Our Crazy Trip To Ohio

"Didn't you think you weren't supposed to go?" said Emily Sommers, last night at the Gospel Echoes fundraiser banquet. "I think I'd have thought, 'I'm just not supposed to go to Ohio.'"

Actually, I never thought I shouldn't go.  I only thought, "Wow, this is a LOT of obstacles in my way."

They messaged me a long time ago.  Would I consider coming to speak at Gospel Haven's women's retreat in March of 2016?

I consent to one out-of-state event a year and didn't have any others scheduled for 2016.  So I said Yes.

The name of the retreat is the same every year: Joy in the Journey.  The theme for this year was "Peace."  I was asked to speak about mothering, particularly adult children, and also dealing with depression.

About three weeks before the retreat, my laptop computer, the one I do most of my writing on, utterly and completely crashed and died.  You know how it is--sometimes a computer is sort of aging and faltering, but if you call a techy son for advice, turn it off and back on, and beg your husband to fix it, it functions again.

This time, it was dead and gone.

However, over on the counter in the office was a little black book-sized device that was supposed to keep the household's computers backed up.  Matt had set it up for us a few years ago, but then he went back to Washington, D.C,. and I wasn't sure that it was still doing its job in his absence.

I clicked around on the big desktop computer, found the file for my laptop, and there it was--all my work, up to date.

Whew.

I spent a few days at a funny little house at the coast, writing like mad on my tiny little Netbook.  Paul was with me the first two days.  When he left, he mentioned that he's going to run a cleaner/efficiency-increaser program on the home desktop computer.

Ok, I said.

I came home two days later with the worst sore throat ever, razor blades shredding my tonsils, it felt like.  Within two days I had a full-blown case of strep throat.

It was awful.  And the retreat was only a week away.  I emailed Fannie Wengerd from the retreat committee, and she asked the rest of the ladies to pray.

I recovered enough to work some more, but the password to the backup had disappeared when Paul ran the cleaner-upper program.

No no no.

We ran through our normal list of passwords and suddenly one worked.

Mercy, the relief.  I was afraid the password would be some computer-generated nonsense that we would never figure out.

A month before the retreat, I had contacted the publisher of my first three books and ordered 60 copies of each title to be sent to Fannie's house.

Five days before the retreat, they still hadn't arrived.

Worried, I contacted the publisher again.  They had forgotten to send them.

Paul, being less busy with school and warehouse than he used to be, decided to go with me on this trip.  Happily, he has a Companion Pass deal with Southwest Airlines, where we can buy a ticket for him and mine is free.

He parked the car at the long-term parking at the airport while I went through security.  Then, while I waited on the bench where you put your shoes back on, he sent me a text.  His license was missing from his wallet.

I am not proud of my reaction, which was a mix of panic and flabbergasted horror.  How could he do this to me??  Who does this, going to the airport and not double-checking their license??  This isn't like him--is he getting dementia???  Was he headed for that happy, oblivious state where people are healthy and strong but have to be watched every minute or they'll wander downtown in their pajamas?

I have a good imagination.

I didn't recognize the real issue or the real enemy--it took me a few days to realize that.

Paul got through security on his Costco card.  [The next day, the DMV faxed a paper that said he owns a license, and then our daughter overnighted his passport for the flight home.]

We had "C" boarding passes for the flight to Las Vegas, which meant we were among the last ones on the plane.  Toward the back, I saw an empty aisle seat and grabbed it.

Oh dear, this guy beside me was very large.

The plane took off, and the guy gradually expanded until his shoulder overlapped mine and his arm took over the armrest between us.

He fell asleep and expanded still further.  His huge arm edged further and further into my territory as I scrinched into the remaining 2/3 of the seat.  I put my tray down and it settled on top of his arm.

The Sleeping Giant, I called him.  He snoozed blissfully with his nose in the air, his sunglasses on, his earbuds in his ears, growing with each breath, like a balloon.

Perhaps I could do some work to redeem the time and the trip.  I placed my notebook on the tray which was still resting on his arm, and dug for a pen.

Another wave of panic.  I had forgotten to put in that handful of pens I had collected on the desk.  I had one pen.  ONE!  How would I make it?  I have to have at least three pens or I feel terrified and panicky.  Would they have pens in Ohio??

Calm down, Mrs. Smucker.  At least you have this one.

I took the cap off the pen and it began to drip big ominous drops of black ink on my notebook.  No no nooooo!  It had exploded, as these pens will, from the pressure changes of flying.

"Spiritual warfare" is a Christian concept that probably sounds crazy to non-believers.  But once you've experienced it, you know it's real.

There's good and evil.  God is good and he's on our side.  We have an enemy called Satan who is evil and who is against us in every way.  When you're doing God's work, you can expect opposition.

You fight by praying and pressing on and praising instead of panicking, which you might guess I am not so good at, in the moment.

I've learned that if I'm going to speak somewhere, opposition presents itself in the guise of frustrations, endless interruptions, fear, and misbehaving computers.  If I'm going to speak or write about marriage, the opposition doubles.

It's weird but real.

I sat with Paul on the flight from Las Vegas to Canton-Akron, near the front of the plane, wondering if all was finally going to be well.

About halfway through the flight, a silvery gray cat came walking up the aisle, creating a stir among the passengers around us and causing the flight attendant to take one pop-eyed look and shriek, "WHOSE CAT IS THIS??!!"

An embarrassed woman hurried up the aisle and snatched up the cat, muttering something about letting him out of his carrier.

I thought, "Did that just happen or did it not??"

I had my Netbook open on my lap.  Quickly I typed in the comments everyone was making.

Here's an exact copy of my notes:

WHOSE CAT IS THIS??

whose dog and pony show are we running here?

I thoguht I was hallucinting

just when you thought this flight was going to be boring

he just came calmly walking up the aisle

15 yrs ago dog got out

bit flite attendant on achilles

I considered writing out a description of this little event and having the guy beside me sign it, just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating, and so people would believe me when I posted it on Facebook.

And then I laughed and laughed.  The tide had turned, I was sure of it, from frustrating to simply bizarre.

We got to Canton-Akron, got our luggage, and walked out of the terminal.  It was after midnight.  Paul had made a reservation at one of the two nearby hotels that have shuttle service.  He called them.

"Your reservation was for two nights ago," they said.  "Tonight we're filled up."

The tide hadn't turned after all.  Oh Paul.

Paul called the Hilton.  They had a room.  They sent a shuttle.

The original hotel gave us a refund.

The next day, I tracked down the book order via the tracking number the publisher sent me.

It said they're sending 180 books, in one box, weighing 24 pounds.

SIGH.

That's kind of impossible, you know, if each book weighs half a pound.

Paul called them up and used Dad Voice* on them.

Eventually we got to Berlin, Ohio, a village that's 80% Amish and Mennonite, and got booked at the Berlin Grande Hotel, and the tide turned and things went well and I was a genuine tourist, gawking at the cute Amish people and gushing about the bonnets and buggies and billowing skirts.

One morning I went down for breakfast and passed the open door to a utility room, and there was a gray-haired Amish maintenance man, eating a banana and reading a newspaper.  That made me very happy.

The books arrived in time.  Well, most of them did.  They sent 60 each of two titles and only 12 of the third, but I was beyond worrying about such things.

I ran into our old friend Alice Miller at the retreat.  She had followed our travel saga on Facebook.  "That was weird," she said.  "Marland said, 'That doesn't sound like Paul Smucker! He's such a planner.'"

That was when I realized that, as I had so many times in my life, I had completely mis-identified the enemy.  I had focused on Paul and his strange mistakes rather than realizing --DUH-- it was all part of a package of opposition that I'd been facing for weeks.

I could quit worrying about Paul getting dementia.  We could face this together.

After an eventful weekend, we flew home.  At the airport, I went to baggage claim to get our stuff while Paul took the shuttle to long-term parking to get our car.

When he picked me up on the rainy curb, he said.  "Well, I can drive legally again."

Huh?

When he got into the car in the parking lot, he had looked down, and there was his driver's license, down between the seat and the center console.

Who knows what other-worldly forces pushed and pulled behind this trip of ours, but it all turned out well and we are so happy to be home.

When our daughter Emily realized the name of the retreat was "Joy in the Journey," she laughed and laughed and laughed.


*Emily's perfectly descriptive term.

How We Spend Our Sundays

Day of rest isn’t always so restful

By Dorcas Smucker

For The Register-Guard

March 13, 2016

As a Mennonite minister’s wife, I sometimes get tired of Sundays. But when I missed a recent Sunday, I found that I indeed missed it. At least I got popcorn at the end.

We Mennonites are not only different from the rest of the world in our conservative appearance, but we also keep Sunday as a distinctive and special day.

Designated in the Bible as a day of rest, it’s the day when our combines are quiet, bakeries are closed, and corn waits for Monday to be picked and frozen. We don’t mow the yard on Sunday or fix the car or go shopping. Families draw their own lines about entertainment and recreation. Organized sports are discouraged.

Individually, we argue with our conscience about things like sewing. Mom always said it was work, therefore inappropriate for Sunday. But for me it’s recreation, so surely it’s OK. A silly discussion to have with oneself, maybe, but tradition is tenacious. We take this seriously. Sunday is also for worship. We go to church, usually twice, and sing hymns, listen to preaching, study the Bible and pray. And we “fellowship,” a religious word for “talking a lot and hanging around for a long time after the service to catch up with everyone else.”

Sunday illustrates the reality that living out the Christian faith is rarely a clearly defined, once-and-done matter. Instead, we live in that challenging, ever-shifting place of finding our balance between two opposing truths. On this side, we have God instituting a day of rest, a holy and deliberate institution, with promised blessings if you treat it reverently and darker consequences if you don’t. On the other side, Jesus in the New Testament observed the day but clarified, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”

There’s also tension between the value of tradition and the need for change, and between individual and corporate faith. Faith affects all of life — that’s been the Mennonite belief for 500 years. Just how it looks and acts in this or that detail — that discussion also has been around for 500 years.

So, for this slice of our lives, this is how we do Sundays: We are up early. Paul, my pastor husband, is in the recliner, studying for a sermon with his computer on his lap while I’m in the kitchen cutting up carrots and assembling a pot roast in a huge pan while wearing an old shirt of Paul’s over my Sunday dress.

Our son Ben comes downstairs, makes coffee and discusses departure times with his dad, since Paul meets with the other pastor and the advisory board half an hour before the service begins, and Ben often leads the singing. On days I make chicken and rice, Paul peels off his dark suit jacket just before it’s time to leave, stands at the sink, and yanks the skins off the chicken legs without splattering his white dress shirt — a remarkable feat, I always think.

The girls show up in a flurry of clicking heels, fluttering skirts, mugs of tea, and “Does this look OK with this?”

The guys leave, Bibles and laptops and hymnbooks in hand.

I tell the girls to hurry. Someone always is delayed, announced in a wail from upstairs. I make sure the oven is turned on.

Purse, Bible, phone, missionary newsletters to put in the mailboxes, birthday cards for a few, get-well cards for others, a Pyrex dish to return, and we are out the door as well.

The sanctuary at Brownsville Mennonite Church is, as the name indicates, a place of safety and peace, and I settle into it, body and spirit. God is within me, always, I know, and here he is among us as well, within, between, beyond. We are safe here and loved, and we worship.

Ben leads the congregation in singing two or three hymns, a capella, four parts, no piano, words and music coming from the past to lift us toward Heaven. “Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love …”

Dismissed for Sunday school, a hundred people head to their classes, up to the balcony or down the hall, with excited little nursery-class kids darting around them.

In the ladies’ class we “share,” another religious word for talk. We share our concerns and questions, pray for each other, and share from our lives in a discussion on how the Bible applies to the reality of a struggling teenager or a dying friend or a financial crisis.

Back in the sanctuary, a sermon follows from Paul or Pastor Kevin. Both take seriously their job of explaining the Bible in a way we can all understand. Recently, though, they’ve introduced the fancy new tool of PowerPoint,¬ an innovation that makes some of the older folks nervous. Paul, a lifelong teacher, is all for using technology to make things clearer. Some people, especially the children, understand better if they see a picture, he says. Imparting truth is more important than tradition.

We mingle and fellowship after the service. “James, how is your foot since surgery?” “Aunt Susie, how is Uncle Milford doing?” “Are you coming to Ladies’ Retreat?” “Yes, I can host the youth group in two weeks.” I scout the milling group and then go to Paul, who is standing near the doors shaking hands with everyone, and we have a quick consultation about who to invite for lunch.

Often, another meeting is squeezed in after the service — maybe the missions committee or the people planning Bible Memory Camp or the social committee.

On the way home, we divide up duties. Our family tradition is that you help before Sunday lunch or after, but not both.

Emily spreads a pretty tablecloth, picks a bouquet and sets out the china. We assemble, give thanks and eat. The pot roast flakes apart in a puff of steam and tastes like all good Sunday pot roasts ought to taste. And, of course, we talk and laugh.

The guests leave. Paul cleans up the kitchen with anyone else who didn’t help beforehand, and then for the first time I get to truly rest, collapsing for a long nap.

It’s nearly time to leave for the evening service when I get up, and as I come back to life with a cup of tea, I wonder about being the pastor’s wife and the balance between freedom in Christ and the sacrifice of worship and wanting to stay home and do nothing.

I usually end up going, because it makes Paul happy, and he skinned the chicken to make me happy, and because this is one way I apply the verse in Isaiah that says, “If you call the Sabbath a delight, and the Lord’s holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please ... then you will find your joy in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride in triumph on the heights of the land...”

This is faith: to believe and do, even if you aren’t sure what the results will look like.

The evening service is less formal, with more lay people involved in speaking, singing or reporting on mission trips. The youth group disappears to someone’s house for snacks and youth-oriented fellowship. Paul and I go home and make popcorn and grape juice, and talk about the day, and read. The kids come home and we make more popcorn, and talk more. We plan our week, the clever people make up puns, everyone laughs, and then we go to bed and Sunday is over.

If Sunday was too exhausting, I take Monday morning as my own time of rest, staying home, making tea and sewing.

I got strep throat last week, surely the worst case in history, with razor blades shredding my throat when I swallowed and swaddled quilts failing to keep me warm.

I stayed home on Sunday. The before-church flurry swept around me — Paul rushing out with his sermon notes, Emily hunting for a lost binder of lesson plans, Jenny assembling a scroll at the kitchen table, scotch-taping paper sections together, with a skewer across the end.

“It’s for the story in Jeremiah where Baruch writes on the scroll. One kid can be the king and tear it up and throw it in the fire.” She slapped the tape down determinedly. “I always get my best teaching ideas right before it’s time to leave.”

“Wait. You’re not having a real fire, I hope,” I croaked.

“No, Mom.”

Then they were gone, and the house was quiet.

I texted my friend Jean and asked her to have the Sunday school ladies pray for me.

It was awful to be alone on a Sunday morning. I missed the singing, the Sunday school discussion, Paul’s sermon, and the fellowship. I missed the missions committee meeting and the mail in our box and seeing my friends and checking up with Aunt Susie and holding babies. Ben grilled chicken for lunch and brought me a fragrant plate of buttery potatoes and a crisp chicken thigh. I missed the evening service in both body and heart, and the missions report on CAM-West, the Ohio-based aid program with a branch on the West Coast. It felt all wrong.

But when everyone was home again we had popcorn, and I was well enough to enjoy it and to laugh at the kids, so it felt at least a little bit special, like a normal Sunday.

Faith always will be both solid in its source and fluid in its application. We will always be adjusting for balance, and there will always be tension between individual and community priorities, between valuable old ways and equally valid new, between freedom and duty.

We will always be tweaking our Sundays — less of this, more of that — worship and rest, sacrifice and fun, people and solitude.

As we take tentative steps in this walk of faith, on Sundays and every other day as well, we find, just as we are promised, a sure and triumphant joy.

Mildred Myers's Mantle Falls On Me

Many years ago, a year or so after Paul was ordained to the ministry, we persuaded our four young children into the van and went to visit old people for the evening.

Without the ordaining, I don't think we would have done this, so maybe it's a good thing, but I have become quite disapproving about putting this sort of obligation on ministers with young families.

Anyway.

What matters is what happened that one evening.

First we went to see "Melvin" and "Hazel."

Melvin took Paul into his study and they discussed books.

The children and I sat in the living room with Hazel, who sat hunched over with a scowl on her face. I tried to make conversation, which was a losing proposition.  Any time one of the children made a move toward any of her many objects, Hazel pointed a bony finger at them and snarled, NO!!"

At one point she wanted to show me an old newspaper found in a basket on a nearby shelf.  She pointed at Matt.  "You!  Get me that!"

He reached, tentatively, not sure what she meant.

"NO!! Not that!!  Under it!"

The children sat there, wide-eyed and curious and bored.  I was nervous and anxious, leaping after any child who reached for any possible thing, hoping to ward off that terrible, angry NO!

Finally, Paul mercifully appeared and with great relief we went to visit the next old couple.

I'll use their real names: Ralph and Mildred.

Ralph hugged us, Mildred hugged us, they smiled and acted just delighted to see us.

One of the children plopped into a rocking chair and promptly rocked it back so hard it hit the wall.  Still nervous from the ordeal at Hazel's, I leaped over to slow him down.

Mildred laughed, "Oh, he's fine!  He's not hurting anything!"

I exhaled.

And that's how the whole evening went.  They thought we were wonderful and our children were even wonderfuller.  The children played with toys and had fun, but if they touched other things or made too much noise, Ralph and Mildred were still perfectly contented and calm.

After we left, Paul and I looked at each other and said, "Let's be like Ralph and Mildred when we get old."

Well.

We've had guests a lot recently, including a lot of children.  Monday night it was two little brothers who ran around the couches and hit each other with that weird reaching mechanical hand that my brother Fred gave the kids.  Last night it was a toddler who kept trying to go outside to see the cats.  And this evening it was a bunch of little people who spilled popcorn and cried and wrote on my prayer list and poked people with Tinkertoys.

It was a great feeling to realize there is nothing especially valuable in my living room and it's perfectly fine if little people bump and rearrange a few things.

We haven't had a toddler living here for a long time and it's been fun to have so many here in a short time.

The best feeling of all was enjoying the little great-nephews and their high-energy ways, and just having this sense of Mildred Myers's spirit resting on me and her words coming out of my mouth--not in any creepy way, but in that very satisfying sense of finding that all these years later, my wish came true and I was given the grace to be like her.

I just hope I can continue to be like her even if I live to be almost 100 like she did.

Quote of the Day:

Facebook ad: "What weird rules did YOUR parents have?"

Jenny: "Don't pick the tulips!!"

The Last Holdout of a Dying Industry

"Face it, we are part of a dying industry."

That was my friend Bob Welch, last December as we were packing up after the book sale at the Register-Guard building in Eugene, an annual event that the RG generously hosts for its authors.

Bob Welch used to write a column three times a week, then he retired from that job and ratcheted up his already prodigious book-writing.  He and I and Carolyn Kortge are in a once-a-month rotation as columnists now.

Bill Sullivan used to have a regular column in the paper but is now a freelancer.  The cooking columnists were laid off.  Jan Eliot, writer of the Stone Soup comic strip, has retired.  So far, I haven't been cut, but you never know.

So after the customers--mostly age 60 and older--left, and the lights were turning off one by one we packed our remaining books in boxes and piled the boxes on our various wheeled haulers and carriers.

[Bob Welch also told me once that this is the authors' attempt to one-up everyone else at these events: not how many books sold but how cool of a book-hauler you have, like a techy fiberglass and steel thing that unfolds smoothly and clicks into place and glides out the door with 200 pounds of books.]

And then as we were ready to head out into the dark and cold, and Bridget Baker of the newspaper Bakers, one of the few families still running a newspaper in this country, held the door open and told us good night, that's when Bob said we're part of a dying industry.

I thought of how a chunk of the RG building is now rented out to other businesses, the definitely-older clientele who still read the newspaper, and the general sense of tightening resources at the Guard.

It made me feel sad and old and left behind.

Then, in the last week, I've heard from probably three sources that blogging is dead.  At least the rambling, storytelling, yammering-about-whatever just-having-fun sort of blogging.

A few people still blog, I'm told, but they're all about specific platforms such as decorating or theology or fashion, with well-crafted backgrounds and specific agendas and lots of photos.

All the old fun rambly bloggers have moved on, they tell me, first to facebook and then on to Instagram and Twitter and venues I haven't even heard of.

That made me feel kind of old and sad and left behind too, as though the young cool people have moved on to the new church up the road where they wave their hands in the air and sing praise songs with a band, and only a few old of us old fogies are still back at the little country church, singing Amazing Grace with a wheezy organ, and they've forgotten all about us. 

In both these cases I had a brief panicky sense of needing to drop the old and try to catch up with the new before it's too late.

And then I remembered.

I've been writing in some sort of public forum for about 30 years now.  All those years, I have heard advice, listened to talks, and read the experts' anxious sermons on The Only Way To Write And Market If You're Going To Reach Any One At All.

And I have always gone in the opposite direction.

I didn't get a degree in writing, I didn't buy a Writers Market, [that thick expensive writer's Bible]  I didn't cycle manuscripts to twenty different periodicals.  I was the last one to blog and get on facebook.  I didn't advertise.  I didn't try to get on radio, TV, or YouTube.  I didn't turn my blog into a platform, I didn't have a ladder of ads up the side, and I didn't have a Twitter account.

Well, I tried just a few of those, now and then, and soon learned that I was way better off doing it all wrong.  I advertised a time or two and barely broke even.  Recently I got on Instagram and quickly realized I am not the Instagrammy sort at all because I don't have enough white in my house, I don't travel to dreamy places enough,and I get too jealous of all the cool dreamy travelers with white backgrounds, so I quit following them and just keep up with my kids and their friends.

This is what I did do, over the years: I sort of moseyed along and wrote letters to people and raised children and jotted stuff down and mostly met my deadlines.  And, if God brought me up to a door, I figured I was supposed to go through it.

The successes I've had were mostly surprises.

So.  Why change my ways now?  Newspaper and blogs might be outdated and dying, but I plan to keep on writing for them until God nudges me in another direction.

Remember not so long ago when the watchmen up in the crow's nests of the book-industry ship were all warning that ebooks were speedboats overtaking the paper-book industry and all its authors were  doomed?

There were a lot of nervous authors out there and a lot of fear in the air at writing conferences.

Well.  This is what has happened: paper books are alive and well, the ebook industry is thriving as well, and authors have more options than they could have dreamed of 15 years ago, more open doors, more volition over their own work, more ways to reach an audience.  What isn't very alive or well are the huge monopolizing publishers and bookstores that made it almost impossible for specific-niche and first-time authors to publish their works or to make any money.

Newspapers and blogs might be a thing of the past, but words and stories and communication are forever.

Here are my favorite verses about panicking over the latest thing the culture around you is freaking out about:

Isaiah 8: 11-12

11 This is what the Lord says to me with his strong hand upon me,warning me not to follow the way of this people:

12 “Do not call conspiracy
    everything this people calls a conspiracy;
do not fear what they fear,
    and do not dread it.

So. I plan to keep writing about whatever I feel like.

And I do appreciate all you old-fashioned folks who  still stop by the Shoe.

Quote of the Day:
"Sometimes I feel like a VHS among a bunch of DVD's."
--Jenny

10 Myths about the Smuckers--Dispelled!

Yes, that title is 92% clickbait.  Just having a little fun here.

However.  I've found that people take what I write/post and draw assumptions.  LOTS of assumptions.  Also conclusions and surmisings and extrapolations.  If you asked, they'd insist that that's what I said, or, at the very least, what I meant or implied.

I realize how easy it is to read something and come to conclusions beyond what the author actually stated, but some of these are a long leap from reality.

So.  Let's set things straight.

The myths:

1. We are farmers.  Yes, Paul and I both come from long lines of salt-of-the-earth, cow-milking, seed-planting, pig-butchering farmers.  Our house is surrounded by farms. We have a farm-related business serving a number of farms in the area.

But we, ourselves, do not farm.  We do not own or rent acres of ryegrass.  We don't have tractors or combines.

We own 2 acres.  Sometimes we grow a few sheep or calves or cats or chickens, but that doesn't make us farmers.  Sometimes we have a garden, which brings us to:

Myth 2. We grow and can/freeze all our own food.

Sometimes I have a garden.  Sometimes I don't, such as when I know the summer is going to be extra full with travel and caring for my dad, and I know I can only do so much without having a nervous breakdown.  Those years, the weeds grow high in the garden patch and I like to think I am being Biblical by giving it a sabbath rest.

When I do have a garden, I grow things like radishes, green beans, carrots, corn, cilantro, tomatoes, and lettuce.  We can and freeze some of that.  We also can and freeze applesauce and grape juice from our own trees and vines, and we get strawberries and cherries and raspberries and peaches from local produce stands.

But there's still a LOT of food that I don't grow or put up myself, like Cheerios, turmeric, coconut, chocolate, ice cream, peanut butter, cheese, and olive oil.

Myth 3: Our kids are all little kids or teenagers.

They aren't.

They used to be, but they grew up.  I still use the term "kids" because English doesn't have a good generic term for grownup offspring.  "Children" implies "people under 12 years old."

Our youngest is 16 years old and graduates from high school in May.  Our oldest will soon be 30.  Right now I have 4 in college.  This fall, I might have 5, and if I can talk Amy into taking a class at North Chiang Mai University just to set a record, I might have all 6 of my kids in college at once.

So yeah, they are no longer little whippersnappers shooting at light bulbs with slingshots or playing dolls with their friends.

Myth 4: I tell you everything about our lives.

Truth: I don't tell you all about our lives.  In fact, I don't tell you that much at all.  You know the famous painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware? Well, it's 149 by 255 inches [says my friend Wikipedia].

Imagine our family's life as such a painting.  There's a lot going on, a lot of figures, lots of color and drama.  After all, there are 8 of us plus extended family and everyone else who's in and out of our doors.

I write about us once a month in the newspaper.  I post on this blog.  I post clever snippets on Facebook.  Which seems like you're seeing a lot of the painting.

The truth is, you're not standing right in front of this painting, examining it in detail.  You're either 100 feet away, getting a general* sense of water, winter, boats, and bravery.  Or you're up close, looking at it through a soda straw and seeing only a detail here and there--a bit of the flag, a hand on the oar, a flapping coattail.

*get it? Washington?

Writing teachers will tell you to say just enough and to let the reader fill in the rest with his/her imagination.

Readers are good at filling in with their imagination.  But they forget what was actually stated and what was filled in by their own minds.

Myth 5: If you tell me anything, I will write about it.

Maybe five or ten times in the past, since ideas were panting at the door of my brain and begging to be let out and I was inexperienced and didn't think it through, I have made grievous errors of writing about people who did not want to be written about, without asking them first.

Bad things happened to me.  Really bad, awful, rather-meet-a-rattlesnake things. Bad enough that I wept, and repented, and lost sleep, and said terrible condemning and castigating messages to myself, and drowned in regret, and wrote great wordy apologies, and decided to quit writing forever because there was no atoning for this error, and no one with such a lack of discretion should be tossing words out into the great world, ever.

But always, eventually, between my gentle husband and the even-gentler Holy Spirit, I was re-introduced to Grace and to Calling and to Permission to Make Mistakes, and once again, the words spun in my head until they dropped forth, one by one, with great caution, from my fingers.

So now I am very careful.  And I ask before I write about you.  I even pay you.

If you are someone who divulges your latest escapade to Emily and adds, "Please don't tell your mom because she'll write about it," that is painful but no more than I deserve.

But believe me when I say I've learned a few things, and sometimes I sit on stories that are like trapped squirming cats, struggling and scratching to be told, but I hold onto them tightly and don't let them free.

Myth 6: I had a lovely, mythical, idyllic childhood, because I was Amish.

Maybe it's the Amish-novel readers that assume this.  When they reference the pain in their own childhoods, they look at me and add, "But you wouldn't know anything about that."

I was Amish, but it wasn't a fairy tale.  Sorry to shatter that delusion.

Myth 7: As a Mennonite woman, I live a life bounded by rules and strictures and pressures from my society.  My spontaneous nature longs to be free.  I am shackled by a patriarchal system that keeps me from pursuing my dreams and keeps me insulated from the wonderful world that beckons Out There.

Seriously, I run into people who talk like this.  They look at me worriedly and ask subtle-social-detective questions.  They suggest ways I can be Truly Me even among my customs and traditions.  They send emails full of hints and questions and bright encouragement.

I just smile.  This is a myth you can believe, if you want, since it's all about perspective, and I won't try to logic it away.

Myth 8: We have a good marriage because we were so lucky to find True Love in Each Other at the Auspicious Moment.

Let me just say that if Mr. Blunt Oblivious Type A Practical Healthy Hi-Energy Take-Charge UnEmotional can successfully be married to Miss Dreamy Hinting Subtle Tea-Sipping Easily-Hurt Creative Asthmatic Feelings, then any couple, any where, can make it work.

Luck is nice, and we had our share, and we inhabit a good good land, but please don't minimize the mountains we've climbed and the swamps we've waded through to get here.

Not everyone can be lucky, but everyone can stick with it and make good, tough, choices and come to a place of green pastures--if they're both committed, which is where the luck comes in.

Myth 9: If my kids write, they are "writing like their mother."

Emily is the most overt writer and has produced news articles, blog posts, fiction, and a book.  Amy and Jenny write poems and occasional insightful and funny blog posts.  They all write lots of [I'm sure] amazing literature that never leaves their journals.

Matt and Ben write scientific stuff now and then.  Matt writes summaries and informational papers at work that are praised for their insight and precision.

Steven writes hilarious texts.

They write like themselves, all of them.

They don't write like their mom, and they don't need to.

Myth 10: My children are as nice, beautiful, clever, and amazing as I always say they are.

Oh wait, that one is true.

Letter from Harrisburg: The Comfort of the Familiar

LETTER FROM HARRISBURG
The familiar between our adventures
By Dorcas Smucker
For The Register-Guard
FEB. 14, 2016

Women’s Retreat was at the same house this year, just north of Newport. I slept on the blue pull-out bed with my head lower than my feet because I always forget to sleep in the other direction, and I paid for it with a stiff neck. Rachel was the first one up on Saturday, and she made the first pot of coffee. Breakfast was eggs and ham rolled and baked in tortillas, followed by shopping at the outlet mall in Lincoln City. Again.

This annual gathering of church women is so predictable that my daughter emailed me from Thailand:

“I hope you’re having fun at the ladies retreat. Some day maybe I’ll get to go to one of those. Make sure to make lots of false teeth jokes at Sharon.”

A few years ago, ­Sharon left her laptop on the ­table, open to her Facebook account, so I posted a silly notice on her behalf that she had lost her dentures. One of the teenage girls back in Harrisburg read it before church (“Oh dear! Poor Sharon!”) and went to Sunday school and shared this concern with the youth girls’ class, and they all prayed earnestly that the teeth would be found, when of course they were in the unsuspecting Sharon’s mouth the whole time.

We recalled this and much more in our hours of chatter around the ­living room and sitting in the hot tub, late at night with the stars coming out above us as the storm moved on. Just like always.

Then, when my ­social batteries were fully ­re-charg­ed, I was just as happy to go home, where I knew the tea would taste exactly right, the oak tree across the road would stand between me and the pink sky when I raised the shade in the morning, and Paul in his blue recliner would be surrounded by piles of seed-warehouse paperwork and the day’s newspaper.

The first daffodil of the season was in a vase on the kitchen counter when I walked in the door. This, too, is a long-standing tradition. How do the ­daffodils know to coordinate their blooming with women’s ­retreat, I wonder, and how does Jenny always remember to have the first one on the counter when I come home?

Maybe they both know the magic of tradition, the power of welcome, and the comfort of the familiar.

“By the end, I just wanted to come home,” 16-year-old Jenny said of her two-week trip during Christmas break. She had flown to Washington, D.C., where her ­oldest brother, Matt, lives, and the two of them wandered around D.C., south to an aunt’s, and north to a cousin’s. “It was fun, and oh Mom, you would have loved all the historical stuff we saw. But it was so nice to come home.”

“Do you consider yourself a go-er or a stay-er?” my ­daughter Emily asked me last week, and I didn’t know how to answer.

At her age, I was a traveler, moving to Oregon from the Midwest at age 19, living in the wild north of Ontario, Canada, after our marriage, and traveling to Africa and the Middle East and Mexico some years later.

My mom, back on the farm in Minnesota, wrote countless letters to her wandering children. The wrens are back at the feeder, she would say. At sewing circle, they quilted the ­Burgoyne Surrounded quilt she pieced for the Mennonite Relief Sale. The deer and pheasants are eating the leftover corn in the fields. Olaf the neighbor stopped in. And the old rooster thinks the one-eared cat is his girlfriend, and they walk around the barn ­together.

Hers was a small life, I thought, circumscribed by Dad and the farm and church activities and the weather. She was happy with the coziness of the wood stove, the sewing machine, the whistling teakettle signaling time for a cup of mint tea.

Now, like her, I find joy in the cozy and ­familiar.

Our son Ben feeds the cats on the porch ­in the morning and laughs at their predictability — Count Olaf ­always launches herself 3 feet up the glass patio door before Ben opens it, and Cinnpurrella runs inside, circles a few chair legs, and runs back out.

At church, I can count on the elderly gentleman who tearfully praises my husband’s sermons. Muddy Creek rises with ­winter rains. The neighbors to the south clear brush and burn it when it isn’t raining. Tony at the Harrisburg Pharmacy will always dispense ­kindness along with antibiotics and asthma inhalers. My friend Arlene will assure me that I’m normal, and Rachel will remind me that my children will all be OK.

“Your mother was so content where she was,” a friend of hers told me on a recent visit. She looked a bit wistful, and so did I, because we both knew that, in a strange paradox, Mom’s happiness with her narrow sphere made it possible for her to influence a much wider world, through endless letters to her scattered family and the truckloads of quilts and comforters that warmed faraway grandchildren and people she never knew, through an Amish-Mennonite ministry providing food and blankets to the impoverished in Eastern Europe.

And Mom always ­welcomed us home.

Sometimes you need to go to exciting places and do amazing things, and sometimes you need to be the solid launch pad that lets someone else take off for far places and great accomplishments.

Matt, the Navy engineer, comes home at least twice a year and says that this is the only place where the trees are the right shade of green. He has always wanted to go to Mars. NASA is taking applications for the next batch of astronauts, who may or may not go to Mars, he tells me, and he plans to apply.

These grapevines need to be pruned before spring, I think, pushing the tough branches aside to reach for a just-opened daffodil. The camellia bush that nearly froze to death in the cold snap two years ago is miraculously putting out buds just outside my office window. Maybe a mint-oil spray will ­discourage the spiders that always fill the sewing-­room window with cobwebs.

As I take care of the details of our lives, I pray for the high school daughter planning an ambitious future. I pray for all my college kids to find their way and for the daughter in Thailand and the firefighting son to be safe. And I pray for the son who wants to go to Mars, that my personal desperate cautions would not keep him on Earth if God’s calling is for him to go elsewhere.

Then I wipe out the refrigerator, arrange a bouquet, and am grateful for this vocation of making a place that they all want to come back to because it’s warm and safe and familiar. I thank God that I get to be here, waiting, the ­teakettle whistling, to welcome them home.

Some Feverish Thoughts

I think Ben capitulated to this virus first but kept pushing himself to go to college.  Then Paul got it.  "How are you feeling?" I'd say, and he would go through a disturbing little routine of looking at me with watery eyes and saying Uhhhh? and wiggling his fingers over his head while putting his chin in the air and waving his head from side to side.

And now that's exactly how I feel.  Very Uhhhhh and very much like something is wrong in my head, besides the usual.

So I am lying in bed with a teacup and a thermometer beside me and my head anointed with mint oil, which is supposed to stop headaches, and since I have lots of time to think, I am thinking that it's too bad we only live one lifetime.

Because there are so many things you could dedicate a whole lifetime to, and you have only one go.

You could buy one of those empty stores in Harrisburg and have a little fabric/paper/tea/thrift shop.

Or you could get medical training and work in some underserved part of the world.

Or you could design and sew clothes.

Or you could have a little farm and grow produce and sheep and chickens and flowers.

Or you could be a full-time writer.

Or you could have a big family and do lots of cooking and listening.

I chose the last one, obviously, and I do bits and pieces of the others, such as writing a little bit and taking out the stitches from someone who didn't feel like going back to the doctor to have his stitches out, except I don't really do the store in Harrisburg, but I sort of scratch that itch by selling a few things on ebay, such as the sewing pattern from 1939 that I bought for 25 cents and that is going for $12.50 with one day left [she bragged humbly].

Lately I've had this misguided grandma craving to make little dresses, so I sewed two of them with no particular little girl in mind.  But in between seams I made cheeseburger soup for James H. who had surgery, and washed kitchen counters, and also took two cats in to get fixed, which didn't go so well, because we had signed up Beatrice and Peppermint Patty, but Beatrice the Dumbest Cat Ever disappeared, and the cat carrier wasn't latched right and broke apart halfway out to the car, and there was a blur as a cat disappeared around the camellia bush,and I ended up taking in two cats who were not Beatrice and PP, so I kind of lied, since the vet people were very big on specific names, but this was a program to fix low-income cats and my voucher was going to expire the next day.

Emily had just learned in one of her classes that pretty much everyone tells white lies as a way to make society run kindly and smoothly, and she was insistent that she is an exception to this, and so is her whole family.

The others in the class felt that if you didn't tell white lies you were blunt and unkind, but Emily says she knows plenty of people who are kind and diplomatic but don't lie.

"How does this skirt look on me?"

[skirt emphasizes belly and is higher in back than in front]

"Well, I think it would look good with that long gray sweater you have."

We also note that Smuckers are utterly honest and direct, wandering into "blunt" territory now and then*, but you always know where you stand with them, which I like.  

*see QOTD below

I am scrupulously honest most of the time, but I wanted those cats fixed without any more drama or babies.

So maybe having a big family is the way to go, because you get at least a taste of all the other lives you'd like to live.

I read this cool article the other day about this guy who dressed up for a day in different costumes.  He was a security guard for a day, and a mechanic, and a doctor, and a priest.  The priest part was especially interesting.

You can read it here.

I am so used to being in identifiably-religious garb [long skirts, hair in a bun, veil] that I don't give it much thought. But it made me think about the identity and responsibility that a person takes on by looking distinctly religious.  There's an expectation of behavior, and honesty, and trustworthiness.

And, in the case of the priest, of helpfulness.

There's a very American belief that what you wear is your business and yours alone--whatever expresses Who You Are and is comfortable.  Other cultures are much more context-oriented (I think that's the word) where clothing carries a message and tells how you fit into society and whether or not you respect yourself and others and the situation you're in.

Mennonites are big on clothes and the messages they convey.

Like I said, I don't mind the connotations of my clothes, as long as they don't make people nervous and distant.  I want them to feel safe, but maybe that's more a matter of the expression in my face than my clothes.

I want people to feel that they can ask me for help.

I have a feeling we choose our clothes and then our clothes make us take on an identity without us realizing it.

My mom always had a manner and voice that she used on "Englisch" people, and another one for Amish and Mennonites, and another for her family.

Last Halloween I wrote about how Margaret and I dressed up and went trick-or-treating, and I said it was the only time we did.  Well, there was one more time, sort of.  I put on a pair of brown corduroy boys' pants--not my brothers'; probably something Mom picked up at the Catholic rummage sale to make comforters--and I think a paper bag over my head, and I went out the back door and over to the front, and knocked.

Mom came to the door.  "Now who could this be?" she said in her most Englisch-people voice, and it was the strangest experience to be addressed thus.  So I pulled off my bag and laughed and laughed.

This subject sparked a discussion on Facebook, and Rhonda Strite from Georgia said, 

My older sisters, who were in their upper teens at the time, had a friend from a distance come and stay a few days. My brother Jeff and I were, I suppose, about 12 and 13 respectively.

We children and this friend went shopping one day and found this curly, chestnut brown lady's wig at a thrift shop which someone in the party gaily purchased. When we got home, Mother was gone and the house was empty, and we decided to dress Jeff up and put the wig on him and all be sitting primly in the front room conversing politely with this "stranger" when Mother walked in.

So they had Jeff put on one of my dresses, and they put this wig on him and we were all splitting laughing because he looked for all the world like a girl, or a lady...it was sort of hard to place exactly what he looked like.

And then Mother drove in the lane, and fast and furiously, we straightened up and took our places demurely, and began to act like "company", which was utterly unnatural altogether..

And she walked into the front room from the entrance hall of that old farmhouse and there we were all sitting properly, and here was this stranger....but no one offered any introduction or explanation. She looked around, trying briefly to assess the situation, when suddenly the stranger rolled onto the rug into the middle of the room in a wild giggling fit, and all the rest of us just sat there and watched her giggle.

Mother had the blankest, lost-est look on her face. She had no idea who this person was or what was the proper thing to do, or how to analyze ANYTHING...

Till we all just lost it and he snatched the wig off..

Afterward Mother said it was the oddest feeling ever, because there were these curiously familiar aspects, (Jeff was famously giggly at that specific point in his life) and yet there were not any other pieces to the puzzle that fit in anywhere..

I said her mom must have felt like she fell into a time warp or something, with this stranger laughing on her carpet.  Rhonda said, "She laughed heartily and VERY SATISFYINGLY when the truth came out so it was all worth it."

It is approaching suppertime and I am going to let the family fend for themselves, seeing as how there is baked chicken in the fridge, and leftover cheeseburger soup, and quesadilla materials, because everyone in the family is capable of fixing themselves a plate of decent food from materials on hand.

I am not nostalgic at all for the days when I didn't get to just go be sick when I was sick, and if I didn't fix them something they pretty much didn't eat, and hungry little Amy scattered a bag of chips like snow all over the bedroom floor and I lay desolate and vomitous on the bed in the middle of the mess.

I don't miss that part of those days at all.

But I do miss the little people.

Quote of the Day:

Paul: [comes in the door with pink roses for me 'for no reason']

Jenny: I like it when Dad buys you flowers. It shows that you love each other. Not that I don't already know you love each other! And it's not loud like kissing.

Sunday Thoughts on Jonas the Storm and the Nest News

The blizzard is over in the East. In Washington, DC, Matt made a few forays out from his apartment to photograph and film Jonas, the big storm, mostly for my sake, I think.

I've been clicking through friends' posts full of snowdrifts and buried cars, and instead of feeling grateful for the fact that I can go outside and drive away any time I want, without sliding or shoveling, I am filled with jealousy.

Two years ago we had a (relatively) big snow and the girls and I went on a walk and it was too wonderful for words.  And Amy said, "Snow just makes you happy, doesn't it?"

Yes.  Yes, it does.

So this evening I asked Paul if he thinks this is God's way of calling me back to mission work in Canada.  He said feeling called because of weather somewhere isn't really valid, he doesn't think. Otherwise we'd all feel "called" to mission work in Hawaii every winter.

He also didn't remind me that I used to get so sick and tired of snow and cold that I would just about despair by March.

However.  If I went to Canada now, I could go out the door without starting half an hour ahead of time by making piles on the floor of everyone's gear, taking everyone potty, and then pulling on sweaters, ski pants, extra socks, coats, hats, scarves, mitts, and boots before we ventured forth.

It would just be me.

I'm not even sure they need us in Canada.  Siberia, maybe?  Or maybe Mongolia.  A missions recruiter once spoke at my folks' church in Minnesota and said they need Minnesotans in Mongolia because people from everywhere else are too freaked out by the Mongolian winters.  But Minnesotans would feel right at home.

*     *     *

Here is an update on the Sparrow Nest, my future writing cabin by the creek.

Paul had gotten permission from the county land-use department, was making good progress with building, and had started constructing a walkway when someone from the county road department saw it and stopped in.

He was not happy.  He was also someone who delighted in saying "No!"  No, he said, taking me across the road to point at things and emphasize his emphatic No's--  No! This isn't safe!  What if a car would slide off the road and hit that concrete pad?  No!  It's not safe for me to cross the road here, with those curves, and what if our grandchildren want to go to and from the cabin? It's certainly not safe for them!  [I wondered what grandchildren he saw hiding in the bushes, as I sure haven't met any yet.]

I said But! Everything will be built on the other side of the fence, so what is it to you?

Oh my!  It was very much to him.  The road has a right-of-way!  For 30 feet from the center of the road!  The fence was put there before the laws were in place! [This bothered him, I could tell. Also that the trees had the audacity to grow that close to the road.]  But now? No! No walkway! No cabin! No anything!

You know, in the halls of government and bureaucracy, where permits are issued and permissions granted or not, and licenses renewed, and taxes paid, there are many people whose job it is to say No, but they divide into two categories.

1. The kind who say No! Nuh-uh! No how!  And who take a nasty delight in doing so.
2. The kind who say No, but let's see how we can work it out so your goals are met and our requirements are met as well.

Mr. Road Guy was of the first category.

He also wrote a letter to the land use people saying, essentially, You can't let this happen!!!

By this time I was recalling the story of Nehemiah rebuilding the wall, and then those two nasty dudes, Sanballat and Tobiah, came by and shrieked NO! and did all they could to intimidate everyone and stop the project.

So I recruited a handful of friends and asked them to pray.

And Paul went back to talk to the county land-use people.

They were of the let's-work-it-out sort.  Which meant that they thought it would be do-able but they cranked up the requirements.

First we had to apply for a variance, which involved them writing to the neighbors and asking if this was ok with them.

We have nice neighbors who said it was ok.  Mr. Coffey from next door told Aunt Susie that it's ok with him as long as we let him sit in the back door and fish.

Any time, Max.

They gave us the variance.  I was grateful and happy.  But there's one more hoop to jump through, that I know of, and that's the engineering study.  They want to make sure the cabin is designed not to fall into the creek during a windstorm, or something.

Now Paul is drawing up careful blueprints because he wants to save the fee an engineer would charge.

So if you want to feel invested in this project, you can pray for all the proper permissions to be granted.

I'm told there are places in America where you can just build stuff.  You own the property, you put whatever buildings you want on it. In fact, Chris the niece's husband from Holmes County, Ohio, said he could build a skyscraper in the middle of Berlin, Ohio, and there would not be any regulations in place to stop him.

In contrast, I'd say Oregon is a weensy bit over-regulated.

What with waiting for all the permissions to be granted, and with cold, wet weather, Paul hasn't made much real progress on the Nest.

But Nehemiah's wall got built, and I have faith the Nest will be built as well.

Quote of the Day:
"Do you ever get that feeling that no matter what situation you're in, you're the most dramatic person there?"
--Jenny
"Yes.  All the time." [sigh]
--me

On Fear and Perfectionism

We weren't married long before my observant husband told me that every time I have a big project, I dance around and around it, and plan and prepare and think and make lists, but I don't just dig in and DO it.

He, who attacks projects like our 8 cats launch toward their dish after clawing 3 feet up the glass patio door, when Jenny feeds them in the morning, he was understandably mystified.

While I have progressed a few miles on this in 31 years, I still fight that barrier.  Which is why the upstairs hall hasn't been painted in years.

If you don't mind spending a little time in my head, I'll explain something I learned about myself recently. Then you can play Life Coach and tell me what to do.

The catalyst for this self-discovery was, of all things, a bookmark I was trying to color.

You know how adult coloring books are all the rage now.  I'll bet half the women in America got one for Christmas.  I did--from Jenny--and it's wonderful.

But I haven't started coloring in it yet.

This is significant.

A few months ago I decided to take a ride on this wagon and downloaded and printed a document with four bookmarks all doodled and swirled and lined with cool black ink lines.

I cut out the bookmarks and tried to start coloring the first one. And I felt paralyzed by fear.

Fear of beginning, fear of choosing colors, fear of getting it irretrievably wrong.

Yes.  Just that afraid.  Of starting to color a 3-cent bookmark that could easily be tossed and reprinted.

I realized I felt that same paralyzing fear with the following projects:
1. Painting a room.
2. Cutting out a dress.
3. Writing a novel.

My friends on Pinterest who know me in real life can attest that I pin pictures of cute dresses by the hundred but actually sew them in far smaller quantities.  Ideas are easy to come by, wild, exciting, energizing.  But choosing a fabric and pattern and making that first cut--that's just overwhelming.

I think we might be discussing perfectionism here, that fear of beginning because it's such a big step and there's no turning back and WHAT IF I GET IT ALL WRONG??

I have danced around writing a novel for some ten years and am still both intrigued and utterly terrified by the idea.

How do you overcome fear and perfectionism, that's what I wonder.  If I came and asked myself for advice, I'd probably start with, "Just grab your markers and color that silly bookmark!"

Quote of the Day:
"The Bernie Sanders Society meets downtown every Saturday morning."
--a lady at a book sale in Eugene.  Somehow it struck me as a uniquely Eugene thing to say.

Letter from Harrisburg: Adventures in the New Year

In the new year, don’t be afraid to say yes to new adventures

 BY DORCAS SMUCKER
For The Register-Guard
JAN. 10, 2016

We had a totally new experience on New Year’s Day.

I had had only a vague knowledge of what a quinceañera was. A party and a fancy dress on a girl’s 15th birthday and a rite of passage in Latin America — that was all I knew.

Then we got an invitation to our young friend Eunice’s quinceañera.

“What do we wear?” I asked Eunice’s mom, Aila. “Is there a meal? Do we bring a gift?”

Laughing, she explained that it was somewhat formal and yes, they would serve a meal, and gifts were nice but not required.

She also said this one would deviate from Mexican custom in that there would not be alcohol or dancing, and they would not announce that their daughter is now ready for marriage.

I didn’t realize that I also would learn about what happens behind the scenes to get ready. My sister-in-law, Bonnie, was asked to bake the “tres leches” cakes for Eunice’s party.

Bonnie called me. If she baked the cakes, would I be ­willing to decorate them — maybe in those swirled roses that are the latest thing?

I said yes, even though I had never made swirled roses. Then I looked up how to make them. “Hold the icing bag, push once, then swirl around,” the directions said.

All right then.

I took my supplies to church, where half a dozen Spanish-speaking ladies, tubs of tamales and unbelievable fragrances filled the kitchen.

Soon Bonnie and her daughter Stephanie arrived with six large sheet cakes, all made in a light, sponge-cake texture. Stephanie stabbed each cake numerous times with a fork and then, in a disturbing procedure, poured a sweet, milky mixture — the “tres leches” — all over each cake until it was soaked.

I like cakes fluffy and moist, not soggy. What a strange tradition.

Out came gallons of whipped cream frosting. Bonnie put a thin base coat on each cake, dabbing at the oozing milk at the edges with paper towels.


I mixed blue and green food color with a small bowl of ­icing to make a passable teal color, swiped two streaks of it down the inside of a parchment decorator bag, filled the bag with white ­frosting, and made my first swirled rose. Push once, swirl counterclockwise, and there it was, pretty, rose-like, and tipped in a touch of teal.





Stephanie whipped cream for more and more icing, Bonnie frosted and swabbed, I filled and refilled my ­icing bag and covered cake after cake with careful swirling rosettes.

We put the six cakes in the big refrigerator and went home.





The quinceañera was lovely, with Eunice in a long, fluffy, teal dress; attendants in brown satin; speeches from her pastor, mother and friends, all translated into Spanish; and symbolic gifts. First a Bible “to guide you through life,” a bouquet of flowers, an embroidered pillow, and a watch, “To remind you to use your time wisely and invest in worthwhile things.”

The tamales and beans were delicious, but I was nervous about my first bite of that soggy cake. I could have skipped it, but why miss an opportunity to try something new?

It was astonishingly good. Cold, just sweet enough, and complemented perfectly with that whipped-cream ­icing. I ate more than I should have.

I’ve been thinking: Maybe my word for 2016 should be “yes.”

For the sake of my teenage and 20-something children, I try to keep up with the trends that blow through their lives.

Choosing a Word for the Year is one of them, mulled and decided upon by dozens of their generation. Some choose “joy,” or “pursue” or “contentment” or “conquer.”

I was not ­intending to join the fad, but the word “yes” bubbled to the surface, and I decided to pick it up and keep it.

A second trend is adventure, demonstrated on that public ­platform of Instagram by young people who wander the country or the world in VW vans or refurbished campers and hiking sandals. They post dreamy pictures of campfires, ocean sunsets and mountaintop views, all labeled with a dozen hashtags, known in my day as pound signs, along with words put together without spaces like #followthehorizon and #adventurecalls and #pursuethedream and #thewanderinglife.

These adventurers are followed by thousands of people who, we assume, live much less exciting lives and long for the wild and free living of dreamers and vagabonds. If these onlookers are anything like our kids, they go to work or school every day, have car trouble about once a week, can’t afford Starbucks ­coffee and feed the neighborhood cats when their owners go visit family in Seattle.

Thankfully, despite the occasional envious glance at yellow vans on Instagram highways, our kids have learned that you can have all kinds of new experiences, learn things you never knew, and even get a taste of wildness right where you are, in your daily dutiful life.

The key is in being willing to serve.

“These people seeking adventure want interesting things to happen,” says our 22-year-old son Ben. “But you don’t have to go to the corners of the world for ­interesting things to happen. Sometimes they’re right in front of you and you don’t realize it.”

He cites the guy on the bike as an example. Ben was driving home from church one Sunday when a young man on a bike waved him down on Highway 99 East. He wanted directions to the train station so he could go to Denver. He has friends there, he said. He seemed vague, troubled and incompetent to be on his own.

There on the shoulder of the road, Ben had a decision to make. He could point the guy in the general direction of Eugene, go home, eat Sunday dinner and read the paper. Or he could offer to take on this man and whatever problems and risk he brought with him.

They maneuvered the bike into the car, and Ben brought him home, gave him lunch, took him to the train station — where he couldn’t travel because he had no identification — took him to the bus ­station and bought him a ticket.

“You can keep my bike,” the man said. “It wasn’t stolen” — which made Ben guess it ­probably was, but he was never able to track down an owner.

And he never heard from the young man again.

It wasn’t a hike up an Alaskan peak or a swim across a flooded river, yet it had all the elements of adventure: a choice to make, a yes instead of a no, an element of risk, a few surprises, and a good story to tell afterwards.

If you open your life to opportunities to serve, you never stop learning, and you never know what will happen next.

Our daughter, Jenny, agreed to help her cousin by babysitting her two children for an evening. Jenny sent me a text: “I never told ­Annette that I’ve never changed a diaper, so I had to wing it. It worked out OK, though.”

Emily, now 25, recalled how, when she was living in Colorado six years ago, she would bike past a fascinating old mansion and wish she could see the inside. Then she offered to help backstage at a community theater production of “Annie,” leading to a lot of hard work and a whole new world of experiences and friends. Afterward, the man who played President Roosevelt invited everyone to a cast party at his house, which turned out to be the fascinating old mansion, which he invited them to explore from attic to wine cellar.

The year ahead holds opportunity for adventure, I’m sure of it. There will be new experiences and new skills to learn. But they won’t come in green-tinted ­nature photos shared on an iPhone screen. Instead, they will involve people who need something from me, they’ll look like hard work, and they’ll take time. But I want to open my heart to the need, the moment, the Yes, remembering the fun of that Mexican-flavored party and the satisfaction of seeing 150 guests enjoy their beautiful slices of swirled and teal-tinted cake.