Mission: 52 books in 52 weeks

I’m starting with Harry Potter. Fifty-two books in 52 weeks—a year—that’s my mission. A Google search reveals many people have this same mission, so I’m not alone. At first, when I came up with the idea, I thought it was really great and really unique. Then I went online where I saw that thousands of people already are blogging their way through one book per week. I still think it’s cool, and, well, the more the merrier. I’m not alone in my quest. Through this year, I aim to discover new authors I like and, through them, learn more about this thing called life.

Here are my rules:

1.)    The book must be finished every week by Saturday.

2.)    A post will follow the book’s conclusion, on the weekend.

3.)    I will post my book lists, including why I chose each to read.

4.)    I am not allowed, even under extraordinary circumstances, to break the rules.

It won’t be easy. That I know. I work a lot—sometimes as many as 60 hours per week—and in-between that time I’ll be squeezing in the reading. But I draw inspiration from such figures as Julie Powell from the wonderful movie (and book) who cooked her way through Julia Child’s cook book and from the myriad of other courageous, creative people who similarly embarked on new adventures. Mine will be through books. And I’m looking forward to the challenge.

“Real stories from Real Life” How does this fit in with the Blog theme? Though I am allowing myself to read fiction—see first book I chose—I do plan to post about the books. The posts will include my thoughts/feelings/reactions to the books. These will include stories from my own life.

First book: Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone

Date to be finished: Saturday, Jan. 7.

Pages yet to be read: roughly 200. (yikes!)

Time left to read them: Two days.

Why Harry Potter, you ask? My little brother Jeffrey’s been asking me to read the series for some time now, because he wants my opinion on them. He loves them, like millions of other readers. They’re somewhat controversial in Christian circles, what with the witchcraft throughout them and everything, so he is curious what I think of them. I told him I’ll let him know when I finish, which will be on Saturday.

Memories from an obituary writer

“You and the rest of the people there can BURN IN HEEELL!” I heard the loud clatter of a phone slammed down, and then the line went still. I felt my heart thumping hugely within my chest and my bottom lip quivering. My ears rung and my palms felt sweaty. I was only three weeks on the job as the paper’s new obituary writer. I only half knew what I was doing—I was still learning, after all—but was working very hard at it. I felt mostly like I swam in paper work, with all the faxes, emails and paper that came through the mail. The deaths piled up on my desk, and I tried to keep swimming and keep my head above them all.

The old, nasty woman didn’t like the headline on her husband’s obituary. It read “Herbert B. Jones, philanthropist, insurance salesman.”

I hear the women’s words in my head: “He ooowned his own insurance company. He didn’t just sell insurance. Don’t you people there know the difference?!” She was livid, enraged, had blown a bona fide gasket, and she downright frightened me. I was so frightened that I couldn’t rightly remember whether it was me who wrote the headline or someone else. After the call mercifully ended, I turned bewildered to the copy editor, who helped sort out the tangled situation. It was discovered that one of the editors rewrote the headline to fit the space on the page. It was not, in fact, my fault, but that doesn’t mean I still didn’t feel like it was.

I’ll never forget that woman. She was the first nasty phone call I got as a reporter. Many would follow but never were any as awful as hers. I felt utterly unworthy to live after that call. She made absolute sure of that. It was, as my colleagues would say, “baptism by fire.” I’m glad, now looking back on it, that I got the worst of it over at first. Afterward, I felt I could handle nearly anything, because if I could get through the angry widow ordeal tear-free, then I could get through whatever I was facing okay, too. And I did.

I wrote the obituaries for a year and six months. They bothered me at first. Each death that crossed my desk saddened me. I felt it personally somehow. The copy editor told me that would soon end, and it did. It wasn’t that I was any less respectful but rather that I also came to accept it as a regular part of life. Just as many people give birth as people die. Everyone knows this, but few really feel it in the way obituary writers do, when deaths sail across their desks every day, mounting into a pile. I got to know a lot of people through doing them. Or at least I imagined I did. Most just came in little paragraph fragments, death notices. So and so lived to 90 years, had 23 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren and retired in the Cayman Islands. She enjoyed water skiing, snorkeling and spending time with her family. Etc.

Some were longer, stretching to the paper’s general limit of 10 newspaper inches. These I put more time into, arranging the information in an orderly, flowing kind of way. These people I got to know better. The weirdest were the people my own age: in the twenties. A few were suicides—which were always conspicuous because the cause of death was never listed—and I wished they would have just waited it out, because so much of life lay stretched before them; anything could, and would have, happened. A few were killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. I looked long and sad at their handsome faces in uniform on my desk, and I sent up a prayer for their families and imagined thanking them for their service.

Obituaries are sensitive things to write, and you better be sure you get them right. I triple checked my work, looking from the computer screen to the paper of information and back again, repeatedly. But not matter how much you check, unless you’re a machine, you’re bound to eventually get something wrong. But for the most part, I got the facts straight. People imagine obituaries as a legacy, the last thing the deceased’s family and friends read about him or her. I always thought this was silly: How could someone’s life fit neatly into a few inches? It doesn’t. It never will. Nevertheless, that’s how people often feel, silly as it is.

Although the obituary information often came through fax, email and mail, people also came directly to the newspaper office to hand the information to me in person. When these people did come in, I shook their hands and looked into their eyes in the warmest way I could. Sometimes we sat down at the front table in the office, where they explained what they wished for the write-up: “Could you list her aunt?” one elderly woman asked. “I know you don’t typically, but it’d mean so much to her.”

I saw the tear trickle down her wrinkled cheek, and I told her that I absolutely could list her aunt, and even her uncle, too, if she wished. I tried to be for people a spot of comfort in an otherwise difficult death ritual: Arrange with the funeral home, organize the obituary, order the flowers. There was so much to do, so much people just didn’t feel like doing but had to do. I tried to do some good even in what often felt like mundane work.

Sometimes obituary writing could be exasperating. Death can bring out the best and worst in people, as evidenced in the woman who told me to go to hell. I like to think she really didn’t want me to burn forever in fiery torment. I like to think she was mourning deeply and took her grief out on whoever crossed her, which happened that day to be myself. She lashed out. But who knows? Maybe she is just a crotchety old lady, the kind who yells at sales clerks just because there’s a line at check-out. I’ll never know, and I’m okay with that. After all, it makes a good story.

Lemon cookies and more

(First off, I want to thank everyone who read and commented on my last post. I couldn’t believe how many people stopped by. So thank you! Thanks especially to Hilary (http://thesmittenimage.blogspot.com/) for putting me in her “Post of the week” and to Grayquill (www.grayquillmusings.com) for recommending me. I am excited to share another story I wrote today about someone very special to me. I could have written much more, but this is just one little bit. I hope you enjoy it, and have a very happy New Year!)

I roll the lemon cookie dough into balls and place them on the waxed cookie sheet. I really don’t want to make cookies, but it’s someone’s birthday at work the next day, and I volunteered a few days earlier to make them. Now, at 7 p.m. after a long day, the earlier baking enthusiasm has long worn off and it just feels like more work. I also made them the day before, for a cookie exchange, so this is the second cookie-making-episode within a 48 period. The faster the better, I think, and then I can do what I really want: read the book on Alaska I picked up at the library the day before.  I make them as quick as possible, mixing together the boxed flour, eggs and oil, and setting the oven for 375 degrees. As the oven heats, I finish rolling the dough.

Janet walks into the room, and asks about what I’m doing. I explain. Janet wears a rumpled sweat shirt too large for her and khaki pants that no longer zip, so she frequently pulls down the shirt over the broken zipper. She wears her brown hair short and doesn’t style it. She does, however, often comb her fingers through it, which leaves it looking wild afterward. Janet, nearing 60, has almost no money. Whatever money she does have comes from the government. Recently it informed her she’d get $100 less dollars per month—a huge sum to her—meaning she’ll eat less and must live on less than she already does, which isn’t a lot. The government cut back on some of her support programs. Once she lived on the street, homeless. She found food where she could, at stores, like Value Home Centers, that gives away free popcorn. That was before she met Jesus Christ in her early twenties. He changed her. He brought order and clarity to her mind. As she grew in her relationship with Him, she began working, got and apartment and started going to church every week.

“You know,” Janet says, “Some people really struggle with jealousy.”

A long time ago I came to expect Janet’s abrupt shifts in conversation, her laughing at silly things and her special view on nearly everything. I appreciated her there with me, keeping me company as I swipe a spatula underneath the done lemon cookies and transfer them onto cooking racks. The cookies would have taken much longer without her. I wait for her to continue.

“But I never did. Because, the way I see it, it doesn’t do any good. Sometimes I think, I would like to have a house like most people and nice things, but that isn’t for me to decide.”

When Janet was not yet even born, her mother drank alcohol heavily. It affected the baby inside her. When Janet finally came into the world, she wasn’t quite right. Her eyes slanted upwards. Her bones were especially slender, noticeable at the wrists and in the feet. She was slower than other kids, too. High functioning, but still slow. She would have been born perfect but for the alcohol that warped and changed the baby. But what is perfection, anyway? I believe once we set  standards for perfection, we begin excluding other people, begin excluding life. One time I did a story on a baby with spina bifida—Emily—and doctors advised her parents to kill Emily before she was even born. Why? Because her spine didn’t go down all the way. She wasn’t the ideal baby. But they chose not to. And I believe that in their arms, love has made her more whole than most people will ever be. They are happy because they’re together.

I think about all this as I listen to Janet talk. She’s often glad to just to have someone listen.

“I don’t know why some people have a lot of nice things, and I don’t,” she says, “but, like I said, that’s not for me to know. God chooses that. If He blesses me with something, then okay, but if not, then I’m okay, too. And, really, I have everything I need.”

She continues, “Would I like to have my own car and drive places? Sure. But I know I cannot.”

The most Janet can do is ride a bicycle. To get anywhere she bundles herself in many layers and walks, even in the winter.  Everything for her is harder than it is for other people. I feel a lump growing in my throat, and I set my spatula down on the counter. How often have I been jealous of other people? Wished for nicer things, for something different than the things I’ve been given in life. Here is someone who, in the world’s eyes, has absolutely nothing—not money, not a job, nor a car or even a family—nothing of status. But she has a better grasp than almost anyone I know on being content—and thankful even—for the few things she has been given. She knows what she has is a gift. I glimpsed, there in that kitchen that evening, as I grumbled about making cookies for someone’s birthday, something incredible. And I thanked her.

Making Christmas brighter

The past year was an awful one for someone I’ll call Sarah.

During it, her dad and sister both died, and so did her dog. On her way back from her sister’s funeral, she twisted her ankle badly in a gas station parking lot. She came back to work from her sister’s funeral hobbling on crutches with one of her feet in a huge, clunky cast. Also, her husband left her for another woman, so they live apart. That woman recently forged her identity on a check, cashed it and subsequently stole a large amount of money from her. Sarah has a small son with whom she shares child care duties with her husband, but now, knowing what she does about the woman he’s seeing—that she stole money from her—how can she trust leaving her son with him? What else is the woman capable of? Her car died, too. Recently she got very sick and had to go to the hospital emergency room where she was treated with antibiotics. No one from her family could drive her, so one of her co-workers did. A few days later she confided to one of her (and my) co-workers that to top of her terrible year, she didn’t think she’d get any Christmas presents.

One of our co-workers sent around an email through the office something to the effect of, “Let’s make this Christmas special for Sarah, brightening her otherwise dark year by bringing her some holiday cheer. Bring something in small for her, and we’ll put it around the office tree.” So we did. Friday morning, the day before Christmas Eve, Sarah discovered the gifts. We didn’t put name tags on them, because it wasn’t about us, and we didn’t want to embarrass her. This was about bringing cheer to her when she needed it most. I wasn’t there to see the look on her face when she saw all the gifts under the small office Christmas tree—I imagine it was one of surprise, maybe shock—but I did make it in time to see her open the gifts. Later I was told that she began crying, overwhelmed by the generosity. She opened them quietly, a bracelet, a whole outfit, a bag full of holiday candy, a candle, a bottle of wine, a gift certificate to the grocery store. She didn’t say much, just kept opening. I suppose sometimes words just aren’t enough. At the end, she looked around at everyone standing near her. And, person by person, she went around the whole room, giving each of us a heartfelt hug. Those were the words that were left unsaid, and they spoke loud.

I am glad someone in the office came up with the idea of giving gifts to Sarah. I’m glad everyone else took the idea and made it happen during a time when we’re all busy with our own Christmas festivities and perhaps found the extra few dollars hard to spare. Yet at the same time, that time spent picking out her gift and the dollars spent buying it weren’t costly to me at all. They could have been, but they weren’t. Caring for someone else, making their Christmas just a bit brighter, that’s what the season is truly about, and at the end of the day Friday, I felt challenged to remember that more often than I do.