Comma Dot Comma

My friend Amy is coming to visit for a few days, and in her honor, I would like to retell her absolutely true story of “The Laundry Burglar.”  It’s a Thanksgiving story but its scary elements work well for Halloween too.  I never tire of hearing it.  I’ll try to do it justice. All the coolest parts (such as the term ‘donut-eatin’ cops’) are hers and hers alone, and this story works best  if you imagine it told in a Tennessee accent. 

It was Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, and Amy was tired to the bone.  She’d known, abstractly, that teaching in an inner city Baltimore public school was going to be difficult, but the actual experience was something else altogether.  Now, at the end of a short week, she kept herself going by focusing only on the immediate hour or two ahead.  School had been a half-day, but she’d stayed late to try to get some grading done.  Finally, as dusk was falling, she walked home, and met her two roommates loading suitcases into the back of a taxi.  They were already heading out for the holiday.  Hugs all around:  Goodbye, have a great trip! Goodbye!  Amy herself wouldn’t be leaving until very early the next morning.

Amy lived in a rowhouse, which for all you West Coasters is exactly what it sounds like:  a house that is connected to the other houses all down the block.  Row houses are skinny, tall, and built of brick.  As Amy climbed the steps to her front door, she was already plotting how the evening would go.  She’d run up to the top floor to get some of the laundry that had been piling up all week.  Then she’d run down two levels to the basement, where the washer and dryer were.  Then she’d run back up and start packing, and maybe get a little more work done before starting the next load.  Everything went according to plan until she got to the third phase, getting stuff done.  She sat on her bed to work, rubbed her eyes, and next thing she knew, it was the middle of the night.

Oh no!  Her plan was totally messed up! Well, she still had a few hours before she had to leave for the airport.  All was not lost.  First, she needed to get those soggy clothes out of the washer, so she stumbled downstairs and pulled the chain to turn on the basement light.  She spent a few seconds staring into the washer before the facts dawned on her with a chill: the washer was empty!  Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of her clothes, which were neatly folded on top of the dryer.  Amy had definitely not dried and folded those clothes.  

Her first idea was to run out into the alley through the basement door and go for help.  Whoever had folded her clothes was probably still in the house, and she didn’t want to be wandering through it alone.  All she could think about was that thriller she had seen, where the murderer straightens the entire house before attacking.  Amy made for the basement door and had her hand on the knob before she realized that she didn’t know anyone in Baltimore, at least no one that she felt comfortable waking at two in the morning.  It also didn’t seem that much safer to be wandering the streets alone, in the rain, at such an hour.  She grabbed a rake off the wall and ran back up two flights of stairs to get to the cell phone in her room.   She made short work of pushing furniture against the door once she was safely in, and dialed 911.

“There’s a stranger in the house,” she told the operator. “How do I know?  Well, whoever it is folded my laundry while I was sleeping.”  The dubious silence on the other end of the line frustrated Amy, and she started mentally scripting a complaint letter to the government.  “Look, could you just send someone over to check it out?  I’m here alone and I KNOW I did not fold that laundry.”  Amy waited awhile, and soon enough she heard a knock on the front door downstairs.  She grabbed her rake and made sure the coast was clear before she answered the door for two police officers standing on the steps.

Baltimore is not known for having the most competent police force in the lower 48, but even so it was clear to Amy that they had dispatched the B-team. The pair was already grinning and they were two of the most donut-eatin’ cops she had ever had the pleasure of meeting.

Cop A:  Soooo, we hear you got a laundry burglar.

Cop B:  Take us to the scene of the crime! 

The cops decided not to turn on the lights, and instead swept their flashlights around the main level of the darkened house.  Amy wasn’t feeling very reassured.  She’d spent the waiting time creating elaborate theories about the stranger, his dangerousness, and his location in the house. She grabbed a kitchen knife as they inspected the kitchen and made sure she was between the two cops on the trip down to the basement.   Cop A started crooning like he was calling a kitten.

Cop A: Laaaaaauuuunnnnndry burglar!  La- La- La laundry burglar!

The two officers aimed their flashlights at the pile of folded laundry.

Cop B:  Well, well!  I wish the laundry burglar would come to my house!

Cop A:  Yeah, he could teach my wife a thing or two!

Amy was disgusted.  She walked with them to the top level and decided to wait in her barricaded room while they checked the rest of the house.  She listened to their heavy footfalls moving up and down the stairs and through the rooms, torn between curiosity and fear.  Then, suddenly, there was a scream and a thump.  More screams– Amy couldn’t stand it, she had to see what was going on.  She rushed out of her room and into her roommate’s room, where all the noise was coming from.

Cop A was screaming.  Cop B was screaming, and had dropped his flashlight.  A third person was also screaming; this person was in her roommate’s bed.  She looked closer, and it was in fact her roommate, who had been startled awake by a wide, looming figure shining a flashlight on her face.  Her scream had started a chain reaction. 

Once the lights were on and everyone was calm, it came out that Amy’s roommate had dropped off her luggage at a friend’s and returned to finish up a few chores that night.  She had folded Amy’s clothes so she could do some laundry herself.  By the time the story was straight and the sheepish cops gone, Amy had to leave for Tennessee.  She walked in the door of her childhood home exhausted and bedraggled. “You won’t believe the horrible thing that just happened to me,” she announced to her entire extended family.  She launched into the story and it gradually dawned on her that instead of gasps and sympathetic sighs, the room was filling with laughter.  Finally she started laughing, too.

image credits: 

laundry basket — www.conservewater.utah.gov

donuts–www.metroactive.com

burglar– www.neighborhoodwatch.net

Knowing stuff — facts, how to do stuff, how to find out about stuff, how to show what stuff you know– was pretty important in our house growing up. If any of us kids asked our parents a question, they were likely to ask right back, “What do you think?” or “How could you find out the answer to that?” I knew how to scour encyclopedias and set up controlled experiments long before I was allowed to go on bike rides by myself.

In a house like that you’d better believe that The Dad had to know the most of anyone. As Chief Knower my dad cut a pretty impressive figure. He could out-calculate, out-cook, out-repair, out-wilderness, out-remember, out-science-trivia, and out-design everyone we knew. One of my favorite family activities as I got older was to go head-to-head with him in knowledge and reasoning battles. In my mind they were like chivalric jousting sessions– will the apprentice surpass her teacher? He did not enjoy these debates as much as I did, especially on the occasions when I led my younger siblings in well-planned group attacks against the reigning order. I knew that to succeed, I would have to develop an artillery of hard-hitting, far-reaching skills, especially for times when my actual knowledge and experience came up, er, a bit short. The strategery:

• Act confident.
• Insofar as possible, know a lot about the subject.
• Use details and examples.
• When you don’t have many details, pad them with facts from a similar field (if you are talking about waffles, bring in info about pancakes).
• Employ real statistics when you have them.
• Employ fake statistics when you don’t (with caveats).
• Call on your greater experience.
• Call on common sense.
• Elaborate the consequences of a mistaken point of view (lots of room for fun in this one!).

I had occasional success, but winning was never as awesome an experience as I had imagined. These days we have left behind the high-stakes battles over rules and religion in favor of more mundane, though perhaps equally unsolvable, topics, such as my reading habits. Do I read more books than almost everyone? The other day Dad and I went back and forth on this issue for about five minutes. At last, the fake statistic “There might be 25 people in the country who read more” was employed. It was perfect: specific, untestable, arresting, and mitigated by the caveat “might.” Case closed!

The fake statistic, the dodgy fact, the perfect comeback: loveable and lovely one and all. And that is why, to this day in the Land of Dottie Comma, you will hear me make statements –in even ordinary, non-debate conversations– such as “I was 87% sure I would have to make a trip to the DMV.” (Dr. G: “Oh really? Not 88%? not 86%?”) And if you disagree with me about the value of fake statistics and dodgy facts, I invite you to consider the wasteland all our conversation and poetry and fiction would become without them. Envision a vast waterless moonscape, with a crater for every place an apt comparison was left out and a pile of radioactive decay for every place that vagueries such as “pretty much” and “almost all” had to be left in. There are three-legged frogs hopping around the dried-up pond where metaphor and exagerration used to grow. You see where your logic takes you?

Should I be talking about tacos? Last week my friends lost their son. I noted it on the blog, and then within a few days was onto squirmy wormies and tacos. It’s a version of a question that keeps recurring in my writing life, a choice that is never made once and for all. The first reason I ask the question is because, as fellow blogger Julie has so eloquently explained, after a death one feels the world should stop and acknowledge the enormous loss; the world should somehow show it is affected. The world will not stop, but friends and family can. We can create a space to honor and remember.
The second reason I ask is because devoting similar space to both large events and trivialities may appear to grant them equivalence. Newspapers give the most space and the best spots to the most important stories– does this quantitative representation of value in journalism carry over to essays and blog journals and fiction and poetry?

I tell my students that the chief requirement for a piece of writing to be worthy of a reader is that it be interesting. (An exaggeration). On the other end of the spectrum, I got fired from the university newspaper for refusing to write columns about anything other than religious virtues. I haven’t read those pieces in many years and so can’t testify to their literary merit one way or the other. At the time it seemed frivilous and vain to wastespace on random thoughts and irrelevant opinions, as I had done (rather successfully) the year before. My 20-year-old self would probably find this blog a crashing betrayal of her ideals.

And yet. To notice or desire one thing is not to forget or devalue another. My skin smells a little stale, my hair feels stiff due to tangles. The rock tumbler in the closet grinds like gnashing teeth in the closet. Beyond physical sensations there are the fragments of thought and influence. There is Ezekiel, who left that place with “anger and bitterness, and the strong hand of the Lord upon [him]”. There is my brother’s new song Groovybaby, LSU’s This is the Healing, Milton’s “mazy error” of nectar running through a soon-to-be-lost paradise. A few layers beneath that I find an area I might call constant prayer, where those I love remain. This is the part of me that is sort of metaphorically lifting each one up before God, into a big swoop of love, truth, and consolation. Sometimes a face or situation will push through the other layers and occupy my thoughts and prayers, canceling out all other concerns. Other times I drop down to visit and float through the love-swoop.

All these things coexist. I want tacos, and I grieve with a friend. I imagine how Project Runway will turn out tonight, and I rejoice about news of an upcoming marriage. Should I write only about what is most important? Do I need to give the big things more room?

I guess today I will let the big things themselves make room. Here, in one of the loveliest things I have read in months, is Mike’s tribute to his son.

Kyrie, rex genitor ingenite, vera essentia, eleyson.
Kyrie, luminis fons rerumque conditor, eleyson.
Kyrie, qui nos tuæ imaginis signasti specie, eleyson.
Christe, Dei forma humana particeps, eleyson.
Christe, lux oriens per quem sunt omnia, eleyson.
Christe, qui perfecta es sapientia, eleyson.
Kyrie, spiritus vivifice, vitæ vis, eleyson.
Kyrie, utriqusque vapor in quo cuncta, eleyson.
Kyrie, expurgator scelerum et largitor gratitæ; quæsumus propter nostrasoffensas noli nos relinquere, O consolator dolentis animæ, eleyson.

Lord, King and Father unbegotten, True Essence of the Godhead, have mercy on us.
Lord, Fount of light and Creator of all things, have mercy on us.
Lord, Thou who hast signed us with the seal of Thine image, have mercy on us.
Christ, True God and True Man, have mercy on us.
Christ, Rising Sun, through whom are all things, have mercy on us.
Christ, Perfection of Wisdom, have mercy on us.
Lord, vivifying Spirit and power of life, have mercy on us.
Lord, Breath of the Father and the Son, in Whom are all things, have mercy on us.
Lord, Purger of sin and Almoner of grace, we beseech Thee abandon us not because of our Sins,

O Consoler of the sorrowing soul, have mercy on us.

(A middle-ages kyrie and its translation, from the Catholic Encyclopedia.)

First comes love, then comes marriage!  Congrats and celebration (including sliding across the wood floor in socks, little skips, and big grins) go out to Super Sumner House Sarah and her beau Jonathan, now engaged!  Couldn’t happen to a better pair.  Sarah and I became friends the week before our freshman year of college, in a special orientation for people who like volunteering called NOSOCO.  She is as silly and practical and creative and kind as ever, and very wise.  I met Jonathan only a few months ago, and he is silly and passionate, creative and kind.  And the big hair is a plus, too!  A match made in heaven, indeed.
Here’s a picture of them from our trip to New York in June.

Last week I got an email message from Kelsey in Sudan, who is now titling her blog posts scary things like “I’m O.K.” She is working with an NGO that provides humanitarian aid to refugees in the Darfur region.

The situation is deteriorating quickly in the whole region, a complicated interplay which she handily explains with baseball metaphors.

In the email, she included the open letter written by a U.N. official, Jan Enlgand, who said that “in Darfur all our nightmares have become realities.”
Here is his advice (though you can read the whole letter at the link above):

“A collapse can still be averted, if you the member states will take action now. What should be done? Let me propose the following: All parties to the conflict must be reminded that there can be no military solution in Darfur, and the Government must be convinced that its planned military campaign is a prescription for disaster. AMIS must be funded, strengthened and revitalized to allow it to continue until there is a more effective UN force on the ground. And as we operate in ever more difficult and dangerous environments, humanitarian operations, which represent a lifeline for millions of people in Darfur, must be urgently funded.”

A few days ago, Kelsey sat quietly in her house as protesters marched past, shouting “Down, Down, USA.” They then vandalized the office of her NGO (which incidentally is not American) as part of the protests against UN Peacekeepers. It’s not the first time she and her NGO have been directly threatened.

I remember last year this time my sister and I got into a debate. She wanted me to write letters to my representatives about Sudan, and I didn’t want to. For one thing I didn’t know what to ask for, and for another I felt that the moment was past. Were I to write a letter today, I still don’t know what I would say, except to encourage the US to support Jan England’s recommendations in the UN. What would help? How do you break long-standing hatreds that are constantly fed by violence, oppression, and rumors? What if there were a Christian Peacekeeper for every five Sudanese people? Just there, praying and talking? Would there even be enough food for them? What if the UN forcibly stopped fighting between the warring groups for, say, a year? What if all the displaced people were returned to their towns and villages?
Here’s how I will pray, and I hope you will join me:

• The end to drought and famine
• That generational, tribal hatred and jealousy will be permanently broken
• That forgiveness and reconciliation will begin, with Sudanese Christians taking the lead
• That all leaders, Sudanese and otherwise, will put aside their particular allegiances and work with wisdom toward establishing the good of all people in the region
• That people will desire peace
• That intervening countries will act with wisdom
• That human life will be treasured and the innocent protected
• That ordinary farming and trade will resume, and that farmers and traders can conduct business without fear
• That Kelsey and her coworkers will be filled with faith and hope to keep them going in a bleak time. That they will see with the eyes of Jesus and act with his power and love.

And if you know other ways of taking action, I hope that you will.

I was sleeping in the car yesterday with my mouth gaping and my head lolling from side to side (my usual mode) when Dr. G. woke me. First he patted my knee. When that didn’t work, he put his fingers under my chin and gently closed my mouth. I jolted upright, feeling vague shame at falling asleep again and at my incorrigibly floppy jaw. But then the car curved around a bend, and the red and white mesas surrounding Sedona loomed over the brush- and cacti- covered terrain. I’ve admired these formations in magazines and calendars, but when they unexpectedly fill the skyline it is another experience altogether. It’s a feeling of subjugation, of being cowed and out-maneuvered by beauty. Where the desert around Phoenix is hardy, windswept, requiring the closest of attentions, the mesas are drastic and extravagant.There is nothing to do but look as long as you can, then stare at your lap awhile, then look some more.
We were on a trip to celebrate our 9th wedding anniversary with a day hike in the canyons followed by dinner in a restaurant with a view. We’re finally starting to feel like something other than newlyweds– our shared memories cover too much territory. If I were to name this phase, I’d call it the “Got-Your- Back Phase,” like in the movies when Mr. and Mrs. Smith fend off the troops inside Costco, standing back to back, swapping knives and bullets. It’s strange to remember that, barring untimely death and unforseen circumstances, we’re only 1/6th of the way through our marriage! We’ve still got most of the way to go.

I’ve never met anyone like Dr. G. There is something about him that is essential and unchanging; when we stopped briefly on our hike to wade in the creek, he crouched unmoving over a slow pool,the late afternoon sunlight slanting across his blond hair, waiting for the tiny fish to swim into his hands. He would have done exactly the same thing as a five-year-old. He stopped to pick apples from an abandoned orchard and to watch the sunlight reflecting off the ripples of water onto the canyon walls. When something in the mix of scents triggered a faint childhood memory of mine (”I think the trunk of that tree might smell good”), he was the first to bury his nose in the bark and announce its similarity to butterscotch. He is obviously not the only person to experience the outdoors with all his senses, but the way he goes about it hints at his younger selves and gives me clues to his future ones. His uncomplicated continuity is remarkable, and one of the reasons I would go with him anywhere. It’s very nice to know that apples and creeks and ferns and pine trees and red canyons exist not two hours from where we live, and I can go there with him often.

Dr. G’s grandmother Ruth liked to say she had lived three lives, and she’d be hard pressed to pick which one was best.

Her first life began on a farm in Northern California, where as a teenager she’d get up before dark to get breakfast for the ranch hands. She cooked on a wood stove and stirred huge, bubbling vats of oatmeal, plopping it into bowls for the men who stumbled down sleepily from the loft. One of her neighbors installed the first flush toilet she had ever seen, though back then it was separate from the house and was called a water closet. All the neighbors lined up to try it out; Ruth once told me about the excitement she felt, hearing the water run down through those pipes the first time.

Ruth finished high school by the time she was sixteen, and there wasn’t much happening in Fall River Mills that interested her. She wanted to meet new people and see some sights, so she did the obvious thing– got a job playing piano in traveling revival meetings. She liked to play loud and with feeling, and though she didn’t have much money, she kept herself busy for many years. She fetched up in Salem, Oregon, where a passionate preacher took a liking to her. Her family advised her to go for it– she was 26 years old after all, no spring chicken! And what else was likely to come along? She’d only known the man a few weeks, but she sized him up and thought he’d do just fine.

It was the Depression. They had a simple wedding and only one worldly possession– an old car– to get them started in their new life, but they went on to raise five lively children together in Oregon, he working in churches or on the railroad, she at home with the kids. Her oldest son, Stan, used to terrify her by blithely jumping off of high places, such as the spiral staircase in the church sanctuary, when he was a very small boy. Years later Stan’s son (the future Dr. G) terrified his own mother in the exact same way.

Ruth’s husband died in 1984, after 45 years of marriage, and thus she began her third life as an independent single woman and the family matriarch. She visited Paris; she kept her subscription to the National Geographic. She drove a Ford Thunderbird and hugged her great-grandchildren at family gatherings. Once, in her nineties, she fell in the bathroom and broke a rib. She spent the whole morning creeping the length of her house to reach the phone and call for help. Afterwards she said it hadn’t been so bad, and she liked living alone, and she continued to do so for a few years afterward. That’s when her “forgetter would get to working” on her, as she described it, though her lively intelligence still came to her aid. “So you’re Stan’s boy?” she’d ask. “And you, (pointing at me)– you were in Africa?” Then she’d use the bits and pieces of information to reconstruct our relationship. “You must be married, you must have been in Africa together, you’re my grandson and his wife.”

Ruth died on Friday at age 95, surrounded by her children. Her descendants include five children, eleven grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. Her legacy is one of kindess, spiritual faithfulness, and adventure. May her family continue to carry it on. She will be missed.

Last week we were in Santa Barbara, which turns out to be good for a number of things, not the least of which is seeing one’s little sister marry. Santa Barbara reminds me of a cupped hand, the way the knuckles of mountains curve around the bay. The summer fog adds a diffuse softness, burning off into views of stark blue and green by late afternoon. My brother Gavin donated some of his photos for this post. We didn’t take any because the camera was locked in the trunk of someone’s car the whole time. Here’s the wedding site, a hillside overlooking the water:

And the reception site, also overlooking the water:

You would never guess, looking at the Princess and Prince Charming, how little sleep they’d been getting in the days leading up to The Big Day. They and their entourage tied hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tiny bows on things and ran no end of errands. The buzz at the reception was all about how perfectly everything turned out, from the gift bags left in the rooms of every out of town guest (except for the two that accidently reached some party girls, who drank all the wine therein before returning them); to the table decorated with round vases filled with candy in the wedding colors (pale pink and chocolate brown), which you could scoop into ziploc bags adorned with the wedding logo; to the basket of toiletries and emergency supplies in the bathroom. There were peonies and paper lanterns and a giant sandbox for the kids. You found your table by pulling your name off of a ribbon tied around an old oak tree. I tell you! And here are the Mrs. and Mr. themselves:

And the Mrs. dancing (hm, I guess I don’t know how to rotate a photo):

In addition to wedding-ing, Santa Barbara is also good for eating stuff, especially Mexican food, and outdoorsy stuff like hiking with my brother and parents. Okay, hiking was really hot, but a nice contrast to the hairsprayed-and-manicured previous days. I enjoy both extremes. We hiked along a river on the way out, so we would stop and jump in when we passed a good swimming hole. Nice!

Flying out of LAX on the way home, we had a number of surprises: 1. witnessing cops with their guns drawn by the side of the road, 2. Don King entering the airport with a chestfull of medals (??), and everyone ignoring him, 3. The security people ordering everyone to hold still, all up and down the walkway, as far as you could see. They had the cutest girl out speaking to the travelers (”Excuse me, could you just hold off on walking? Thanks.”) while the rest mumbled and pushed a lot of buttons on their phones and walkie-talkies. After a few minutes they gave the all-clear and we were permitted to move again.

So that’s what I’ve been up to!

I’ve been wondering all day if I should blog about this, but since it’s already national news I guess it’s ok. In the midst of an extremely busy day my thoughts keep drifting back to my good friend Aaron (pictures of him, the tall dark-haired guy with goatee, are included in my Alaska blog post), who is undergoing surgery today after a 450-ft tumble down an icy face of Mt. Hood. He and his two climbing partners, as well as the two additional teams of climbers below them that they crashed through, all survived. The two other teams managed to keep their places on the icy slope, and one of Aaron’s friends was able to safely walk the rest of the way down the mountain. Rescuers were nearby and saw the fall, and they waited with Aaron and and Jeremy for seven hours on the mountainside until a helicopter could airlift them out. The two men have some serious broken bones and all three are battered and bruised and scraped, but it turns out that everyone is expected to fully recover. On the one hand I feel relief and gratefulness that it wasn’t more serious– that they fell away from the the deep crevasse nearby, that the other teams had all just fully secured themselves to the ice and that Aaron’s team was able to warn them that they were falling, that there were rescuers right there waiting to provide first aid, that the injuries are all of the sort that heal eventually– and on the other hand I feel some grief and fear. Aaron is an experienced and responsible climber, and his fall reminds me that if it can happen to him, it can happen to anyone. Frightening and painful things can occur among us at almost any time. Granted, this is an obvious truth, verging on the cliche, that I am reminded of again and again; granted, mountain climbing isn’t exactly a risk-free activity; granted, one can’t constantly think of these things and continue to live a sane life. Yet the reminders keep me sad, and humble. I also feel sad that, though their rescue was quickly put in motion and everyone worked as fast as they could, they had to lay injured in the snow for so many hours. I still wish God’s protection included our bodies and our fortunes as well as our souls.Thank God Aaron and his friends had helpers and comforters, and those who continue to watch over them. If you are a prayer, please pray for their speedy recoveries. If you are also a reader, here is the link to the newspaper story in the Oregonian.