My Heart

There is a story I wrote-- a short version of it-- some time ago.  Sometimes I can write a story and know when it is done.  This one has never been done, but is constantly changing and evolving, on paper and in my mind.  I believe this story shows my heart like none of the other stories I've written; but it keeps changing because I have changed.  It is a story that anyone who knows me, or used to know me, would probably be astonished to read.
Let me explain that last sentence, because it shows a lot about who I am, and who I used to be.  This is who I used to be: a girl, and ashamed of it.  A very shy, quiet, reclusive girl, who on one hand craved relationships and on the other, felt she didn't need them.  A girl with carefully hidden girlish tendencies under a boyish exterior.  I was the girl who talked sports, wielded a knife, climbed trees-- in short, tried to keep up with the boys so they would consider her their equal-- because I felt it was shameful to be "weaker" just because I was a girl.
How I have changed!
I have come to look upon women not as the "weaker" sex, but as people who have different strengths.  Who I am now: very much a girl, and glad to be so (except I could do without some of my mood swings.)  I love flowers, pretty clothes, and even an occasional love story.  (I once would have died rather than admit that.)  I love the beauty and the emotions and the depth and the strength to be found in a woman's character.  God has also been showing me the value of relationships, and how much I need them.
And so I wrote this story-- and I am still trying to write it because it just isn't quite right yet.  I tried to paint the beauty and the depth that can be found in a woman's character.  I revealed a longing to go deeper that I've always had and still have.   I expressed my love of nature and how I have found God in nature.  I wrote a love story into it, a story of discovery, of wanting to be a better person for the one you fell in love with.  A story of sacrifice, of loss, or grieving.  Examining what is important in life.  All of these things are part of my story.
I had it work-shopped in one of my creative writing classes, and the reactions mixed.  Some said the setting was unrealistic (I basically copied the setting I grew up in); some said the characters were unrealistic (I instilled in them many of the values that I believe.)  Many said the narrator painted the girl in the story as "too perfect."  I tried to remedy that, then I realized, this story is told about a girl by the man who is in love with her.  No, she is not perfect.  But I truly believe this is how he saw her.
In short, many saw the structure of the story, but few understood my heart speaking through it.  I am not trying to say the story is perfect, or even that it is totally realistic.  But I truly do believe it expresses some of the deep things of my heart like nothing else I've written.
For all these reasons, I continue working on this story, and for all these reasons, I am both excited and nervous to let it go.

Words That Form a Picture

"We live in a two-story brick house skirted by a wide porch where four wicker rockers, two on either side of a bright red door, beckon our neighbors to visit.  At the south end of the porch a matching swing creaks in the warm breeze.  And potted plants, whose contents change with Rose Marie's whims, are scattered everywhere.  In the front yard a gnarled magnolia takes an imposing stance, transforming an ordinary lawn into something regal.  Small flowerbeds lay beside the steps that lead to the porch.  Pansies add color there in the winter, but now a fresh crop of impatiens is the ornament of choice.  This is the home where I brought Rose Marie about a decade ago..."

-from Safe at Home by Richard Doster

Picture of the week

~ Take Me Out to the Ballgame ~
The Cubs played their first Spring Training game yesterday... baseball is back!

Nerdiness and Game-playing

My family has reached a new level of nerdiness lately.

And for us, that's saying something.

Lately we have been playing a lot of “Settlers of Catan”, a board game that involves collecting resources and using them to build settlements and cities and roads. You collect different resources depending on the dice roll, so of course, getting the optimal numbers is important. That means we, of course, are interested in knowing which numbers actually get rolled the most. Dad was convinced the conventional dice would be skewed somehow, so he downloaded a dice ap on his phone and started introducing it to our games, convinced it would be much more accurate. Plus they are efficient and easy-- less noisy, less prone to mess up the game pieces or roll off the table. At first we were a bit dubious, but over time all four of us have succumbed at least somewhat to the electronic dice. I have been won over entirely and would prefer never to go back to conventional dice again :-).

But, despite agreeing to use the electronic dice, James was more dubious about their accuracy and decided to keep track of the numbers and compare them. Mom still sometimes prefers the regular dice, and when my brother and sister-in-law come over, despite being nerdy in other ways, refuse to use the electronic dice. So over time James was able to compile quite a few stats on both devices, by keeping track of every dice roll on both. It was my sister-in-law Ginny who suggested compiling all the data into an excel spreadsheet. The results were surprising. Ideally each device should form a perfect bell-curve, but none of them are quite perfect. Ironically, the “real” dice have been more bell-curvy than the phone. Fours have been rolled more than fives, which is odd, and sixes and eights have been rolled more than sevens, also odd. (Seven is supposed to be the most rolled number; it is associated with the “robber” who steals a resource when seven is rolled.) As we were standing around the table looking at the charts and analyzing the data, James looked up and asked, “Do other families do this, or just us?”

I had to laugh at that. Our tradition of nerdiness in games goes back a long way. My sister-in-law Ginny kept data on games of Nertz for a long time, and compiled them into charts of wins and losses, also average points per game and “percent nertzed.” She fits right in with our family. :-)

My family has played games together as long as I remember, and it is something I will always be grateful for. I learned to ad and subtract figures quickly in my head when I became the designated scorekeeper at an early age. From a dice game called Muggins I learned how six and four ad up to make ten, and from a card game called Cribbage I learned that seven plus eight is fifteen, and so is six and nine.  

And then there's Scrabble. We used to be pretty normal as far as Scrabble goes, then my dad took it up a notch. He started playing these weird, crazy words we'd never heard of before. In answer to the protest, “That's not a word!” He would say calmly, “Look it up.” We would-- and it was. I am a very competitive person, so this was to me the proverbial throwing down of the gauntlet. I began studying the Scrabble Dictionary in my free time, and picked up all kinds of useful things. Handy, short Z words, Q-without-a-U words (yes, they do exist!) Dad and I memorized the two-letter word list (all 96 of them) and studied the J and K sections of the dictionary. Our turns grew longer because we were no longer satisfied having a double-word score alone, but we just had to put our H or M on the double-letter score, as well! And then-- we found Super Scrabble.

Super Scrabble has become one of our favorite all-time games. It has twice as many letters as regular Scrabble, and a board that is three rows larger in all directions. There are now quadruple letter and quadruple word spaces. We play with nine tiles because it takes so long otherwise-- and even with seven it is rarely less than three hours to play each game. Often closer to four.

We once played Scrabble with a friend who was visiting and he happened to get the Q and not have a U.  "No problem," Dad and I said, "there's lots of  Q words that don't use U."

"No there isn't," our friend asserted.

"Yes there are," we replied, pulling out our lists and the dictionary to show him.  We were very happy when the fourth edition of the Scrabble Dictionary came out with "Qi".  Before that "Qat" was the best.  "Tranq", "qwerty", and "qaid" and "qoph" are also very handy.

Our friend just looked at us, shaking his head.  "You guys are sick."

That was the first but not the last time this epitaph has been bestowed on us...