Three years is long, fast time

Just about three years ago...

 

Now, our little boys are our "big" boys!

Remembering Elwood

In honor of Veteran's Day today, here's a little thing I wrote in September 2007, about an experience Papa and I had before the premier of Ken Burns' documentary The War.

***

We drove down to Luverne in the late afternoon to meet up with dear friends and their four children. When we arrived, the kids were checking out the vintage cars parked in front of the courthouse, where locals were scheduled to speak before a parade to the Palace Theater where the showing would be. Their youngest wondered how the convertible owners could get the hoods on fast enough should rain appear, as the gears were manual. The sky overhead misted with gray clouds and threatened to test his theory.

We went to dinner at the Pizza Ranch two doors down from the newly renovated Palace. Our meal was a quiet, happy time—our friends asked their kids to eat salad along with their pizza, a teenage waiter brought us fried chicken since the buffet was out, we laughed and caught up on news since the last time we had visited—until the evening news, broadcast on a largely ignored big screen in the middle of the restaurant, turned to a segment on Ken Burns’ visit to Luverne and the film’s premiere. All of a sudden the conversations stilled and everyone turned to watch. But it was only a moment, and the sound was low, and we soon resumed our conversations and our laughter.

 

The rain came during dinner—we watched it evolve from glistening sheets to half-hearted pitter-patter—and by the time we emerged, mints in mouth, the sun was trying to break through the still ubiquitous clouds. We walked back to the courthouse to find the presentation had been cancelled (and the cars with their hoods up), and we returned to the Palace, fearful the “red carpet” processional would be cancelled too. That would be our big moment, the chance to see Ken Burns for a fleeting moment. The kids and I strategized as to how to get Mr. Burns’ autograph for my long-distant sister—perhaps the youngest daughter could trip in front of him and after he asked what he could do—because he would be unfailingly polite—she would smile winsomely and whip out the little pad and pen.We giggled at our plans.

Some great kids and I, excitedly waiting.

 People milled here and there, as forties era music played over loudspeakers. Most were dressed casually; the American Legion members who had the honor of holding the flags at the entrance of the theater tried to figure out what order to be in as onlookers tried to figure out the best place to stand. I saw a man with a World War II veteran hat on, standing nearby. 

I love meeting veterans, especially ones who've lived long and seen much, whose young adult-hoods were consumed by sacrifices I, now a young adult, can't even begin to comprehend. So I approached the man with the hat and thanked him for his service. He smiled and said, “Thank you for thanking me.” I said something, protesting politely, about he was the one who should be thanked, and his face grew serious and he looked me close, and said, “Young lady, there’s only one thing you should remember. Four hundred and seven thousand boys just like me went to war, and they never came home. It is because of what they gave that we can live the way we do.” His eyes were misty.

The man told me his name—Elwood, from Chandler, Minnesota. He served as a junior officer in the Navy —“not anything real important”—in the south Pacific, and he served on a ship for over 700 consecutive days. No leave. “It was one month shy of two years,” he said. His daughter came up and he showed me her shirt—on the front was his name and a picture of his 21-year-old self in Navy whites. On the back was the ship on which he sailed and the places he landed, the last being Okinawa. Reverently, he told me how they landed there on Easter morning, 1945.

He spoke of how little young people know about the war and about the world generally. Not disparagingly, but sadly. “They must learn about what happened,” he said. Not to honor him, but to remember and understand the sacrifice of all the young men who never came home.

One of many memorials we saw.

What a terrible burden it is, to live proud of the service you gave, and every once in a while to be honored for that service, but to know that you are honored because you lived, and loved and worked, and so many others—your friends, your neighbors, your cousins and brothers—never left the far-away places of war. They never reaped earthly joys of cherishing wife and children, friends and neighbors. They never experienced the daily, simple toil of farming on land long held by kinsmen, of growing old and going out for cups of coffee to commiserate about the price of soybeans. They never came home.

As I listened to Elwood, I blinked to stop my sudden tears and my eyes caught the top of the Hotel Manitou, one built by dedicated hands early in the twentieth century. I thought, “We live such comfortable, leisurely lives, without even thinking of it.” Standing on a dusky street, smelling the wet pavement, watching the excitement of people who have lived comfortably because of others' service—these are priceless times of privilege that we take for granted. Elwood's story reminded me, shocked me really, of the quotidian things that those boys that never came home relinquished freely. Their sacrifice is both awesome and terrible. 

And their sacrifice enables us, the living, to laugh over pizza, to debate over rainy weather predictions, to gather together for civic events with loved ones. Ironically, their awful sacrifice often means we forget them as we move along, ahead. We even forget the ones who did come home, like Elwood. But we shouldn't, and we can't. It is because of what our veterans gave that we can live the way we do. And the living veterans deserve our honor and our thanks, just as we remember their brothers buried far away, for what they have given us.

***

We ended up seeing the premiere and Ken Burns, which was a great experience. But I am more grateful that I met Elwood that day, who reminded me then, and today, to whom I and my children, and all Americans, owe immeasurable thanks.

Old, Gold Friends

Growing up, I always wanted a bosom friendship like Anne Shirley and Diana Barry shared. I was blessed with a twin sister--a topic worthy of not just a blog post but an entire book. Probably a series!--but I guess I was attracted to the allure of finding a female kindred spirit that didn't happen to come from the same parents and share the same uterus as I did. I made a few good friends in high school and never lacked for people to run around with, but especially my senior year I felt lonely a lot. I'd made some really great friends over the summer at Lutheran Summer Music the prior summer, and those four girls gave me a wonderful blessing of deep, if quickly made, friendship. I hoped I found a hint of that bond in college.

Well, God was gracious, and He gave me a dear, wonderful friend in Monica, who was my roommate throughout college, excepting the year I studied abroad and she took a turn as an RA. To this day she and I are great friends, and words can't express how thankful I am for her. Funnily enough, she grew up in the same area as Papa, and they attended the same Lutheran grade school, though not at the same time. (I've learned that I really like blond, stoically Lutheran, super awesome Milwaukee-area-bred people. Call me a wannabe-Wisconsinite.) Anyway, Monica and I made friends in other contexts at school, and through a long and circuitous route we befriended and were friended by a group of terrific girls. Our senior year we all tried to live together in a ramshackle house just a block from campus, but the house could hold six, and we were seven. So Monica and I roomed together in an apartment with two other awesome ladies and popped over to the Green House throughout the year to hang out and visit.

Fast-forward eight years to now. Some of us have married; some of us have traveled; some of us have lived rural and some of us have lived urban. All of us have completed master's degrees; all of us are still trying to live the lives that God has set before us in the ways He would see fit. We've never been together again, all of us, since graduation, until late in May. After kicking around a 30th-birthday-year get-together for almost a year, we finally settled on having a reunion here over Memorial Day weekend.

I wish I could adequately express how logistically perfect everyone's travel, job schedules, and life events generally had to coalesce to make this happen. Suffice it to say that we managed to get all of us together in rural Minnesota (which was amazing by itself!), when just weeks earlier three--I think--of us had been overseas (China, France, Switzerland/England) and Monica and I were between babies (C nearly six months old, Monica's babe about a month from birth). On paper, we didn't do much: ate a LOT, took walks, visited the Monument, went to church together. It was perfect. We laughed a lot and cried a lot and didn't stop talking for forty-eight hours (with a few winks for sleep in there). And I can say that just thinking about those precious days together make my eyes water and my heart swell. These women are incredible. We have our differences, as everyone does, but we support each other and love each other. "Keep the old," the saying goes about friends. They are gold. They are priceless, and their friendship is priceless.

I could go on and on about this, but I'll leave with this: thank you, thank you to Monica, Julie, Gretchen, Sarah M., Katie, and Sarah S.--to all the Green House girls. You are old, gold friends--bosom sister-friends!--and I pray we will have many, many other reunions as we age.

Jules brought some decorations!

Together after church. So incredibly special.

Dancing Shoes and The Nutcracker

About a month ago, while I was going through basement boxes, I found my pointe shoes. Pointe shoes, for the uninitiated, are the fabric, leather, and glue-constructed, box-toed shoes that older ballet dancers wear that enable them to dance, literally, on the tops of their toes. I took a picture for posterity's sake.

I'd kept these old, worn shoes, I suppose, as sort of relics of a cherished time. I'd left sticky notes on the undersides of a few:


"First Pair--
9 years old
June Conn School of Dance"

"1996 Nutcracker
Baker School
Martzipan & Flower
(Later, Mom chalaced [sic] these & another pair 3 times! They shrunk!)"

I kept only one of my first pair, and I obviously was proud of the fact that by the time I performed in my last Nutcracker, I had to rotate pairs to get the best wear out of them, and even then my mom added a clear shellac to the shank to preserve their life. (All pointe shoes wear out after extensive use, and shellacking them can keep the shanks--the part that extends across the bottom of the foot--and the box--the flat part that dancers stand upon when in full relevé--from weakening more quickly. Evidently the shellac also ended up shrinking the fabric on my shoes, too.)

So with my shoes in mind, and in this the season of The Nutcracker, I'm indulging in a little walk down memory lane as I remember with fondness my years in ballet and the many productions in which I participated. A little history: when my family lived in southeastern Kentucky in the late 1980s, my sister and I, then first or second graders, began taking ballet lessons from dancers with the Lexington Ballet who would drive to our rural area once a week. We'd meet in an upstairs room above the fire station. I can still remember sitting in a circle with a bunch of little girls, my feet palm to palm, so to speak, gently flapping my knees, trying to be flexible enough to get them to touch the floor. The teacher would ask us what stickers we imagined we had on our heels. I dimly remember talking about butterflies and rainbows and fairies on mine. The incongruity of our setting belied the fine instruction we received; in retrospect, my parents and I were prepared only for classical, extremely high-quality ballet instruction after that.

We went to a production of Cinderella in Lexington at some point, and I will never forget how entranced I was--the music, the costumes, the loveliness. I wanted to be a dancer after that. Angelina Ballerina was a favorite (new back then!) book, as was one I found a few years later at our local library called A Very Young Dancer. That book, more than anything, made me want to visit New York, see Balanchine's production, and participate myself in The Nutcracker (but probably not at the New York City Ballet). Interestingly, this recent article on A Very Young Dancer includes this tidbit: “As a girl from Kentucky,” Ms. Whelan said, “this book literally opened the door to my fascination with New York City, ballet and Balanchine." That's how I reacted, too.

We moved several times, and I was blessed to take lessons for about seven years, including at the now-closed Lancaster Ballet and a short stint at BalletMet in Columbus, Ohio. I participated in countless Nutcrackers, in nearly every divertissement in the second act. My favorite was dancing as a Flower in The Waltz of the Flowers.  By the time I finished junior high school, though, I realized that I didn't want to be a professional dancer, and other interests--singing, mostly--were crowding out my time. I had to stop abruptly when I was fifteen due to continuing knee problems, and at the time, though I'd already decided I'd want to stop eventually, the rift between my pre-ballet life and my post-ballet life was stark. In some ways I had to figure out what made me unique outside of that ballet descriptor. (As a side note, Stephanie's experience after A Very Young Dancer was sad but common, I think. So many dancers don't "make it." I'm thankful  that my memories are good.)

 It truly seems like another life to me when I think about it now. At my peak participation, I attended three three-hour classes a week, from six until nine o'clock at night. (My wonderful parents were, needless to say, extremely supportive.) The slightly pungent air of big, open studios; the piano accompaniment keeping time and moving us; the feel of the wood or steel barre under fingers; the laughter of camaraderie between aching dancers; the tiny, quiet, authoritative ballet mistresses showing us movements that we learned instantly--tiny moments, snapshots in my mind, are what I remember now. I learned countless lessons from my time as a young dancer--an appreciation for beautiful music, for performance, for precision, for the effort seeming effortlessness requires. For smiling through pain. For how transformative and--I don't like this word, but it fits here--empowering dancing can be for children, even awkward teenagers (boys and girls). If my children ever express an interest in dance, particularly ballet, I hope we can provide that experience for them.

Lots of sweat, pain, and joy in these shoes.

So back to The Nutcracker. Over our first Thanksgiving of our married life, Papa and I--who were living in Connecticut at the time--went to New York City for the weekend. We saw the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, walked the streets of downtown (but decided against the three hour wait to get to the top of the Empire State Building), did some shopping, ate a 9 p.m. Thanksgiving feast at the Waldorf-Astoria (because we figured this would never happen again), and generally had a great time. Papa, in all of his kindness, agreed that the one show we would see was George Balanchine's The Nutcracker performed by the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center. What a great guy. This had been a dream of mine, obviously, since childhood. And it was magic. Though I have no pictures of that visit, I have the 50th anniversary commemorative book of Balanchine's production (which was the season we saw it). And when I pulled it out the other day, I couldn't stop smiling. I hope you all can see a local production sometime, particularly if it's a traditional staging. So happy, happy visions of sugarplums!