The Woman Warrior

Tonight the University of Notre Dame opened a three-day conference celebrating 25 years of the democratic Chinese magazine Today. I attended with Marianne, Joan, and Laura Farina for a wine and sushi reception (fabulous), and to hear readings from one of my literary idols, Maxine Hong Kingston.

She was wonderful. She was pointed out to me while I sat in the atrium of McKenna Hall trying to identify the most polite way to eat a sushi roll: a petite woman in a black-and-white striped dress with shoulder-length gray-white hair pinned back at the side in cute little clips, standing with her back to me about seven feet away. I watched her greet the people she knew with hugs and thought, Ohhh she's nice. (It's lovely to see in person a favorite writer who is nice.)

And her readings were superb. She stood just a head above the lecturn in the cozy auditorium and told funny stories about her writing career (which began with a funny poem she made up when she was two, hanging out a second-story window from her mother's hands, greeting her great-uncles coming toward them in a coach drawn by a pair of black horses). And she read exerpts from her work. This is the thirtieth birthday of The Woman Warrior, and in the thirty years since its publication, Maxine discovered some errors (or omissions) in her representations of the myths of Fa Mu Lan and Ts'ai Yen, which she corrected (or added) in her readings. She has a low, easy voice and a relaxed presence. Her reading voice is excellent. And her passion for peace is both inspirational and contagious.

I left wanting to read everything she's written, and kicking myself for not bringing my copy of The Woman Warrior for her to sign. And as we filed out of the auditorium, I found myself walking right behind her.

I touched her shoulder and thanked her for presenting, and said, "It was an honor to hear you."

She squeezed my arm and said with a big, warm smile, "Thank you -- I love your coat! Pink -- so appropriate." (My pink spring coat coincided neatly with her concluding remarks on pink as the color of peace.)

Then she went to the table to sign books, and I wandered out into the frigid South Bend early spring night, happy happy happy.

If you haven't read Maxine Hong Kingston, please do. Not only is she brilliant and amazing and powerful in her works, she's also gracious and endearing.

So glad I went. So glad.

a day with Meg

Yesterday morning I had to go with my coworker Mary to set up a display for the Auction at the mall. Yes, folks, the mall where I drudged my life away for nine months on two minimum-wage, benefitless jobs.

I was unprepared for the strength of my reaction to that consumeristic, soulless place. I had, consciously, to wipe the disgust and revulsion and resentment off my face when we came out of the dingy back hallway into the main area of the mall. It actually took courage.

I didn't realize till yesterday that I really was miserable for a good deal of the time last year. And now, when things are going so incredibly, unbelievably, unexpectedly well, and I don't have to brave my way through everything, I can say, Man that sucked.

I mean, don't get me wrong. God was there, all the way through it. The ladies at Ann Taylor (none of whom work there anymore; the wonderful women who took me in as a surrogate daughter and sister have been replaced by toothy, snotty sharks who only want your dollars -- if they can tell right off the bat that you have dollars) gave me a place and a kind of family. But I was under several burdens, constantly and simultaneously: feeling inadequate in a sales job; feeling pressure to bring in more money or lose my job (this was from the upper management, not the management in my store); feeling despair at having to work so hard doing something that my personality and field of education didn't suit me to do.

So when I walked out of the mall after my three-hour table-sitting shift, I felt slightly sick -- poisoned, even. (The only upper was buying an ADORABLE mug at Gloria Jean's.) And on the way home, out of the blue, I called The Meg Formerly Known as Boss and audaciously invited myself to her charming house in Michigan for the afternoon. (It's harder to invite a married couple over to my small apartment when they have a real house with things like yardwork to do on Saturdays, when on Saturdays the height of my activity is maybe walking the dog next door.) So I drove up to Michigan -- and every time I drive to their house, even after eight months, I still need a refresher on directions; the generally decent map in my head abandons me when I cross the Michigan border -- and we went antiquing.

Antiquing was the perfect antidote to the mall. We poked around stalls in this big warehousey low-ceilinged building exclaiming over chairs, glassware, pots, lamps, chests, benches, stained glass windows. I fell in love with an old unstained kitchen chair, carved for comfort. And the woman who waited on me at checkout gave me a stranger's unexpected high praise. She asked if I were a student, and when I said no, she said, "Oh, let me guess what you do. I like doing this. Hang on -- I'm trying not to stare -- you're really lovely, you have wonderful teeth -- okay, let me guess what you do..." And she guessed wrong (lawyer's assistant), but when I told her my real job, she said, "Oh, you'd be really good at that, you have this warmth about you, it draws people. Some people give off this vicious vibe, but you're not vicious." And in the process of ringing me up, she found out I was funny to boot, and when Meg and I left she called after me, "Good luck, you're wonderful!"

It was a little crazy, but really nice. It purged the mall-poison from my system.

So then Meg and I went home and had an excellent dinner with Meg's husband Phillip (grr, I can never remember if I'm spelling his name right, I hope that's it -- Philips/Phillips are as picky as Sarahs/Saras when it comes to spelling), and then we went to see the local high school's production of The Wizard of Oz for which Meg and Phillip had done a lot of set work, and which Phillip was stage-managing. It was insanely cute, and the show was completely stolen by the cutest little four-year-old girl Toto anyone has ever seen. At several points there were at least twenty people onstage doing well-rehearsed dance numbers, and all eyes in the audience were fixed on this sweet little Toto doing her enthusiastic, unselfconscious level best to follow along. I kept whispering to Meg, "I can't take it. I want one."

So it was charming, and the set work, despite Meg's disappointment with the final result, was great. Oo and the Oz costume was amazing -- modeled after Western Native American dance costume, it featured a huge, frightening mask head on a frame several feet above the actor's head, from which flowed long loose robes, making Oz look enormous. There were also creepy metal claw-hands. Fantabulous.

It actually makes me want to see the Judy Garland version again. I haven't wanted to see that, even remotely, in ages.

So it was a good day. And tonight I'm planning on attending a Chinese lit conference at Notre Dame, and tonight's program features Maxine Hong Kingston reading some of her work -- I'm outrageously excited.

spammers

Okay, I mean come on. Who invents these names that show up in my bulk folder?

Today a guy named Castillo Harvey sent me a spam. Then there was Napoleon Huddleston and apparently his brother Jarold Huddleston who both wanted to tell me about tickets they say I'm being billed for.

Who has names like this? Who even invents names like this?

Ridiculous.

In other news, as the Auction nears, I'm surprisingly calm. I had a meltdown week last week, and my favorite guy friends were insanely nice and supportive, and this week when I'm doing fine they don't seem quite to know what to do with me. We've hung out and had good times, but sometimes they just seem...puzzled. "So, you're doing okay?" "Oh yeah, I'm doing fine now. Everyone says things are coming together well, so I decided to believe them." "Oh...good -- that's good." (Maybe they think I'm an insane woman, freaking out one week and blithely fine the next.)

But the thing is that the meltdowns tend to be few and far between. Ordinarily, I'm really fine. Sometimes I half-wish I were consistently broken, just because it seems to motivate men so much to try to make it better, to be there, and they make the greatest companions. And I grant you that I'm pretty lonely. But I can't fake that I'm doing poorly, when I'm usually doing fairly well.

I'm not sorry I'm doing well; I was broken for awhile, and I don't miss it. I do wish that I could find a way to be close to men without having big problems for them to try to fix. My only big problem is that I'm lonely and want someone to share life with, day by day. But how do you tell someone that? (Although I'm starting to.) So, usually when they ask how I'm doing, I say, "Fine -- yeah, everything's fine."

When it's kind of not...I mean, my life is great. I have a great job, great cat, great apartment, great friends, and I really feel like I'm settling in. But I keep coming back to the bare, bald fact that when I consider what I most want in life, it's a family. And I have no control over acquiring one. I have to wait.

But even with the frustration, the loneliness, the yearning, the hunger for intimacy in all its forms, I'm still not broken. And often that seems to drive the good men away. Like I don't need them. When I do need them. Not to fix me, not to save me, not to complete me; but to live alongside me and love me and see me.

Bah, it feels corny to be complaining about it. It'll happen, when I'm not clutching for it. I know this.

So it's a matter of cultivating contentment, a matter of time, and a matter of enjoying the people I know right now, while I have them. Everything will fall into place eventually. Everyone says so, so I think I'll believe them. (Because "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.")

Right?

Right.

overwork and odd bumps

I put in about 65 hours last week.

The next couple of weeks leading up to the auction are going to consume my life. This isn't of course bad -- it's like a strange combination of production week and finals week -- but I'm going to be exhausted by the end. The night itself will, I think, be quite fun.

Poor Simon spends so much time alone that he goes primordially insane when I walk through the door. He tears around the house making brrrrrrrt! noises and leaping out from behind furniture to bat madly at my ankles when I walk past. Lately our favorite game when I'm getting ready for bed involves him ferociously attacking my hands through the shower curtain while he sits in the bathtub. (When he sees the bare skin of my hands, however, he immediately desists and rubs against my fingers and starts purring.)

And I have this odd lump on the back of one of my vertebrae -- it doesn't seem to be attached to the bone, is slightly squishy, and hurts like hell, probably because I've been performing contortionist exercises to prod at it. My acupuncturist says it looks like a fatty nodule and needs an eye kept on it.

I'm freaked out and scared. What is it and why is it there? Is it dangerous? Should I get it looked at? What if I need some major surgery? What if it's cancer? Why does it hurt so much?

Prayer, please. I know I may be a little of an alarmist, but when it comes to my health, I really really like things to be normal. And this isn't normal.

new things

This week kicks off our "Biggest Loser" competition among the staff at work. Twelve people are participating, and there's a nice reward pot for whoever wins.

I'm excited to do this. Now, I know I don't techincally have a weight problem, but I've been steadily putting on the pounds over the past year, and I don't like it. I know with absolute confidence that I will not win the "Biggest Loser" prize, but I look forward to the camaraderie of working with other people to establish healthy patterns of eating and excercise, which will hopefully outlast the 4-month competition and continue into my future.

So yesterday I went for a brisk long walk through sopping spring snow (the snow actually completely covered my glasses and soaked my coat), and today I plan to implement a new two-hour lunchbreak plan, where I still come in at seven and leave at five instead of four. This way I can take a nice walk during my lunch, shower if necessary, eat, relax, and head back to work. (This is the closest to a "siesta" that I can get this side of the Altantic.)

And now I have to roll up my sleeves about the Auction. I'm starting to stress about it. It's a huge task, I've never done anything like it before, and there are so many different tasks that I need to do that it's difficult to stay organized. BUT I have to have faith in the God who put me here, and who equipped me for it -- I don't have to do this alone.

And that's the other thing -- I feel like this weekend contained the perfect balance of companionship and solitude. I hung out with MP, chilled with some of the most fun of the grad students at her apartment for sweeping rounds of Balderdash and Bullshit (both of which I sweepingly lost, but it was oh-so-much fun), and Sunday was church and much-needed shoe shopping, and then an afternoon of trying to take a nap while Simon jumped on my head, and an evening of movie-watching by myself while I figured out my menu and grocery list for the week, and finished paying off my bills. (Ugh.)

So it was good. No matter how well I sleep on Sunday nights, it's never enough for Monday morning, but I'm going to keep this nice past weekend close to mind as a landmark of sanity when everything starts to go crazy...starting in about ten minutes when I have a meeting to figure out what we're putting in the program, get the program text written, figure out volunteer contact information to go into the program, and various and sundry other panic-related things as we all completely wig out.

But it's going to be okay -- by and by. I really need to keep the stress under control. When I don't, it keeps me from falling asleep, seeps into my dreams when I finally do drift off, wakes me up from the dreams to continue worrying, and brings my menstruation on early. (Oh yes. Some girls skip their period when they're stressed; mine comes sooner. So lucky.)

SO, I have a strict don't-think-about-it-when-you're-not-at-work policy. Which has been working so far. But we'll see, when the poo finally hits the fan. In five minutes.

Here's to relying on grace!

a great week

So, after all the angst and misery and anguish of last week, this week was splendid.

It all started, surprisingly and ironically, of course, with church. After tearful conversations on the phone with various people of various degrees of understanding, MP said, "Sarah, come with me to Calvary Temple. Just this Sunday." And I, who left this church at the beginning of last autumn, and who normally decline MP's invitations to go back, said, "Yes, okay."

It didn't cross my mind not to go. And the entire service was unbelievable. I sat there stunned, thinking, this is God gently telling me that it's okay. That everything is okay. And that there's a place for me.

Because the pastor, just after a great worship service, stood up and said, "The word of the Lord today is one word. It's two syllables. The first syllable is re." And I thought, oh-the-second-syllable-is-PENT-okay-I-should-probably-repent-of-my-bad-attitudes, and then the pastor said, "And the second syllable is lax."

And I sat back and thought...oh. Oh.

And the sermon, preached by my favorite pastor at this church, addressed almost everything that's been important lately. I was challenged, encouraged, and filled with joy. And afterward there was a luncheon for the young adults at the head pastor's home, and MP and I both went, and we met some truly fabulous people. One girl busted out with the occasional "shit" and another was telling me how much she enjoys wine. And I just relaxed and bathed in the company of other, normal, cool, amazing young people who are connected with church.

This doesn't mean that any of my previous complaints no longer have value. They very clearly do. But God took me by the shoulders and showed me that the whole thing is not hopeless. And I basked in the "God-afterglow," as MP calls it, for the rest of the week.

The Miracle Auction that I'm running at work is three weeks away. There's so much to do. And this week I wasn't going crazy with stress. I just did what I needed to do. A few coworkers for whom I care greatly are undergoing various extremely stressful personal scenarios, and instead of worrying myself sick over them, I prayed. And prayed. And prayed. And was suffused with peace. And overall a vast thankfulness, that God has brought me here, and is still leading me.

The week has had its challenges. Last night I plunged into momentary discouragement, where I was convinced I'd die alone, and started to feel like I felt all through February. But then I said, "No. I'm sick of being depressed. I don't want to feel this way anymore. God is GOOD, and His gifts are GOOD, and they're pouring out more than I had imagined possible." So I relaxed, and chose hope, peace, love, and faith.

And now it's the weekend -- the last free weekend I'll have till after the auction, since work will, starting Monday, overcome my life for the next three weeks. Last night I went to the Fiddler's with two of my favorite coworkers (the only person missing was Meg), and we hung out and told stories and talked, and then I went home feeling that momentary lonely discouragement and instead of wallowing, I baked a pan of cornbread, took a long soak in a tub full of relaxing bath salts, read half of a cheesy romance novel, started a historical exploration of Helen of Troy, and went to bed. This morning I slept in, read, and began cleaning the house. Soon I'll head over to MP's to do laundry and chill, come home to walk the dog next door, and head back to MP's for a game night. Tomorrow is church and an afternoon of relaxation.

A great week. Thank you, Jesus, a great week.