Sweet Sorrow

Parting was a sweet sorrow. 

Some goodbyes are the casual "well...have a good life!" kind; others are the cry-your-way-through-airport-security-and-beyond kind.

As wonderful and enriching as travel is, time abroad inevitably forces you to say sad goodbyes made even harder by the realization that you might not return to that place or see that person for a very long time, or in some cases ever again.

Sitting in the airport during a miserable layover in Belgrade, Serbia, I thought of this... Already missing our dear German friends. Thinking of the joy and delight that was Christmastime celebrated with them in their home. Wishing I could better communicate how much I loved each of them and cherished the time we spent together. 

I hadn't expected the tears to flood my eyes with such force when we all parted. It was unbidden, undiluted sorrow. 

Later I understood the sweetness of it. 

I was glad for the sorrow, for I recognized it as a confirmation of truly caring. 

Goodbyes can reveal to us how we value those we adore and cherish most. Sorrow at parting is sweetness on our tongues when we are conscious of what we have lost, whether permanently or temporarily, when we realize how someone has changed us, loved us.

In Pencil

“You can write, but you can’t edit...edit...edit...” -- Regina Spektor 

I always associated the beginning of September with new school supplies. I loved to label glossy new folders, meticulously outline my upcoming class schedule, sharpen pencils to needle-perfect points. I would spread out everything in front of me and reflect on the school year ahead, my plans to stay organized, my aspirations for my social life, my goals for discipline in my faith. I tried to prepare myself as best I could for the stress I knew inevitably lay ahead. Getting everything in order was my calm before the storm -- the times I would unravel emotionally in the throes of perfectionism, unrealistic expectations, a hectic schedule, and lengthy to-do lists. 

Despite my best preparations (and my petty joy in the newness of my carefully-selected school supplies), September also heralded the unknown...the unforeseen life lessons I could not possibly brace myself for, the new knowledge and wisdom I had yet to gain. To put it simply, I had no way of knowing what really lay ahead. But I invariably had high hopes for starting afresh. 

My favorite new school-related items were almost always my pencils -- more specifically, their erasers...their pink erasers...smooth, untouched, velvety soft, bubble-gum hued, plump and supple atop their yellow No. 2s. If you couldn’t already tell, I was (am?) a bit obsessed with these pink erasers...to the point that when I was younger I would buy those ugly, bright-colored little refill eraser tops to cover up my new erasers so that I could preserve them in their un-smudged, pink perfection. I refused to erase anything with the actual pink erasers formulated for that very function. I even covered up their loveliness as a result of this absolutely ridiculous apprehension that someone would use them (heaven forbid!) and only occasionally let them see the light of day so that I could admire them and contemplate their simple beauty. Footnote: if this makes you laugh at me and think that I was absolutely crazy, you are fully justified in doing so. But I have a reason for admitting my pink eraser-fixation: it’s analogous to my life, and maybe to yours. 

Don’t hide loveliness, or diminish the significance of a gift you have just because you’re afraid of using it. Utilize what you have for its intended function. If you’re holding a pencil between your fingers and think you have something decent to say, WRITE. ERASE. Write some more. Encourage, challenge, rectify, create, persuade, motivate -- mistakes and triumphs mingling on the page.

What does it mean to plan ahead? What hopes will be dashed by unpredictable Septembers and the months that follow? What can we prepare ourselves for? What can we anticipate? What does it mean to write plans for our lives in pencil? 

Some goals and dreams shift around a bit in your suitcase when you travel. Some lists are unfinished and awaiting additions. Some love poetry ought to be edited. Some words should be erased, but they have to sit there on the page awhile first. Some sketches look better smudged. 

Writing in pencil begs for fresh starts, better words, chances to self-correct or be corrected. Ergo, writing in pencil also requires an eraser. 

I’ve realized that I sometimes avoid erasing. If I discover some abhorrent paragraph of thought or deed scrawled on the pages of my life-journal, I’m tempted to tear it out, crumple it up, burn it, toss it out. But maybe it would be better to besmirch the pink-eraser-view of perfection I’m ludicrously trying to preserve in my expectation of myself by erasing that undesirable page instead...and writing over it with something redeeming and beautiful. 

Sometimes the organization and discipline I try to build into my academic, spiritual, and intellectual life each September ends up falling discouragingly short of my good intentions. Reflecting back on this past semester, which has just mercifully drawn to a close, I am realizing that perhaps too many of my goals are oriented toward some lofty dreams about the future and what my life will look like, when in reality there is little that I know about what lies ahead for me and much I have still to do in practical, daily steps towards those goals. But spiritual discipline starts NOW. I can come closer to realistic achievements NOW. I need to think about what my life looks like this very minute. 

God is helping us compose our stories, pencilling in new details, making smudges in the margins, erasing our failed attempts at perfection and writing over them with definitive redemption. He doesn’t make us wait until the next September to re-evaluate, restock, reassess, and start afresh with renewed exuberance. 

So for now, I will pick up a pencil. I will write, and I will erase, and I will write some more. 

I hope you will, too. 

The Waiting

This post will and must be short (you can thank my research paper for that). But I need to write, like I have a soul itch. 

It's that time of year when the topography of my desk has been transformed by new mountains of books with titles like Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich and Resistance of the Heart; when somewhere behind the drawn curtain of our dorm room I can hear the pitter patter of the rain, constant like the static of a radio station; when I sip scalding green tea from my favorite glass mug; when it hurts to type because of the harp-string-induced blisters on my fingertips from the Christmas Festival concerts; when hearing my Dad's voice on the other end of my phone call makes me miss my family even more.

It's that time of year when I get even more excited than usual to go to Trader Joe's so that I can collect more of their paper grocery bags and carve away at them with scissors to craft Christmas cards; when I have to remind myself that I don't need to buy anything from Anthropologie, no matter how festive and enchanting it may be; when I feel increasingly thankful for true friends; when I miss Turkey a great deal (oh wait, that's all the time).

For whatever reason, it's also that time of year when being serenaded by Michael Bublé's rendition of "All I Want For Christmas Is You" over Pandora, or enjoying a gingerbread latte in a cozy armchair, or watching all the be-scarved couples strolling hand in hand under the twinkling holiday lights of downtown gives me this little ache inside, a longing to share this season with someone special. 

I'm definitely not saying I want someone to come along just so I can hold his hand and sit by the fireside reading together (as wonderful as those things may be)...I just recognize that this is sometimes a rather melancholy time to be single. It's probably worse than Valentine-less Valentine's Days. And I know I'm not the only person who feels this way.

But as I was engrossed in a volume of the last messages written to friends, family, and fiancés by men and women who resisted Hitler and were martyred, I came across a letter written by Rose Schlösinger to her young daughter in 1943, shortly before Rose's execution for her involvement in a resistance group against the Nazis. It was beautiful, and something young single women should perhaps remind themselves more often. Rose wrote "dear little big Marianne": 

“Do not be too prodigal of your feelings. There are not many men who are like Daddy, as good and as pure in their love. Learn to wait before giving all of your love -- thus you will be spared the feeling of having been cheated. But a man who loves you so much that he will share all suffering and all difficulties with you, and for whom you can do the same -- such a man you may love, and believe me, the happiness you will find with him will repay you for the waiting." 

Sshhh.

"Hence it comes that men so much love noise and stir...hence it comes that the pleasure of solitude is a thing incomprehensible." 

- Blaise Pascal, Pensées - 

When I stopped running to slow my rapid and ragged breathing, I grew aware of the noiselessness of my surroundings. I was gloriously alone in the blooming quiet of morning. No loud voices punctured the film of nature's whispers. The rough edges of the humdrum of coffeehouses and dorms and classrooms and rehearsals and hangouts were smoothed by forces more organic. It was like escaping from a stuffy room into crisp air, realizing that before that refreshing moment every breath had been inhaled in a stale atmosphere. I thought back to the Spring, to how I hadn't felt the full extent of the intensity of life in East Jerusalem until I'd left it. Going from noise to quiet was like that.

I drank in the new silence like it was an elixir for a withered body.  

What lovely, mentally cleansing and clarifying activities are the acts of walking alone outdoors, savoring silence, dwelling in solitude, appreciating stillness, listening with rapt attention to a soft voice. 

Sometimes this makes re-attuning oneself to the drone of constant activity and noise that much more painful; sensitized ears are more acutely aware of how loud we actually are. 

Maybe this isn't the most even-handed generalization (if there ever is such a thing) to make when living in a dormitory on a college campus, but...

Americans tend to be LOUD. 

(Note to self: subdue your ear-piercing laughter). 

From our courtyard-facing window, we overhear every aspiring musician strumming over-zestfully on his ukelele and robbing us of precious sleep in the late hours of the night, every rendition of Lady Gaga hollered at remorselessly high decibels. The entire dorm is subjected to certain individuals' screams and squeals (why does anyone feel the need to literally shriek out a conversation?!) and alternately heated and disconsolate phone calls (we are all now privy to the details of your family, personal, fiscal, and relationship problems). How difficult would it be to keep your window closed to muffle the obnoxious bleeps and rambunctious reverberations of your video games and action movies issuing endlessly from your room? And, honestly, not everyone appreciates having their studying bumptiously accompanied by country music or impassioned jam sessions of repetitive (dare I say Christian?) music. Pianos keys don't necessarily need to be pummeled like some kind of obstinate construction project. After one morning when someone's alarm in a room across the courtyard rang for a full sixteen minutes with metallic, xylophonic ascending scales before finally being turned off (I timed it, bleary-eyed but irreparably awake), one of my roommates moaned from her bed, "Whoever that is...if we were friends before, we aren't anymore."

I found myself wincing recently when my friend raised her voice to speak over the racket of the radio on a car ride...when I realized my hearing had been temporarily impaired by an excessively loud college chapel service...when members of the basketball team violated the sought-after sacredness of the 'study' lounge by playing inane YouTube videos and guffawing rowdily, apparently impervious to the scowls and cleared throats of their disgruntled peers and ostensibly oblivious to the fact that other students had attempted to retreat there to actually get some work done.

But what bothers me most about all this is not necessarily the noise itself, but the fact that an individual's or group's loudness evinces a blatant unconcern for others in the vicinity -- a thoughtlessness that is, frankly, invasive and rude. 

These observations about American loudness are not just a product of experiences at college, but also from abroad. 

Almost immediately when we were adjusting to daily life in Istanbul, we noticed how the Turks approached and respected public space in an entirely different way than we were accustomed to as Americans. 

In Turkey, subway commutes and public buses were usually fairly quiet. No one spoke too loudly (anyone who does was usually an oblivious and inconsiderate American tourist), if at all. In days upon days of observing people on ferries, buses, shuttles, and the metro system, I was fascinated by how, in the few times when someone's cell phone caused a disruption, the grimaces of fellow commuters quickly nudged the offender back in line. There was a sense of shared space, of commitment to the common good to be found in making daily commutes more bearable for everyone. Because of this, people spoke softly, tread with subtlety and a certain culturally-impressioned respectfulness of others. Calling attention to oneself, in certain contexts, seemed thoroughly selfish and daft. 

I thought back to times when I'd ridden buses in Seattle and San Francisco, how I usually ended up sandwiched between someone gabbing away on her cell phone and someone whose iPod earbuds were turned up to such indecently high levels that I might as well have had them in my own ears. In the States it often seems like everyone is so keen on asserting his or her own 'individual' personality and demands (as if entitled to some unquestionable human right) that any perception of how others are being greatly encroached upon is entirely forgotten or unsophisticatedly overlooked. 

Observe who and what is around you. Think before you brazenly impinge your conversation or musical tastes upon someone's mental and aural space. Evaluate whether or not you need to be speaking so loudly. Learn to enjoy solitude and silence and stillness. Only after much listening and observing can we make sound instead of cacophony, music instead of dissonance. 

Ad Orientum

The other day in one of my history classes, a professor showed us a powerpoint slide of a typical Medieval church floor plan. "The apse faces East," she said in passing. "Priests would pray oriented Eastward, to be ready for the return of Christ." Judging from the deadpan expressions on the faces of most of my fellow students, this didn't really mean anything significant for their lives.

But I felt like I'd had an epiphany. I'd been reminded of an experience I'd had in Istanbul, and I began scribbling emphatically in my notebook.  

Orientation is, obviously, very important to Muslims. The mihrab in a mosque indicates the direction of prayer towards Mecca (in the early stages of Muhammad's revelation, his followers prayed facing Jerusalem...anyways, later on Muhammad changed that). 

As a Protestant in the West I had never really given much thought to what direction I was facing when I prayed. In my ignorance I hadn't realized that for many Christians this is highly significant. 

Of course orientation matters for Muslims and for Christians in the East. 


We had reached the first week of March. The sun warmed our faces as we stood outside Chora Church, known in Turkish as the Kariye Müzesi (the word “Chora” in Greek refers to the original chapel, which was outside of Constantinople’s city walls back in the 5th century AD). The pure ancientness as well as Byzantine essence of its structure were striking. The church sat there in the midst of an Istanbul neighborhood, cobblestone streets, new park, and touristy restaurants as if it ended up there by a subliminal accident -- and yet there was something determined in its timeworn existence and integrity, even if it was tinged with a little bit of melancholy. 

As magnificent as the Hagia Sophia is (and if you know me well you know of my obsession with that particular place), its mosaics and frescoes are no where near as incredible nor as numerous as those of Chora Church. Every single direction we craned our necks were new Biblical (predominantly New Testament) scenes depicted in a spectrum of colorful tiles. The gold glinted here in the fanned tail of a peacock, there in a sullen emperor’s crown; here on the book Christ clutched in his hand, there around the head of a martyr, saint, or apostle. We saw Peter holding the keys to Paradise, the child Mary taking her first seven steps, angels swooping down from every corner... it was breathtaking. Chora church still served as a Christian place of worship even following the conquest of Istanbul in the famous (or perhaps infamous, depending on your background) 1453. Only in 1511 was it converted into a mosque (try to imagine how contentious that was!); then to a museum at the end of World War II. 

In what was once the sanctuary of the church, I stood staring at the mihrab, off-kilter from the orientation of the original chapel (which faced towards Jerusalem) in favor of alignment towards Mecca. I turned my gaze away from the mihrab, squinted my eyes and tried to imagine an altar there. I looked down at the marble under my feet and started saying something to God. I was almost immediately interrupted by the harsh voice of a security guard. It took me a moment to even realize what he was telling me and what I was doing wrong: “NO PRAYING,” he said. “MUSEUM ONLY.” Rattled from of my quiet thoughts, I nodded quickly and he waved me away from the spot. We heard later that while we were in the church three Christians had gotten thrown out for offering up prayers to some iconic saints depicted in the mosaics. 

I was disoriented by this experience in a way I hadn’t anticipated. There was something intrinsically affronting about starting to pray in an ancient church and then being confronted so abruptly, especially when I hadn’t thought that anything in my body language conveyed what I was actually doing or thinking. I felt like a hermit crab who tried to retract inconspicuously into its shell only to be followed into what should have been a place of safety -- my own mind. It was a strange encounter, and made me even more thankful for the solace of some thoughts and prayers that are too deep to ever be drawn out from inside my shell. There is solace, even if it’s under threat, in knowing that your mind is free to pursue God.

What direction are you facing when you pray? 

Are we oriented towards Christ's return, no matter where we are in the world? 

Maybe we should be more intentional about how we orient our lives, especially when we are in a place that makes in difficult to do so.

May our faith be deliberately oriented, intentional and devoted even when it's hard and our values are extremely countercultural or alien or not accepted in a certain social group or atmosphere. May we remember how we ought to orient ourselves no matter where we are... 

Near to You

My mind is buried in Pascal's Pensées and a thick stack of readings on Fascism, my heart is graffitied with Poison & Wine lyrics and the dark ink of bad News, my hand is aching to be held, my head is gravitating toward my pillow...and my whole being is longing to be living abroad again.

Mind, heart, and head are heavy. 

Hand and being are reaching, reaching. 

Love and death and happiness and purpose and suffering and God...I try to comprehend them then shrink back and want to stay in bed and not get up for a long time. 

The intentionality with which I wish to conduct all the nuances of my thoughts, my intentions, my prayers, and my actions has been replaced by tumbleweeds of weariness and distractions and apathy and irritation. 

Everything and nothing is under our control. 

Everything and nothing is as God intended it to be. 

May every soul disquieted and discomforted turn in the right direction, to the right person...

No matter how buried or graffitied or aching or weighted or filled with longing.

Dragon Skin

"I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it. The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know -- if you've ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts like billy -- oh but it is such fun to see it coming away." -- Eustace Scrubb in C.S. Lewis' The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

My friend sat on the edge of her mattress, on the verge of tears. The hopelessness and frustration in her voice made my heart ache for her, made me want to reach out with more than a hand or the consolatory words I could muster up in the moment. The words she used to describe her struggle snagged on my memory of words I knew I had spoken or written, months previously. On impulse I scampered away and returned with a small journal in my hand. "Can I read to you?" I asked. She nodded. 

It had been a few months since I'd opened that journal, and I loved the feeling of it in my hands. It wasn't just a travel journal I'd filled with pencil print from Germany to Turkey to Jordan to Israel back to Germany again; it was a receptacle of personal thoughts, emotions, and observations that I've never let anyone read. I hadn't even read back over most of these myself since the time I'd written them. 

I wondered if starting to read from that journal would be a horrible idea.

I wasn't sure what I was looking for, but I leafed through the pages, propelled by memories of bleak hours when I, too, had sat on the edge of somewhere, on the verge of tears. I could tell when these times had been by the subtle alteration in my handwriting. And I read. Where it applied, I read through the messy bits, the confused bits, the frustrated bits, the scathing critiques of myself, the questions to God. 

But I knew there were hopeful bits coming, answers to prayer that were a long time coming but infinitely better answers as a result. A major aspect of those answers were in the very act of getting mucky and wading through the questions. Transformation doesn't always happen in clear water. Eustace had to have his dragon skin scraped off. 

I continued to thumb through, to the culmination of particular struggles and stories, the ones I'd chosen to compose coherently in that little travel journal. Embedded there I rediscovered verses, quotes, prayers...and metaphors of sinfulness, forgiveness, and grace I could hardly remember pressing into those pages.

It was as if my past self had written a prescient letter to my current self, to the current self that now sat in front of a good friend, self-revealing in the hopes of healing. 

Somewhere in the course of this I started crying, struggling to keep it together and keep reading, because in that moment I saw a glimpse of God's work in my life over the last several months, felt his ever-present love. I looked up, and the tears were now streaming down my friend's face too. 

Writing has this power to surprise. To drop in our laps what has been lost through the holes in our pockets of memory. To soothe current wounds with the salve of past processes of healing and the wisdom that comes from this whole operation. To apply to several people in myriad different ways, but in simultaneously, bewilderingly pertinent ways. To tear into us deeply and painfully and pleasurably -- again. To pencil on our hearts remembrance of and thankfulness for God's transformative work in very broken beings. 

Shared

I'm going to make a confession. 

The act of "sharing" certain things has never been my forte. (Mom, Dad, if you're reading this, please don't smirk). Just see what happens when you take a huge chomp out of a burrito I just bought or when I realize that you borrowed my favorite dress without asking me. I hope you are aware that this vice of mine makes me feel terribly ashamed and that my penitence is genuine....It's just amusing to me that I'm going to write about this. Because, let's be honest, what do I know about this subject?! But, with that disclaimer, here we go anyway.

During those winter months when it actually snows in our town and our house is framed with Christmas-postcard-perfect snow and icicles, the snowfall inevitably coats the sidewalks of our neighborhood with thick layers of white. Then the snowplows clear the streets, spewing more snow and gritty slush onto the pathways which avid dog-walkers and reluctant school-goers alike trudge along every day regardless of the cold and bleakness of winter. Around the time of our first Christmas in that house (which happened to coincide beautifully with the first substantial snowfall), I remember that I decided to go out and shovel our large circular driveway as well as the sidewalk. Decked out in cold-weather gear that I'm pretty sure made me resemble James' Giant Peach, I spent what was maybe an excessively long period of time shoveling the sidewalk that ran the length of our lot. 

Sometime in the hours that followed (when you couldn't tell that anyone had ever shoveled our driveway or sidewalk at all, let alone in recent history), I stood indoors gazing out the window and I saw one of our neighbors with a small snowblower, dutifully clearing the sidewalks of snow in front of all the neighbors' houses. For some reason I felt a surge of affection for him, a thankfulness for his neighborliness and consideration that most people don't own a snowblower or have the time or energy to shovel away the snow constantly. I don't think we had to shovel our sidewalk for the remainder of the winter.

What if we broadened our concept of "neighborhood", or of sharing in common, daily or irregular tasks? Does every home in American suburbia need to be individually equipped with all the tools and gadgets to make a household completely independent and selfishly self-sufficient, or (heaven forbid) what if we actually had to ask to borrow things from our neighbors, and loaned to them what they do not have? What if we curbed our self-absorbed anxieties and consumerism and instead loosened our parsimonious tight fists? In whatever context we find ourselves in, what if we made it our habit to conscientiously and constantly shovel the snow from our neighbors' sidewalk for them? 

Back in Turkey, during the time we lived in the dormitories of a private university in Istanbul, I had retreated with my computer one morning to the basement of our building, which offered students a cold, echoey, institutional (I think in my journals I called it "austere") environment for studying with limited natural light or aesthetic joys of any kind, hard plastic lime green chairs, and internet access. I sat there, chilly and cheerless, without human connection other than that which Facebook can provide. I couldn't decide if I wanted to talk to people or if I just wanted to be alone. 

Two women (evidently employees of the university) in janitorial garb came into the study lounge (if that's what the frigid, echoey hospital dungeon basement with uncomfortable chairs could be called), munching on pretzels from a snack bag and holding bardaks of çay. They began trying to speak with me in Turkish. They didn't appear to be in particularly good moods and, to be honest, I don't think I was either. Our communication failed on both ends. One of the women kept pointing to the door and asking me a question, and I thought they wanted me to leave. But then they left. When they returned to my table two minutes later it was with three boxes of different kinds of tea, a cup of hot water, and a paper bowl with pretzels in it. 

Their act of sharing had a profound effect on me. I think I might have teared up, which maybe confused them a bit as I was also smiling and thanking them profusely in Turkish. I wrote later in my journal that "I was touched by their kindness and how little acts of thoughtfulness maintain a level of humanness that is a lifeline in a new and unfamiliar place." They had shoveled my sidewalk. They had shared the little that they had. They had shown me, some morose-looking, apparently anti-social American girl in her flannel pajamas, the profundity of neighborliness. 

So snowblow someone's sidewalk if you own a snowblower and they own a shovel. Make tea for someone. Share your pretzels. 

And I'll try not to be immoderately irritated when you take an immoderate chomp out of my burrito. 

Cut from a Cloth

I'm not going to lie. I really adore Anthropologie (just not that the most I can buy from Anthro with my fifty-dollar gift card is one scented candle... I'm kidding. But not really). 

There is something therapeutic about trying on beautiful, overpriced clothes that you have no intention of actually buying. The other day I walked around the back of the store in a $240 dress for a while just because I really liked it and knew I'd never get it (let's be honest, that's the equivalent of a plane ticket that could take me somewhere I really want to go). No wonder fashion-savvy girls with their parents' credit cards look so chic all the time. The rest of us would probably look fairly good on a day to day basis too if we could constantly shell out that much money for pricey (albeit well-made) clothes.

There was a time in my life (i.e., when I was first acclimating to my new Southern California, private college environs) when I almost subconsciously aspired to be and look like those kind of people. You know, the carefully styled, beach-y bohemian California girls with wardrobes as inexhaustible as C.S. Lewis's and gorgeous blond hair to rival any red-carpet starlet's. 

As often as I reminded myself that this quasi-aspiration was extremely shallow and materialistic and that I really didn't want to look like that anyway, I still found myself insnared by an ever-present desire to go shopping and completely overhaul my own wardrobe. I never actually did this, of course. I tried to set my sights on contentment and thankfulness, because that's really the only acceptable attitude that comparatively well-off Americans should ever have anyway. 

But especially after staying in Turkey, Jordan, and Israel over the course of last semester, my perspective has completely shifted. I donned the same few clothing articles day in and day out for over four months, and I found to my great relief that I could function perfectly happily with very little as far as attire was concerned. I was satisfied with what I had, and relieved not to feel defined by what I wore or where I shopped.

And now being back, something in me is fundamentally appalled by the materialism of so many girls here. I find the carefully styled, beach-y bohemian thing so...unnecessary. I'm no longer striving to fit in with people who I want to be seen with. There are so many more valuable and quality interactions and relationships to be had, and so many other more worthy things to strive for. 

Do not misunderstand me. I enjoy fashion, and I am definitely a proponent of putting your best, classy foot forward.

But did you really decide to pay that much again this weekend for another new outfit from Free People?! Maybe you could free some people by not buying more clothes for yourself. Maybe you could be ungrudgingly, uncovetously satisfied with what you have.

Maybe we could all afford to take a critical look at our own materialism. 

Sanctum

It was almost an instinct, that feeling that I needed to get away for a bit. Not tell anyone exactly where I was going. Wander for wandering's sake. 

Downtown, I diverted from the main road...discovered a patisserie with rainbows of macaroons...delighted in walking alone... 

My only worry was that I would cross paths with someone I knew. 

I felt like sand trying to find an escape route through interlaced fingers. I longed for someplace different, more mysterious, more sacred, more impenetrable. Somewhere that wasn't Californian America. 

Maybe that's the curse of having experienced life abroad. 

For some reason, the Different seems more approachable now, even more familiar. 

My feet directed me to an episcopal church. My eyes fixated on the church doors, and I approached it as if my whole Saturday had been aligned to lead me to that moment. 

The doors were locked. 

I spent the next seven minutes strolling around the complex, trying every entrance to the church to no avail. 

There was a glass panel in one of the doors that led to the sanctuary, and I stood there and peered inside longingly. Lit candles in votives. Stained glass windows. Majestic vaulted ceilings. Though I couldn't see the organist, I could hear him practicing, and the door reverberated with the vigor of the lowest notes. My face was so close to the door that I could smell incense burning from somewhere within the sanctuary.

It was as if a few granules of sand had sifted between those fingers, fallen, and rejoined the dunes along the seashore...

For the redolence of incense had rocketed me back to memories of a Syrian Orthodox service in an extremely poor neighborhood we attended one night in Istanbul...to mental images of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on Good Friday teeming with Christian pilgrims and holy men from all over the world...to recollections of quiet, solitary explorations of smaller churches in the Old City of Jerusalem. It was the aroma which for thousands of years has symbolically reminded worshippers of the ever-present prayers of the saints. How strange, I thought, that churches East and West could be united in my mind by that scent of incense.

The organ music continued to rattle the door. I thought back to the evening years ago when my family sat together in the pews of a German cathedral and listened to an organist practicing for the approaching Easter services in Nürnberg. 

I thought especially of my Dad, who has always loved organ music and the smell of incense. My memories are now imprinted with their significance. 

There was an open window above me, and I could glimpse more stained glass, the colors of which were much more vivid from the inside looking out than from the outside looking in. 

Church doors should never be locked. 

Greener Grass

When I was a little girl, I was a Native American who could slink silently across our backyard in leather moccasins, an unbelievably beautiful mermaid trapped in our shallow inflatable pool on the back patio, a medieval princess fleeing from an evil babysitter, a hungry pioneer wearing a makeshift bonnet and gathering unripe raspberries from our poor bushes, a misunderstood orphan dramatically trying to escape the "orphanage" (a.k.a, my house) by taking off down the sidewalk towards the neighbors' (because no one would ever think to look for me there...). In my fantasies, my hair was always straight and jet black instead of curly and blond; my eyes were blue instead of green. My imagination allowed me to be what I was not, particularly when I thought I would be better suited to an entirely different place and era. 

As ardently as I enjoyed and appreciated living in Istanbul last semester, there inevitably came the moment when I missed home. If I remember correctly, we were sitting in an especially drawn-out lecture on the implications of gold mining for a remote region of Turkey. It had been a chilly and wintery morning again...we had trudged to the classroom through icy slush and soggy cigarette butts.

My pencil strayed from my notes to the margin of my notebook and began doodling as if guided by a hand not my own. The sketch took shape: a strong and gnarled tree, tufts of grass at its base. An unoccupied wood-and-rope swing. I stared at what I'd drawn longingly as if gazing through a window. I imagined plunging headfirst into this scene redolent with the essence of carefree childhood summers. Yes, I missed the rich damp earthy smell of June rains and blackberry blooms and boardwalks by the bay in Washington State. I missed feeling known, understood. I missed being sure about who God was and what His goals for me were. 

Many, many times since returning to the States, I've longed to be back in Turkey. I miss riding the ferry, sipping at a tiny little glass of steaming black tea, watching the seagulls dodge each other above the Bosphorus. I miss buying flowers from the Roma for way more lira than should be spent on something that will wilt within the week...miss carrying them from Taksim square back to Galata tower and feeling poetic and putting the tiny, fragrant blooms in a water glass. I miss dodging the untamable city traffic while crossing the street or exploring some new part of Istanbul, learning how to navigate, feeling a little BA. I miss hearing the Call to Prayer (yes, even at indecent hours of the day/night) and the way it reminded me of how I was a punitive Christian fish in a sea of Muslim believers. I miss climbing up several stories of stairs (winded..calves burning..) in old, old buildings...knowing that thousands of feet have tromped up the same stone steps.

I miss delighting in the night lights, the Aya Sofya and the Yeni Cami aglow in the distance. And oh the skyline! Blue and gold in the evenings. I miss strolling past those brightly lit fish restaurants along the Golden Horn with a heady sense of all the possibilities of a passionate future. I miss hunkering down in coffee shops kept warm in the wintertime. I miss devouring pistachio and pomegranate Turkish delight and the entertainment of trying to charm young male shopkeepers. I miss visiting the art museums, gleaning endless inspiration, and catching sight of Istanbul's elite artsy crowd. I even miss being part of the morning subway commute and munching a simit on-the-go. Taking the stairs instead of the escalator. Admiring Istanbul's fashionable women, their peacoats, their boots, their scarves. Getting soaked by sleet on the way to a church meeting and regretting not owning an umbrella -- on the same day that Istanbul lost electricity for hours and hours. Seeing the ubiquitous Atatürk lounging in photographs on the ferries, above our classrooms, in thrift shops and on book covers. 

What an unfortunate thing that we are so prone to be dissatisfied with what we have and where we are. I, for one, know my tendency to yearn for something, someone, or somewhere that is out of my reach. 

Thank goodness God doesn't always give us what we want right away, or even at all. 

But in an unpredictable change of pattern, I am actually content with being here, now. 

When one of my roommates was desperately missing life as a counselor at a Christian summer camp, I recognized that aching and dissatisfied look in her eyes -- like it mirrored my own feelings when I perceive being back in the States as a drab, flat, limp, shallow experience. Sympathetically, my other roommate suggested that we transform our room into a foresty scene reminiscent of camp. 

But as much as I would love to revitalize the wilting heart of my friend and roommate (and would love to plaster our ceiling with Iznik tiles that remind me of the magnificent mosques and museums of last semester), I knew it simply wouldn't be the same. I knew that it's impossible to recreate something that can never be matched. 

I don't always enjoy being in the Santa Barbara bubble. I miss the iridescence of life abroad exploring and having an infinite variety of intense things to think about and conversations to have with people very different from myself. 

How do you show or explain to someone who has no concept of life outside of California how much you are forever changed? How your faith and attitudes have been altered? 

Despite these questions and so many others, I have been overcome by the love of my friends here, and the gracious ways in which God is revealing truths to me in this specific community. 

God has already fulfilled so many of the desires of my heart. The least I can do right now is praise Him with the joy of contentment. This peace surpasses all understanding. The grass is pretty green on this side, too. 

My eyes are not blue, nor will they ever be. I'm not a resourceful Indian fleeing from frontiersmen or a blasé Parisian flapper in the 1920's or the disconsolate wife of a soldier in the Second World War or a fierce princess in Medieval times. I'm a green-eyed, twenty year-old American college student in the 21st century. And that's okay with me. 

Origami

Many years ago, my family hosted a Japanese exchange student in our home for a month. In all the time we spent with Miko, what I remember best is how she taught us to fold beautiful patterned paper in the art of origami. Swiftly, deftly, her fingers creased and tucked until the little square sheets transformed into basket-like dishes, regal cranes, and exquisite heart-shaped envelopes. I would watch her in rapt admiration and begged her to help me create my own set of paper paraphernalia. 

I was hardly as skilled as Miko, but I did craft quite a few origami boats. I would fill our bathtub and send the boats gliding across my miniature ocean with gusts of breath. Sometimes I would churn up the water until the little paper vessels were so waterlogged that they began to sink in sorrowful silence to the deepest leagues of the bathtub sea. 

Sometimes I would wonder if that's what God does to us.

I think I recognized even then how God's fingers are always creasing, tucking, folding us into new shapes. 

I certainly wouldn't know what to do with my paper-square of a soul without Him. And just when I think I'm taking recognizable shape, I realize that the process isn't over...He has more steps in mind, more folds to make. 

Sometimes I feel like an origami boat in a bathtub, blown around with unpredictable gusto by some omnipotent and Divine breath. 

You'd think it would be terrifying as a boat not to know when the calm would be interrupted with the gusts that toss and turn you so, or with the changeability of the churning water beneath you. 

But if you've allowed God to craft you into a vessel of His own, you can greater enjoy the tranquility and better survive the storm. 

Maybe we sink when we don't let Him make us ship-worthy. 

The less I try to take charge as captain of my life, and the less of my corrupted self I drag into my relationships and interactions with others, the more I feel freedom knowing that God has taken control. 

That I am but an origami boat in His hands.

That God can use me however He pleases. 

That He can bless me with peacefulness and purposefulness, or send me to the bottom of His sea. 

Either way, I trust what He's doing. 

Peaches. Sunburn. Plato.

I'd forgotten what a whirlwind college students get swept up in the minute they set foot back on campus... the all-student emails, the high expectations of well-loved professors, the quickly accumulating piles of dirty laundry, the late-night jam sessions that keep the entire dorm awake long past "quiet" hours. 

I'd forgotten my mailbox number and code, and some acquaintances' names ("Oh hiiiiiii...[blank stare]!"). I'd forgotten that my bedding still has Nutella stains on it from freshman year. I was so enthusiastic to soak up some sun when our first weekend finally arrived that I'd forgotten to put on sunscreen before spending several hours reading at the beach. I'd forgotten how highlighting too much of a book defeats the entire purpose of highlighting (sorry, Socrates' Apology). I'd forgotten the small delights of adventuring (I was pleasantly pleased with the peaches at the farmer's market...)

I'd also forgotten how good it is to fall to the floor in a fit of uncontrollable laughter, or cry in the arms of a really exceptional friend. I'd forgotten to brace myself for the strangenesses of returning from a semester abroad and realizing which people actually care. 

For everything I'd forgotten, returning to college stirs up an awful lot of memories too -- both the kind I wish I could discard and the gemlike kind that I want to treasure forever in the jewelry-box annexes of my heart. 

I'm reminded here of how much I have grown; how deep my roots can go if I choose to invest deeply and richly; and how I am still in a continuous process of flourishing to my utmost potential. 

It's good to be back. 

Two Cities

I have never been a huge fan of San Francisco. 

Now, before you bite my head off, I have a confession to make: after today, I think that that San Fran has actually wheedled its way to a higher place in my estimation. [Don't worry Seattle, the Fog City will never replace you in my heart]. 

Maybe the reason San Francisco doesn't seem quite as bad after all is that today reminded me, just a tad, of being in Istanbul. I guess that maybe I'm just missing living in a big city -- observing and being part of the hodgepodge of grit and glitter, the interdependence of comings and goings, the coexisting entrepreneur spirit and dark desperation in an eclectic group of people thrown together in an idiosyncratic place. Anyways, there's a lot about Istanbul to miss. 

But back to San Francisco. How could I not be won over, even just a little, by display cases of plastic sushi and kitschy trainer-chopsticks, or bookshops of used cookbooks and hip new fiction picks all crammed side by side like tea biscuits just waiting to be bitten into? How could I not but be delighted by the sheer variety of tapiocas and rice and noodles and unidentifiables on the shelves in a lively Asian market, or by the standout façades of Edwardian-era San Franciscan homes as we walked briskly along the sidewalks in the chilly fog? 

No offense to Ghirardelli Square, but I would much rather (as we did today) wander around in ridiculous junk shops, or get distracted by beautiful book spines and autobiographies of women from Tsarist Russia, or nibble at gooey green-tea-flavored red-bean mochi, or meander around an area where people have a hard time speaking English, than spend all my time in a place where the offbeat beautiful has been stamped out by the tourist industry. Hence why I found it so special this afternoon to see San Francisco in a snapshot of what our hostess adores about her city...the quintessential eats, quirky treats, and daily activity, mundane and otherwise, of one particular neighborhood. 

I was most thrilled when our hostess took us to one of her favorite haunts, a mini market of Middle Eastern and European foods -- shelves of tea and preserves, candy with Arabic on the wrappers, trays of baklava, bowls of hummus and feta cheese in a refrigerated glass case. I thought of the spice bazaar in Istanbul, all the heaps of dried fruit and lokum and the bustling activity and vociferous vendors...and my heart ached to be back there. We bought pita bread and pistachio halva and manti (a Turkish meat-filled mini pillow tortellini of sorts, to be served with yogurt), and I must have appeared very enthusiastic about everything because the Guatemalan clerk handed me a piece of rosewater Turkish delight for me to enjoy as I wandered around trying to find everything with Turkish labels. 

Even after we'd left the shop my thoughts stayed with Istanbul, but I was grateful -- grateful, in particular, that our hostess knew what it's like to miss a city you love, and that she'd brought us to a place that felt almost familiar to me. 

I'll hand it to you, San Francisco, today was an unexpectedly delightful foray into the recognizable and relatable, the outrageous and outré...a brief but hearty savoring of memories and familiar flavors, but also a chance to find my own impressions of offbeat beauty in you.

Golden

There have been occasions in the past when, surrounded by a group of people whom I know fairly well, I have found myself envisaging each of them as particular colors, as if the very essence of their souls or selves could be distilled into character-revealing, unadulterated hues -- visible manifestations -- and examined in transparent flasks. My visualizations go something as follows: his color would be a deep shade of eggplant, full of depth and complexity, a bit hard to penetrate with the eye...kind of like looking through a wine bottle in an underlit room. His color is rich and robust, like his conversation and silence and emotion and wisdom. Her color is the green of split-pea soup -- it is always difficult for one to decide whether it is enjoyable and savory or not. In her color is something a bit disagreeable and unstable, yet fascinating... And so on, with quite a bit more detail and nuance. 

Usually, I would eventually come to wonder what my “color” would be. What would it say about me to my examiner? 

This all might sound quite strange and foolish, but I actually find it a helpful exercise. 

Because I know exactly what color I would want to be, but am simultaneously aware that if I were reduced to a shade reflective of my true self, there would be something contaminated about that color, something corrupted and turbid. 

Many times in my life I have driven past healthy introspection and humility right down into a valley of self-loathing, a place that also happens to be populated by pride and lies. On my own, I try to fix the damages, make changes to the surface and the interior. When that doesn’t work, I try to carry the burden of my car-wreck back out of the ravine -- but that, too, proves unsuccessful. 

Until I allow someone to help me carry it.

I find myself increasingly thankful for those people who tell me, in honest and excruciating love, the things I know to be true but am not courageous enough to admit to myself, or admit to God.

It can be unpleasant to see your own color. 

But there is great joy in knowing that you really are loved, loved so much by someone that they will drag the ickiest part of your soul kicking and screaming out of the dark and into a blinding light. This is in no way pleasant until the exposure is over (which, perhaps, it never really is), and you find yourself luminous again. Less...icky. 

I have found life-giving freedom in a truth: the truth that though I cannot purify myself by my own willpower or self-disparagement, there is someone who can radically refine me, develop me into a radiant soul reflective of that someone much brighter, much purer -- someone truly and forever terrifyingly lovely to behold. 

Americano

Maybe I was just in a particularly good mood after a full night of sleep, a couple of hours reading Miroslav Volf out in the sunshine by the lake, a couple more hours in the gym, and creating (and enjoying) my own drinking chocolate concoction when I got to work, but I felt especially talkative when one customer in his twenties or thirties came up to the counter with a kind smile on his face. When he asked me how my day was going he probably didn't expect for me to talk about how strange the seaweed salad I'd tried for lunch was, or how I'd thought it looked like it was composed of torpid, tiny creatures from Monsters, Inc. I wondered if the Pixar reference made me sound like a six year old. 
He couldn't decide if it would be better to get an Americano or a coffee before work, because they were the same price. He asked me what I would get (why do people ever ask those kind of questions?!). I would never have either, so I told him I would definitely choose an Americano. 

While I ran the espresso machine we kept chatting. He was rather nice. He left me a tip and strolled out the door.

I stared out the store's front window and fantasized that he would come back tomorrow. And the following day... And pretty soon he'd discover that he'd been spending too much money on coffee... Because he'd wanted to keep talking to Seaweed Girl. And in my fantasy, imagined Seaweed Girl looked a lot more like Zooey Deschanel than real-life Seaweed Girl actually looks. 

Near the end of my workday when I was outside winding a bike lock around the outdoor seating, I caught sight of him down the sidewalk. Fickly, I'd forgotten about my fantasy. I fiddled with the cushions. He didn't look over at me. A girl drove up in an ugly car and he hopped in and off they went. I realized that I was narrating my own quasi-dissapointment in third person. 

The average day doesn't usually transpire with chick-flick flair, even if you try to mentally construct it. 

The average day is...average. 

But sometimes I enjoy the average days, even as little hiatuses from all the intense and profound days, because it is during the average days that I laugh at myself the most. 

Human

Istanbul.

We had meandered our way back to the old book market in the shadow of a mosque in Sultan Ahmet. In the very far corner of the bazaar was Mustafa’s tiny shop, brimming with beautiful art prints (whirling dervishes, cityscapes of Istanbul, depictions of the Bosphorus, Orientalist sketches) and prolific collections of old stamps, matchbox lids, pins, and other paraphernalia. Hours passed as we sifted through fantastic collections of old coins and watched the collector rub his fingers over the pieces as he identified their origins. He gave us steaming bardaks of çay, sticky with sugar around the rims. 

I bought some old photographs of Turks from bygone years: solemn family photos of young children in white dresses and stockings, a blurry image of three people playing in the ebb and flow of the ocean, pictures of young men and women with neatly brushed hair posing in gardens for portraits with their lives stretching happily unknown before them, a browned-from-the-sun old man napping on a porch rocker with his hat tipped back jauntily away from his face, a candid and humorous snapshot of two overweight women in shabby swimsuits trying to wash a little boy's hair in the water from a garden hose during the summertime. I loved the photographs I picked out, partly because they reminded me of the eclecticism of Mustafa’s shop, partly because they were fading and stained images of jovial times now forgotten, and partly because through them I had found a new way of feeling connected to the Turkish people. These were their lives as they had been in the 1940’s and 50’s... I could not know them, could not talk to them, but they were not dead faces. 

I wondered if someday a foreign girl would be in a curio shop rifling through old photographs and find one of my family, unnamed but merry, captured in the masquerade of the moment. Would she delight in the happy humanity of the image? If you slice a wafer shape from any period in time and put it on your tongue, something about the flavor will be unidentifiably familiar to you. Perhaps we are all spliced together by this taste, and that’s what binds us to the bits of daily humanness that we can relate to in history and in other cultures. Or maybe this is my imagination, because after all, it is sometimes easier to love the dead than the living. 

Worthy

We were worshipping. Or trying to. From our seats in the balcony of our church back home, I could just make out a tiny triangle of simple stained glass that let in light from the apex of the sanctuary's ceiling. I trained my eyes on it as I sang. Something intrinsic in my soul was flitting around like a sparrow trying to find an appropriate place to land. The sanctuary was painted in drab grays and blues, carpeted with another dull hue...void of much color or light or adornment, save for the American flag in the corner and the arrangements of artificial unpleasant-green leafy plants lining the "stage" where the worship leaders flashed smiles and clapped out of sync with each other as they led us through another vapid song. 

What I am not trying to express is unthankfulness for our worship space, or for the time and financial efforts the congregation poured into building it. I am thankful that we have building permits for churches here, that we don't live with the threat of our neighbors locking us into the sanctuary and setting the building on fire while we're inside, that we are affluent enough to construct a roof over our heads so that we have the opportunity to foster fellowship and community and reach out to our town and beyond without immediate threat of persecution and terror. 

I also realize that God meets with us anywhere and everywhere, whether we're worshipping him from slum, palace, orphanage, monastery, coffee shop, or mountain top. 

There are many places to take off your sandals on holy ground.

But remember that Christmas song Little Drummer Boy?

"Come, they told me, pa rum pum pum pum

A new born King to see, pa rum pum pum pum

Our finest gifts we bring, pa rum pum pum pum

To lay before the King...

So to honor him, pa rum pum pum pum,

When we come..."

God is more than worthy of the finest gifts we can bring Him, the best worship we can give Him. And the best worship spaces.

People in Europe and the Middle East seem to have no problem constructing "contemporary" worship spaces that don't resemble lunch-boxes or warehouses. Americans may not have a modern Da Vinci or Sinan, but that doesn't mean our buildings have to be ugly.

Sometimes, when I've voiced my conviction about this, someone will tell me bluntly that it doesn't matter. God doesn't care.

If God didn't care, I don't think His Creation would be so beautiful. 

Is it a coincidence that the most regal cathedrals mirror the grandeur of ancient forests?

Do you think Heaven is painted in drab grays and blues? That God lines his throne with rubbery shrubbery? 

Did God let the Israelites use second-rate materials in the Tabernacle? 

I don't think so.

In Islam, it is sacrilegious to depict in art Allah, or the Prophet Muhammad, or other images, at the mosque and elsewhere. Shirk, idolatry, is avoided at all costs. When we were abroad, I admired how Muslims often celebrate the beauty of holy places without compromising their ideology. Focus should clearly be on Allah, on prayer. But the Blue Mosque in Istanbul is quilted with cobalt-blue Iznik tiles. Its interior is exquisite. And it inspires worship. 

There was a point in our semester when I felt spiritually weary, especially distant from God. The day had drawn out long and hot in Jerusalem. We'd spent hours walking through thronging crowds and uphill in the unmerciful sunshine.

And then we got to the Garden of Gethsemane, with is old old gnarled olive trees and lovely, well-kempt landscape. Ten minutes previously, a gong from within the Old City had signaled the end of Jesus' three hours on the cross. Christ had died. 

I would write in my journal that evening: "For some reason, as we went into Gethsemane Church, a sadness came over me, like a heavy afternoon that makes you wonder what you should live for and what comes next in life. The church was exquisitely beautiful...pale columns with lovely carved capitals, stained glass windows of blue and purple that filtered in tranquil, dim yet rich light...olive tree motifs of skillfully-worked metal that vined around the door to the sanctuary like a man-made thicket...and on the ceiling, a mosaic of blue, speckled with silvery stars. I was deeply moved by a sense of peace, of calm, of God's unfailing and unconditional love. Christ would resurrect. Looking up at the stars on the ceiling of the church high over my head, I remembered what God had told me once, that all my hopes and dreams and things to be achieved were as numerous as the stars, and that God held all of them in His hand, stretched out like the glittering tapestry of the night sky in His palm."

I remember quite vividly how the beauty of this encouragement and the sheer loveliness of the church moved me to tears. It was a worship space that had drawn me closer to the One whom I worshipped.

Recently a design-savvy, Christian friend expressed to me how discouraging it is to her when most of the Christians she knows sharply criticize and disdain her passion for that which is aesthetically pleasing. 

Christians, we should be the forefront champions of that which is aesthetically pleasing. Not so we can worship beauty for beauty, but so that we can worship Him who makes all things beautiful.

God is the ultimate and indefatigable architect, designer, artist. He knows our sparrow souls, how we search for the sliver of stain glass that elevates our minds to something more magnificent, something more like His kingdom, something more like Him. 

Callebaut

Future significant other, beware: I have high standards when it comes to chocolate. Giving me crappy chocolate is no way to my heart. 

Now that I've been raised in a family that has always frequented the shop of our professional chocolatier friend -- who has run a successful business for over twenty years handcrafting truffles and other products from the finest Belgian chocolate (not to mention liquors)-- I will probably forever decry anything but Callebaut. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I recommend looking it up. 

Sweet snobbery aside, working at that friend's chocolate and gelato shop this summer has been teaching me quite a few other tidbits of lifelong wisdom. 

For example, it is impossible to describe what a guava fruit tastes like, so don't even try. 

If you've made the choice not to consume ANY sugar, dairy, gluten, or nuts, a chocolate shop probably isn't the place for you to wander around complaining that your options are severely limited. 

If indecisive people are given too many choices to make, you may be standing there for a very long time.

People like to talk about themselves. And if you give them even the slightest chance, they will. 

Always be nice to salespeople. Berating them to the point of tears for not having your personal favorite variety of chocolate gelato on hand every single time you come into the store will not make you a favorite customer. If you are nice to them, however, they'll serve you generously. And maybe you'll even brighten their long day.

WARM HANDS MELT CHOCOLATE. 

Labeling things doesn't always help people identify what they're looking at. Hence why a customer might point to a tray of gelato designated "LEMON" flavor with a little tab and ask "What flavor is this?" It is best to maintain a neutral facial expression in these scenarios.  

Showing even benign interest in the details of what someone is selling to you makes their job much more pleasurable, and shows them that you care about the product they're preparing for you, which means you'll probably get a richer mocha or more luscious hot chocolate or more delightfully decorated slice of cheesecake out of the deal. 

Smile as much as possible. You have no idea how many people are visibly shocked to be smiled at and greeted warmly. So shocked that they'll leave a generous tip, enthusiastically smile themselves, and thank you profusely for doing a simple job that you would have done anyways. 

Don't let your children, if or when you have them, lick display cases. This is all at once unattractive, unsanitary, and inconsiderate. 

Tactfully sharing something about yourself with strangers will often open up impressively fulfilling conversations. 

Savor good things. Like good chocolate. 

And if you really want to impress a girl, give her the quality stuff. 

Ginger

When I was old enough, but still not old enough to comb all the tangles out of my own hair, my parents would let me go stay at Ginger's house in the Seattle area. There was so much I didn't know about her then, and so much that I didn't think to ask. She was simply, and wonderfully, Ginger. Her black hair with threads of gray framing her dimpled face. Her purple smock-like dresses over her stout figure. Her buttermilk and lavender scent. Her ready chuckle. Ginger was a genuine gem of a kindhearted person. 

During my long visits, I always slept in the tiny room off the kitchen. I was enchanted with the petite steps leading up to the hobbit-sized door, and I loved that there was just enough space for a little-person sized bed on the floor of the Harry-Potter-cupboard room. Greg (Ginger's longtime partner) would always clear the space of stored, yellowed magazines and ubiquitous spiders before my visit. Ginger would tuck me inside the layers of slightly-musty blankets when bedtime surreptitiously arrived.

Apparently I talked and sang incessantly during those visits. Often times I didn't understand why Ginger would chortle for minutes on end after something I'd said, but I didn't mind because I adored her. We would sit on the edge of the damp picnic table in the treed courtyard and feed the squirrels peanuts, and I marveled at the sheer number of peanut shells that carpeted the ground beneath our feet. 

Greg spent years collecting and recording Shirley Temple flicks for me (I was convinced I would be a charming actress and talented tap-dancer myself). Ginger and I would pop new videos into the VCR like thick slices of toast into the toaster, and we would cuddle up to enjoy the old films. Ginger would tell me how my golden curls were just like Shirley's. 

Ginger and I donned aprons in the kitchen to make bagels from scratch. I fondly remember how she would spin the dough around her finger, how I exclaimed "Hole-y bagel!" and made her face animate into laughter, how she taught me to dunk the bagels into hot water and sprinkle them with a dusting of sea salt. 

Then I grew up, like Peter Pan's Wendy or C.S. Lewis' Lucy, like all little girls are bound to do sooner or later. I rarely saw Ginger. "She has an important job at the University," my mom would say. "Ginger is extremely bright. And you don't need to be babysat any more." 

But Ginger would sometimes drive to Canada to see us perform in our annual Christmas concerts. On rare occasions we would go out to dinner together. She always smelled the same, looked the same -- albeit with more gray strands in her hair. I didn't make her laugh as much anymore, but she would keep me and mom in stitches with her old stories. I loved the way her face reddened and shone with mirth during her storytelling. 

She was still my beloved Ginger, and still the Ginger that I knew loved me. 

Ginger never divulged many personal details. I still remember the afternoon when as a little girl I asked, "Ginger, why aren't you and Greg married?" She looked taken aback by the question, but I stood before her blinking with unflinching naiveté. When she spoke, it was softly. "It's been so long...I think that we are, Emilie. Greg and I know that we love each other."

Over the years I picked up bits and pieces of Ginger's story from my mother. Ginger had once been a great beauty. But some experiences with men in her past damaged and haunted her. She deliberately overate, tried to make herself unattractive in acts of self-neglect. Age did the rest. 

But the Ginger I knew seemed so far removed from these experiences, and she never even breathed of them to me. Maybe she thought I was too young to know. I probably was.

When I graduated from high school, I wrote her a note and tucked a senior picture into an envelope that we never sent. We couldn't find her address, or phone number, or email. I went to college. It had been years since we'd exchanged our last postcards. But I wasn't worried. Ginger would always be there, always loving. I imagined how she would be at my future wedding, regaling the guests during the toasts with heartwarming stories. Of course she would be there at every stage of my life, because she had watched me grow up, and because I wanted to make her proud of me. 

And I wanted her to know that I was old enough to be her confidante, too. That I wished to understand more about her, her pains and her joys. 

I assumed I would get a shot at this, because Ginger, a living, breathing, factual Ginger, was like a foundational pillar in my memories of life and relationships. 

I was at college, States away from home, when I got the call from Mom. We had been invited to Ginger's funeral. Greg had left several months before. Ginger had been found at home. If she'd taken care of herself, the doctors had said, she would have lived nearly twice as long. 

It was midway through the semester, and I would miss the funeral. Mom called me afterwards. "Ginger was such an amazing person, Emilie," she said. "She poured herself into other people's lives. She was incredibly intelligent and incredibly loving." I nodded even though I knew Mom couldn't see me. I tried to dam up my reeling mind against the floodwaters of guilt and regret. If only I'd made the effort to reach her, tell her how much I cared about her, before she'd gone. 

Mom knew. "There was a display of the photographs that Ginger had framed on a table in her house at the time she passed away," she said. "There was a picture of you. You brought her so much joy. She always loved you so much." Over the phone I could hear the tears stretching Mom's voice taut.

"I wish I had the chance to tell her that." My own tears, my own strained voice.

"She knew, Emilie. I think she always knew that."