name when you try to give it?  I confess I’m not as good as Chris.  My crime is not so much forgetting a name–though I do this too—it’s more about not paying attention from the first.  After  introduced to someone by name, we’ll talk.  And then after a bit, I’ll say, “Now tell me your name again.” 

 

I look forward to meeting this place and this man, because it will grant me a better sense of each.  Their names will become weighted by personal experience so that they are not so easy to fly off the top of my head.  And as I write this, I see that it’s been this way since time began, because in a biblical sense, to know a person’s name is to know something about their character; and to go a step further…. to really know a person demands an everyday intimacy.

 

While there is a distinction between ‘knowing about’ and ‘knowing’, I wonder if these haven’t become homogenized.  For me, to say I know about something or someone can imply a whole range of knowledge: It may be a skimming of the surface – the barest of facts – or it can be deep layers of understanding that comes from digging down and getting my hands dirty.  Or, it can fall somewhere in between. 

 

But there is a single word in a single verse from the Gospel of Matthew that has marked a line in the sand for me on what it means ‘to know’. 

 

“Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife:  And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son… 

 

True ‘knowing’ transcends ‘knowing about’ when we decide to get naked with one another.  We hold nothing in reserve.  We bare our souls and then our bodies.  To do it in reverse may be an intention to never know.  It may mean something someday… or maybe nothing at all.     

 

But call the name of one you tuly know and see what it means.  Notice what rises to the surface.  Maybe it’s their wicked sense of humor, or the way they can read your unspoken thoughts, or maybe it’s the way they wear their pajamas all day on Sunday without apology.  Names change.  They may even soften into a nickname with familiarity.  But the deep down core of a person, once you get under the masks and the props –all the stuff that makes them a person– rarely if ever changes.     

 

I think this is sort of what Shakespeare had in mind, when he wrote these words for Juliet to speak to Romeo:  “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.”

Blue Moon

30 Monday Mar 2009

Posted by in Life at Home

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

I use to be a fan of college sports, but OU football broke me of the habit, after one too many nail-biting, bowl losing games.  But since my husband enjoys it, I go once in a blue moon.   It’s a sacrifice.  And I go in the biblical way, like a lamb to the slaughter. 

 

Last night was blue moon time—we grabbed an Irma’s burger and drove down to the Ford Center to catch the first two games of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Regional.  Personally, I’d rather have cleaned all forty windows or picked up the neighborhood dog hockey.   

 

The first game was a sleeper, and not in a good way.  More tortoise than the hare, Purdue and Rutgers dribbled the ball sluggishly up and down court as if immersed in chest-high water.  Within five minutes of play, I’d decided this sport was a kissing cousin to synchronized swimming or cross-country skiing, where I’d learned the flip side of athleticism can be hypnoses.  So don’t rely on me for highlights.  I can only report, without knowing when and how, that Purdue managed to pull away to lead Rutgers by as much as sixteen points; And with a few minutes of play remaining, Rutgers eventually whittled the lead within two points, to lose by five.  Or was it three?  Yawn. 

 

The second game began late, shortly before bedtime.  But I was wide awake as soon as OU hit the court; perhaps it was the electricity in the air, or the familiar sounds of the OU fight song or just the contagious excitement of the players themselves.  Whatever it was, I found myself actually caring about these girls and the game’s outcome.

 

There was no place for tortoise shells in this mad dash between two hares.  The girls and the ball ricocheted so quickly around the wood court that it reminded me of a vintage pinball game being played by experts.  It was exciting to watch and a privilege to be there.  To really be present …rather than off in the land of nod.

 

Before last night, I knew next to nothing about OU women’s basketball—I knew Sherri Coale liked to wear Jimmy Choo heels; I’d heard some talk about the ‘the twins’; and after some prompting, I recalled my husband once telling me a story about a new freshmen girl who’d bested a NBA professional in a 3-point shooting match.  After last night, I now know a little more than nothing:  Sherri’s pant hem covers her expensive high heels; the twins have names – Courtney and Ashley – and the pro-besting girl wears the #25 jersey.  I don’t know her name.

 

But who cares about such details?  What matters is that these women, and a few more like them, had me cheering like a real OU fan.  The delusion lasted only until I rubbed the sleep from my eyes.  Because there I was, wearing the wrong school’s colors…. a blue moon in a sea of crimson and cream.