a new spring

It's been a little over a year since the pandemic hit the U.S., since cities shut down, since Princeton shut down, since the archives shut down, since we realized that life was going to be very different for a while--for how long a while, none of us knew for sure. 

I remember how strange it was to see the beginnings of spring--of daffodils, green buds, of cherry blossoms--juxtaposed with everything closing up; with death and sickness and fear. 

A year later, with spring in the air again, things feel different. A few nights ago, Sam and I ate outdoors at a restaurant, felt the warming spring air around us, and saw how others around us--seated outside at the restaurant, passerby on the street--seemed so much more relaxed than a year ago, than a month ago. There are changes coming, and I hope that there are good things ahead for all of us. 

"there's a hope in every new seed

and every flower that grows upon the earth [. . .]

I'll come back to you in a year or so

and rebuild, ready to become 

the person you believed in, 

the person that you used to love." --noah and the whale, "the first day of spring" 

Mid-Atlantic Snapshots

On our walks, I've been taking pictures of these call boxes which dot D.C. Some of them have been designed to show historical scenes of the local neighborhoods. 

Others portray historic figures. 

And yet others are truly labors of love. Like this one outside of Tyler Elementary School, with the "Tyler Tiger" (who looks like a burglar), admonishing us to "Do work." 

I got new glasses frames. I also got a new phone and am trying to figure out both my new frames and Portrait mode in this picture.

WFH view some days. 

Princeton covered in snow (I went up there for a day to drop off/pick up books). It was a bit eerie being there. 

This was the day I got back from Princeton in D.C. Amazing what a distance of 170 miles south can do to weather patterns.

Sam and I went out to eat in a restaurant for the first time in . . . I don't know how long. The ramen here was pleasing to my palate. This lantern design was aesthetically pleasing.

Stained glass windows are also aesthetically pleasing.

Okay, so this does not technically fall into "Mid-Atlantic." This is a picture of Luray Caverns, which are in Virginia. But we went there last week and they were really cool! It really gives you a different sense of time--in this case, deep, deep time. 

This one (below) was my favorite part on the tour. They are stalactites which are reflected in 8-10 inches of water, and the "stalagmites" on the bottom are actually just reflections. But they look like a miniature model city or canyon!  

The famous Luray Organ. It was playing "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" when we walked past. 

And then, back properly to the mid-Atlantic in D.C., in our apartment, stitching away, since that's apparently what I do while nesting. 

The (almost) finished product! (I'll put Baby's name/birthdate/weight and height underneath the flower, once he has and name/birthdate/birth weight and height. All of those are still TBD.) 

Two P.E. Stories

I'm trying a digital minimalism challenge for the month of March, which, for me, basically means I'm staying off of Facebook and Instagram. My personal rules do not rule out my blog. 

But I am amazed at how bored I get during the day, and how my mind wanders to things I haven't thought about in literally years. The caverns of human memory are deep. 

On a walk a few nights ago, the floodgates of remembering junior high and high school P.E. classes opened for some unknown reason, and I found myself thinking of a few different P.E. classes, and then telling Sam about them, because, what else better to do on a semi-spring day in our nation's capital? 

One of these memories which came to the forefront was from tenth grade. The details and faces are hazy, but I remember there were two cousins in my P.E. class (which, if it was tenth grade, would have been my aerobics class, which is another story for a different day, because wow, I don't think I've worked harder in my life than in that class). I think one of the cousins was in Band with me, which means I knew her slightly better. She was also kinder to me. The non-band cousin I didn't know at all, but she was on the Yearbook staff. She was not as kind.  

Anyway, one day when we were all in the locker room changing into our high-school approved P.E. gear, the Yearbook Cousin was talking about how one of the pages she was working on was about trips/adventures students had undertaken that summer. I can't remember if someone had asked her what she was working on for that class, or if she was mainly talking to her cousin about it, but I recall that it was more of an open, "this is what I'm working on," conversation, and it seemed to me that she was wanting more stories and photos. 

I had gone on a really cool trip that summer with my family. We had gone to Europe--to Germany, Denmark, and Sweden--and I had had a great time. I mentioned this to the Yearbook Cousin, and said that I could get some pictures if she was interested. She didn't seem very interested, and said something non-committal. 

She probably thought I would forget, but I did not. I got some pictures from home, made copies of them, and at some point in the next week or two, again, in the locker room, I handed them to Yearbook Cousin, saying that the trip I went on was really interesting, and that she could use my story if she wanted to. I do not remember her seeming particularly pleased, but she put the pictures in her locker and then off we all went to get pummeled by burpees. 

But what I do remember is that after that class, as I got changed, the cousins left before me, and when I turned around to leave the locker room and head off to whatever class I had next, I saw the pictures I had handed Yearbook Cousin on the locker room bench, very much unwanted. 

And that made me sad. 

I didn't want to cry, because I only had seven minutes to get to my next class, and it would take longer than seven minutes for a red, puffy, tear-streaked face to return to normal, so somehow I gathered up my courage as I gathered up the photographs, put them in my backpack, used a minute of my time to drink deeply from the water fountain to keep back my tears, and then went on with my day. 

Telling this story to Sam, I can laugh about it now--both at the sheer absurdity that belongs to high school P.E. classes, and at Yearbook Cousin's passive aggressiveness (there are so many better ways to handle a situation like that . . . just take the pictures and if you don't want them throw them away at home. Don't just put them on the locker room bench like a cutting room, especially in front of the girl who just gave them to you. Anyway. Just. Really, really weird. I don't even remember her name. I also don't remember the name of Band Cousin. But I do remember this experience.) 

That memory awakened another deep P.E. memory, this time from 8th or 9th grade in junior high. Again, names and details are very fuzzy. But I remember that there was a girl who was a grade younger than me that decided for some reason that I was her enemy for a couple of weeks, and she was just really snarky towards me. I will call her Ponytail Girl, because I remember she wore a high ponytail. But it wasn't for very long, and I think I remember being more exasperated than anything--I usually just became very "ice queen"-esque when people were being unkind to me (I wouldn't respond, I would ignore them, etc.), so I'm pretty sure that was the extent of the unpleasantness, and I don't think it lasted more than a week or so.  

And, I probably wouldn't have even remembered that, except that three or four years later, that same girl came up to me at EFY in a classroom in the Wilkinson Center at BYU and re-introduced herself and said that she was happy to see me. I didn't really remember who she was, so I was more confused than anything, but I don't think she was happy with my response, and later I heard her friend saying something like, "All that matters is that you tried to repent. It's her fault if she won't forgive," or something like that. I then spent the rest of that session trying to find her again trying to be more friendly, but, alas, she'll always remember me as the "girl who wouldn't forgive," who, in reality, was just confused. 

You just don't know what's been eating away at people, nor can you read minds. 

There is no rhyme or reason to these stories, really. Just random P.E. stories which have been on my mind. 

Again, the caverns of human memory are deep and uncanny. 

international women's day, eight years later.

Tonight I am thinking of my Women's Day spent in Eastern Ukraine.  

I'm thinking of yellow, puffy mimosa flowers handed out to women in the streets

of friendly greetings in the cold, March air 

of thoughtful friends giving us purple hyacinths 

of a possible spring 

of women's shoulders

(hunched down, straight, tall, burdened) 

of sisterhood and solidarity 

of the sense that I was part of something larger, 

something bigger, 

connecting me to women I would have never met or seen; 

women whose stories are so much larger

than I can ever truly know. 

Things bringing me joy this month (so far)

 

[this. this brought me joy.] 

[walks with sam. always.] 

[climbing. it's been fun to go climbing a few times a week. i'm grateful for full-body harnesses which allow me to continue to climb while pregnant, but also, they are not the most comfortable.]

[this. this brought me joy.]

a [small] announcement

 

Baby donuts to announce the newest addition to our family. Sam and I are thrilled and humbled that we get to become parents this summer to a baby boy. 

I'm sure I'll have more pontifications about pregnancy at some point, but for right now, I'll let the pictures do the talking, and just say that we are grateful, excited, and (at least for me) just a bit more than nervous. But mostly grateful as we cross this threshold together (and, ever mindful of those who want to add to their family in this specific way, but for whatever reason, have not been able to). 

My favorite books of 2020

This was meant to be posted, oh, I don't know, about a month ago, but the first month of 2021 has already been verrrrryy long, and so I'm just going to post this here and start February 2021 with new blogging hopes. 

I hope January has been kinder to you than to most of us. But if anything, there is snow falling in D.C. tonight and it makes our patio look lovely. 

[copied and pasted from my Facebook post from a month ago, because that's where we are today]

One of my goals--for both personal and professional reasons--during 2020 was to read more fiction and non-fiction (specifically non-fiction unrelated to my research . . . I've been reading a lot of that for the past few years). The goal was personal because I had missed reading for pleasure, but it was also professional because I have found that reading outside of my dissertation research enlivens my own prose when writing dissertation chapters. I ended up reading 102 books this year (not counting books I read for my research). Many of these books were books I'd been MEANING to read for some time, but had never gotten around to them. Below is a sampling (in no particular order) of some of my favorite books this past year/books that really made me think. If you have any book suggestions for me in 2021, feel free to comment or DM me.

1. Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, by Svetlana Alexievich [Both a stunning and gutting look at the former Soviet Union and people's memories of its demise from 1991-2012. It brought me straight back to Ukraine and the way that Svetlana Alexievich tells the story--through the voices of the many different people she interviewed--reveals a striking constellation of human suffering and hope.]

2. Radium Girls, by Kate Moore [Read this book for a Zoom book club and it is haunting. The women's stories in this book have stuck with me.]

3. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder [This is not your typical WWII history book. It is also a book I wish I had read before my mission to eastern Ukraine.]

4. Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee [A beautiful story about Korean immigrants in Japan. Brings up questions of home, of cultural and racial discrimination, and of belonging.]

5. Silence, by Shūsaku Endō [I saw the movie a few years ago, but this was the first time I'd read the book. My "book notes" after finishing this book simply say, "Stunning. Gutting. Needed."]

6. Wind, Sand, and Stars, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry [The prose in this book is just beautiful. I especially loved the second chapter.]

7. I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith [Somehow I did not read this one as a high schooler, but I'm glad I've read it now.]

8. The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro [Another one that I somehow did not read until now. I found the story engaging and the narration really interesting.]

9. Hunger, by Roxane Gay [Powerful, powerful book.]

10. Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner [I know that, from a historical perspective, there are controversies surrounding this book, but I still liked it and found the stor(ies) compelling.]

--Some Books I re-read this year--

11. To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf [I got on a Virginia Woolf kick during the pandemic, as evidenced in my next favorite re-read . . .]

12. A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf [The last time I read this was a sophomore in college. I got more out of it this time.]

13. War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy [I first read this book during my last year of college in one of my favorite undergrad courses ever. It changed my life then, and I found that re-reading it in March/April--during the very beginning of quarantines was one of the very best things I could do for my emotional and mental health. Tolstoy writes about radical uncertainty very well, and I needed those reminders. Also, I will always have a soft spot in my heart for Pierre.]