Friday, March 6, 2009

truck stops for coffee and presidents for company

i have met:

a girl who owns her own plane.
a boy with an english accent.
a girl who has surfed with jack johnson.
a marathon runner.
a certified pilot.
a pretty redhead.
a professional model.
a swimming champion.
a disciple of rich mullins.
an aspiring housewife.
an excellent cook.
a hypochondriac.
a beatles expert.
a folk singer.
a farmer's daughter.
a girl with an engineering degree and a sense of humor.
a book reading fanatic.
a fellow olivetian.
a boy with a beard.
a soon-to-be nurse.
a soon-to-be wife.
a might-be nun.
a boy with a miniature guitar.
a ballerina.
a missionary kid.

put them together and what have you got? my semester of students. a learning experience a challenge and a whole lot of fun.

and only a few more weeks with them.

and then we all move on.



again.




phil: i've heard the east coast in the states is getting a big winter storm. i haven't seen snow or been sledding in so long. do you guys miss winter?

me: i don't know. being in seattle kind of reminded me that i've forgotten how much effort it takes to exist in the cold!

gwyn: i miss being able to live by the seasons. yeah, there's a winter. but then it's over and you get a spring. and then things grow and then there's a summer and it's hot and then fall and there's campfires. you can judge your year by the change of season.

and then i thought to myself, yet another element of living in the states that perpetuates the american desire to move on. we'll exist in winter, but only as long as we're promised a spring. we're always moving forward. we're always changing places. even if not geographically, we're still changing. or trying to. or wanting to. john steinbeck has some good words about it. (who i had a dream about last night... we were in a tree house. it was odd.) the american predisposition to uprooting oneself.

i've been swept up in it. i'm still participating in it. but maybe someday i'll slow down. or sit still. or plant roots. or even a garden. and i wont have to say goodbye to everyone i meet every time i meet them. and i wont have to spend so much money on plane tickets. and i'll get to actually taste the food that they cook and fly in their airplanes and pirrouette across the kitchen floor. which in the spirit of american understadning will be a whole new phase in and of itself. the phase with roots. not a girl who's a pilgrim.

a girl with a garden.



and a girl with a reason to wear her fancy dress tonight. she might see the president! and you simply can't meet a president in baggy trousers.

library benefit dinner. sounds so very prestigious!

1 comment:

carterfive said...

You won't know this song, but I'll leave it in an edited version nonetheless...ahem..."ramblin' girl why don't you settle down, (name of wherever) ain't your kind of town, there ain't no goal and there ain't no "mama" like meeee....i'm the number one fan of the girl from...tulsey?" Hey, that wasn't bad!!