Grieving the Possibility

Ensign and Mrs. Waugh at the Intruder Ball, 1983
Ensign and Mrs. Waugh at the Intruder Ball, 1983

For many, Veterans Day is a day to remember those who have served our nation in the armed forces.  Originally known as Armistice Day, it marked the anniversary of the First World War or as it was known hopefully by those who lived through that frightening time; the “war to end all wars”.  For me, for the past thirty years it has been the day I miscarried my last child.

I will always remember this event happened on Veterans Day.  Dave was on active duty at the time  and so we went to the labor and delivery deck at the old Portsmouth Naval Hospital; a scary building which was originally built as the brig. (I’m not sure when it was built, but I’m fairy certain it dates back to when the original hospital was built in 1827.)  Because of the holiday  there was minimal staff and were not  particularly warm or considerate, treating me more like an inconvenience than someone in distress.

I received adequate care but the holiday created  enough hiccoughs in services like the unavailability of clean linens, etc.,  that the fact that my miscarriage landed on a national holiday, has been firmly planted in my brain and so does not slip by each year unnoticed.

So, every year while people seem to trip over themselves to “thank us for our service,”  which, by the way, is a relatively new concept in my almost forty years of military wife experience, I instead spend time wondering how our lives might have been different if we’d had a third child as a member of our family.

The only thing we knew for certain about this child was that it was a boy.  There were indications leading up to my miscarriage that his heartbeat was slowing but whether that was indicative of a defect or just part of his passing, we’ll never know. All we can say for sure it that there once was a possibility of a child, his health may have been poor and that even after thirty years gone by, I still look back and wonder just what it would have been like to have been his mother.

This year’s remembrance of my lost child has been compounded by my feelings about the result of last week’s presidential election.  Just as I was certain at the beginning of my last pregnancy that I would carry my baby to term, I was equally as certain, based on Nate Silver’s track record and my own hopes, that our country would elect Hillary Clinton to be our next president.  Neither happened as I would have expected.

And so this year, I also grieve the loss of what might have been.  The potential of what Hillary Clinton could have brought to our county is what we will never know and it saddens me deeply.  I’ve never cried after election results were announced before.  Since Wednesday morning I’ve teetered on the edge and several times have allowed myself the self-indulgence of a good cry. It doesn’t change anything, it doesn’t make me feel any better, it just is.

Thursday afternoon Dave and I went down to Colonial Williamsburg for a long awaited getaway weekend.  As we emerged ourselves in colonial America, I began to regain my perspective.  On our visit to Charlton’s Coffee House on Duke of Gloucester Street we were immersed in the year 1765.  After our interpreter gave her presentation  regarding the “current” debate about the recent Stamp Acts she asked those gathered if there were any questions.  A woman asked if there had been much talk of revolution.  Staying in character, the interpreter replied no.  She went on to say that there was not telling what would happen within the next ten years or so, but for now (1765) the residents of Williamsburg were all good British subjects and happy to be so.  And in all reality, if the revolution hadn’t happened, I don’t think our lives would be radically different from what they are today.

And so it goes.  We just don’t know what will come our way in the next ten years.  All we can count on for certain is that time will pass and things will change, because they always do.  Going forward, I will try to wrap my head around our new national reality and continue my work in my community but there will always be that part of me that will wonder about what could have been.

Believe It Or Not!

Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum, Atlantic City.  (Thank you Jeff Kaplowitz for taking this awesome photo.)
Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum, Atlantic City. (Thank you Jeff Kaplowitz for taking this awesome photo.)

How would you spend your time if you were going to spend a couple of hours on the boardwalk in Atlantic City?  Would you visit a casino?  Would you spend some time on the beach?  Maybe you’d check out the large selection of factory outlet stores or indulge in the continual feast of beach food down the older section of the boardwalk and buy some beach souvenirs.

Would you believe Dave and I spent last Saturday morning on the boardwalk in Atlantic City and didn’t do any of these things?  Instead, after walking in the hot sun for forty-five minutes, we chose to spend $12 a piece (with a military discount) to tour the Ripley Museum; believe it or not!

The reason we were in town had nothing to do with Atlantic City except that it was near the home of a college buddy who was hosting a party for a whole crew of folks, many of whom hadn’t seen each other in almost forty years.  After spending almost seven hours in the car on Friday crawling around DC and Baltimore we were ready to stretch our legs a bit and the Boardwalk seemed a likely place.

We were big fans of Boardwalk Empire so the thought of retracing Nucky Thompson’s footsteps seemed like an appropriate way to spend our time.  However, the modern day boardwalk bears little resemblance to that of the twenties and thirties.  The wooden facades are long gone, replaced by modern casinos with “themed” fronts facing the ocean.

In one spot there was a small park with a replica of a covered wagon.  It may have been part of a casino, otherwise I’m not sure of its significance.  Certainly if folks in New Jersey loaded up covered wagons some time in history, it was to go somewhere else, and definitely not Atlantic City!

Poles along the beach side are topped with TV’s broadcasting commercials and playing popular music so you can’t even look out at the ocean without having your thoughts interrupted.  In fact, the benches faced the Boardwalk and were conveniently situated near charging stations, so visitors never had to worry about waning battery life on smart phones.  God forbid!

Also gone are the natty dressers.  It would have been nice to see men in crisp linen suits and straw hats escorting women in loose fitting lawn frocks, but they, like Nucky, there too are from a time long past.  Replacing them are hoards of the beach-clad from all nations; most of them revealing much more of their bodies than I’d prefer to see.

So, with a lack of things worth looking at on the Boardwalk, Dave decided to humor me and we retreated into the air-conditioned world of Robert Ripley where it wasn’t impolite to stare at oddities. Believe it or not!

 

 

 

 

Stories From Under the Sink

IMG_0560Yesterday we had new countertops installed in our kitchen.  I never really minded the old ones, formica is okay with me but these days it seems that homebuyers insist on solid surface countertops.  We’re not selling our home since we added an island to our kitchen, our current tops were not big enough and knowing we’ll have to sell sometime down the road, we elected to pay the extra now.

The best part of the new countertops is my new under-mount sink.  That is one thing I have long coveted.  The thought of not having to scrape built-up kitchen goo from around the rim of a sink sends shivers down my spine!

After allowing a period of settling for the new sink, this afternoon my plumber, Wayne stopped by to hook up all the drain fittings and faucet.  I am perfectly capable of doing all that myself, but I have learned that plumbing projects many times involve an element of surprise that are not pleasant.  Having Wayne do the job meant that if there were any surprises, he was more than able to handle them.  Besides, I enjoy being the “helper” a lot more than the person who contorts themselves under the sink.

As he worked we chatted.  It takes a really cold duck to avoid chatting with me while working in my house.  Usually we chat about the weather, or some local doings.  Today though, Wayne shared an amazing story from his life, about how he became a plumber.

Not long after he graduated from high school, Wayne was involved in a head on collision which left him with severe head trauma and in a coma for six months.  Just days before his family were planning to remove him from life-support, he regained consciousness but was unable to talk and his entire left side was paralyzed.

From the hospital he went to a rehab center where he spent another two years re-learning how to talk and walk.  His memory had been pretty much wiped clean and his family worked with him to fill in the gaps of his life story.

During his time in the rehab center, he met a man who told him to give him a call when he got out and he would give him a job.  Wayne didn’t know what kind of job he would have but was happy to have a job to go to.

The first day he reported to work, the man wasn’t there.  Some other men gave him a broom and told him to start sweeping.  A little while later, when the man showed up, he said,”I didn’t hire you to sweep. You’re going to be a plumber!”

The rest is history.  Wayne was trained as a plumber and has reached master plumber status.  He is certain that he is on this earth due solely to God’s grace and his faith is quiet and genuine. Hearing the story of his survival of the accident and long road back amazed me.  I don’t know what I’d expect someone with that kind of story to look like, but certainly not like Wayne.

With all the commotion in my kitchen the past couple of days, I’ve been distracted and missed my daily time with God.  As always, when I fail to talk to God, God finds ways to talk to me.

Thank you God!

 

 

 

Learning New Tricks

qr_code_without_logo
QR Code for the webpage for Habitat for Humanity, Greene County, VA

These last few weeks in May public attention is focused upon graduations.  Every weekend newscast, newspaper front pages and a good percentage of Facebook posts feature happy people of all ages dressed in caps and gowns.  It’s impossible to see these images and not think back on my own personal milestones; my high school and college graduation ceremonies.  Truthfully, I don’t remember much about either one of them, I remember sitting on risers for high school and in the hot sun on the lawn when I graduated from Rutgers.

Instead, I tend to remember the details of the after parties more.  On the drive home from my high school party I drowsily called my date by the wrong first name (oops!).  En route to our college graduation party, the driver of the car I was riding in momentarily lost control and we went into a spin.  I remember how the huge aluminum panels of the semi truck we managed to miss flashed by my window.  It felt like a brush with death. Anyway, all this graduation reminiscing has made me again begin to ponder the rightness of my current course in life.

Yesterday I attended a workshop on Social Media presented by the Virginia Small Business Development Center and hosted by our local Chamber of Commerce.  The workshop was held at a satellite campus of the community college so in a way, I was back on campus again.  During my registration, I spoke to a middle-aged woman who had a mylar balloon floating above her desk.  I asked if it was her birthday.  She said no, she had just graduated with the Associate’s Degree the previous weekend.  I congratulated her and went on to get some coffee.

As I walked away, I considered the tremendous effort and sacrifice this woman had made to achieve this goal.  Even though she worked on campus, certainly the time necessary to attend classes and study weighed heavily on her already full schedule of work and family life.  More importantly, I wondered what would prompt me to make the same choice.

Part of me has always felt like a bit of a slacker because I’ve never pursued an advanced degree.  Even with my Bachelor’s degree, I am now the most under educated person in my little family; Dave has two Masters, Maggie and an advanced certificate and Andy has his PhD.  It’s not that I’m opposed to learning, I just never felt the fire to go back to school.

Then yesterday’s workshop happened.  I attended on a whim.  In my position at Habitat for Humanity here in Greene County, I attend the Chamber meetings.  When the offer of this workshop in Social Media came up as a part of a Small Business Development Day, I thought, what the heck, why not?  So I went.

I learned so much about ways I can improve Habitat’s visibility in the community.  When I got home, I ran up to my office and with my newly attained knowledge, revamped our webpage a bit, made it mobile enabled and even created a QR code for our flyers and mailers!  What a rush, as we used to say in college!

So, in the end I guess I unlocked the motivation to go back to school, not only to gain the knowledge, but to take it on and use it and share it.  And for me,  I guess I don’t need the extra certificates and paper with my name on it.  Little hits of information work just as well.

Am I Blue?

IMG_1026For the past several weeks, Dave and I have been trying to choose a new color for the walls in our family room.  From the first time I saw the pale blue walls, I knew the blue had to go.  Although the color was part of a pallet chosen by the decorators at Lowe’s and marketed as such on a little card, pale blue didn’t seem an appropriate color for a family room.

And, even after we moved in and placed our furnishings, which all complemented the blue nicely, I was determined that at some point in the future, we’d have to choose a more neutral color, more fitting for the space.

After almost four years of my griping about the wall color, we went to Lowe’s and had a couple of samples mixed to test on our walls.  Dave painted swatches of the two taupey-beiges in a couple of places to carefully consider different light plays in the room and we spent many days comparing the two to our room only to decide that neither were the “right” color.  I went back to Lowe’s, picked up a couple more chips and we decided to try a pale grey.

One morning I bought my sample and tried it in another spot on the wall.  After weeks of pondering, we were fairly certain the grey was what we wanted, although we’d have to change the picture over the fireplace to bring a little more color.  Fairly certain of our decision, we determined to paint the room the next time we had a free weekend.

As always, our life is pretty full and our weekends especially seem to be loaded with stuff.  For the past two weekends, we’ve had houseguests, which is the best kind of stuff to have.  With the taupey-beige and grey test spots still on the blue walls, conversation with both sets of guests naturally turned to our wall color.  First, it was my sister Barb who said she’d always liked the blue and didn’t understand why we’d want to change it.  Then, last weekend, my friend Lori, who is an interior designer, after careful consideration rendered her opinion that indeed the blue worked in that room.  The one thing I was right about was we needed more color over the fireplace.

Isn’t that just how it goes?  All the while I knew there was something not quite right in that room but instead of looking at one minor correction, I was convinced that a drastic change had to be made.  Truth be told, I actually like the blue.  My motivation for changing the color was that it seemed inappropriate.  What’s that all about?  I didn’t worry about appropriateness when I painted the bathroom in our last house purple or our kitchen turquoise.  Who was I trying to please?

Anyone who knows me knows that I tend to march to the beat of my own drum, so why would I even worry about what anyone else thinks about my choices in decor?  Sometimes I think those of us who appear to march to our own beat are partially just plain unable to catch the beat of ground and march along so we make the best of our awkwardness.  We can’t keep step so we create our own cadence.  I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, just a thing.

So, our next free weekend, I’ll be repainting the family room the same color it already is and searching for the perfect picture to put over the fireplace.  Who knows, it may be something I already have.  Wouldn’t that be a kick?

 

Your Tears Will Be Turned Into Dancing!

cursillo-chicken

Women often reflect the world around them in their countenance, posture and attitude.  When we are tired, we drop our shoulders.  When we are attempting to find balance in our lives, we can seem controlling.  And when we are is despair, we can appear distant and cold.  We build walls to protect us from harm and hand curtains to hide our hurt from others.

Just as we religiously apply our BB cream every morning to blend in the dark spots, we, like Eleanor Rigby, put on our face that we keep in a jar by the door and face the world.  We are determined not to share our hurt, guilt, shame and disappointments, all at a very dear price; our own peace.

At this weekend’s Women’s Cursillo,  I witnessed what happens when a group of women are gathered and freed from their daily responsibilities and given a place where they are not only allowed to be who they are but celebrated for being no more than who they are; daughters of God,  warts, bumps, scars and all!

Women stood taller.  Women smiled more freely and laughed heartily.  Women sang in incredible harmonies and danced like their bodies had been aching to move for a long, long time.  The transformation was a thing of awe.

Granted, this metanoia was fueled by a lack of sleep and overabundance of chocolate, but similar to the vision quests young native Americans would take, the great Spirit came down upon each one of us this weekend and refreshed and renewed our souls.

The Spirit did not make us holy, we already were in God’s eyes. Instead, our eyes were opened and we were able to see our holiness, some of us for the first time.

My name is Monica and I made my Cursillo at Camp Overlook in October, 2012 at the table of the Seekers of the Light Within.    I was blessed with the opportunity to serve on this past weekend’s preparation team.  I hope I’ve given you a teasing glimpse of what Cursillo is and how it can lift your soul.  (I can’t tell you more or I’d have to kill you! lol)

If you’d like more information about Cursillo in Central Virginia, please contact Valley Cursillo at  www.valleycursillo.com.  If you live outside our area, check out www.cursillo.org. You’ll be glad you did!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRAUH8yBcQ

 

 

 

Tooth Truth

Did you ever consider that some of the everyday errands you run could be envied by somebody else?

compromising tooth

Last week I while I sat waiting for my name to be called at the dentist’s office for a routine cleaning and exam, I witnessed a scene that I haven’t been able to shake from my mind.

A woman came in and quietly asked the receptionist if they were accepting new patients.  Yes, they were.  Her next question  concerned the type of dental insurance the office accepted.  No, they didn’t accept her insurance.

“How much does it cost to get an exam and cleaning? ” the woman asked.  The receptionist answered that the charges for the initial visit were almost $400.

Visibly disappointed, the woman said she would need to check to see who carried her insurance because she really needed to see a dentist, she’d lost a tooth the previous week and others were loose.  Although the receptionist was kind and compassionate to the woman, she didn’t have a solution to the woman’s problem. With her head low,  she left.

I have been blessed with regular dental care my entire life, even in the years when there was no such thing as dental insurance.  It was a sacrifice for my parents to provide me with the care I needed, but it was a priority for them and they found the resources to make it happen.  As a result, except for #31, I still have all my own teeth.  And, while I realized long ago that others have not been so fortunate, I’ve rarely witnessed the yearning for healthy teeth first hand.

Here in rural Virginia, it is not uncommon to run into folks with teeth missing, not in the back, like my #31, but right up front for all the world to see, or to see middle-aged adults with no teeth at all.

As a child, I lived for more than  three years with a gap where my right front incisor should have been.  Family photos reflect years of me smiling with my lips tight.  Because of this I’m very sensitive to the feelings of people with missing teeth.  I felt like the ugly duckling and it affected my self-esteem for a long time.

This is the first image I got when I Googled, "Hillbilly clipart".
This is the first image I got when I Googled, “Hillbilly clipart”.

Let’s face it, our culture takes great liberty at the expense of  people with missing and crooked teeth, equating them with ignorance, lack of good hygiene and labeling them as lower class.  It’s part of the cultural lexicon, the hillbilly with the random teeth, or the mentally challenged with the crooked or buck teeth.  I’m no expert, but I would be willing to bet that most folks, given the financial opportunity, would choose to have a full set of straight pearly whites.

In a perfect world, everyone would have access.  But, the world is far from perfect and I’m not advocating that we should institute universal dental coverage.  What I am suggesting is that when you see someone with a tooth or two missing, don’t be so quick to judge them and if you are able to pay for regular dental care, don’t take it for granted.

If you have dental insurance or can afford the cost out-of-pocket, you are one of the lucky ones.  For what ever reason, God has chosen you to be one of the ones who are gifted with this.  The fact that someone else has not, is not a punishment, it simply is.

So that was my epiphany in the waiting room at the dentist’s.  I could have spent the time mindlessly playing a word game on my phone, but instead spent some time with Spirit.  After she left, I said a prayer for the woman that she gets what she needs because I certainly received a reality check I needed.

 

 

 

Submitted For Your Approval

 

 

IMG_0815.JPG…….A young, middle-aged woman, while confined to her home suffering the ravages of a nasty cold she contracted from her spouse, spends long, cough filled days in her recliner, binge streaming scores of episodes of a program she recently discovered on Netflix called, “The Dead Files”. The series chronicles the paranormal investigations of physical medium Amy Allan and her partner, Steve DiSchiavi, a retired NYC cop, as they respond to requests from desperate people seeking answers to unexplained paranormal occurrences in their homes and businesses. The two work independently, coming together only at the end with remarkably similar findings.   Is it proof of spirits living amongst us, or just a carefully choreographed hoax designed to mislead the viewer?  Come, explore with me in the Twilight (of cold meds) Zone…..

Yes, I am the ailing body with toes pointing towards my contact to the outside and in this case, the other world. Almost everyone who know me well accepts the fact that along with my deep spiritual belief in God, I also firmly believe in angels, and allow for the possibility of a host of other types of beings unseen by the average person.  Programs like this attract me and entertain my mind.  That being said, I’d like to switch gears here and focus on a very much human part of this equation; the people who feel these entities sharing their homes and the effect that this belief, real or imagined could have on a family or individual.

As a part of Steve and Amy’s investigation, family members, including the children, are asked to describe what they have been experiencing.  One little boy, about seven, sat on his bed, his legs swinging, telling about the person who visits him at night.  Another, a girl, spoke of a little girl who played in her closet. Both said they never shared what happened at home with their friends. I wondered what it would be like for these children to live their everyday lives holding such potentially socially explosive information under wraps.

Remember those kids in school who, although they seemed pretty normal, seemed to make it a point to become part of the woodwork, never doing anything that could in any way bring attention onto themselves?  They just seemed sad. Their body language said, don’t come any closer, like an invisible wall protecting them. The question is from what?

In the lexicon of my childhood, there was really nothing I could identify as a reason for this kind of behavior.  I could understand shyness because I was painfully shy, but in my shyness I always felt open to anyone making that first move.  I understood sadness.  I’d lost pets and known kids who’d lost their grandparents and even a parent.  As a child I feared losing my parents.  I understood illness.  As the oldest member of my family and therefore being the first child to enter the germ pool that surrounds elementary schools, I pioneered most of the horrible childhood viruses that have been replaced by vaccines. I was a pro at knowing what it felt like to sick.  The only thing worse than losing a parent to death when I was a kid was having your parents divorce.  It just didn’t happen very often and the stigma on children was very real.

The things I had no frame of reference for are the things a child could suffer I have become aware of in my adulthood.  Sadly, I now know just what kinds of fears a child could be hiding behind an invisible wall, abuse, gun violence, substance abuse, sexual abuse, ear of abuse; both physical and sexual, the pain of a family deteriorating, the uncertainty of sexual orientation, the pain of being hungry or even homeless and worse of all, the fear for personal safety.  These are all things that most certainly existed in my childhood, to some degree, but they were not visible to me.  I wonder how many of the quiet kids in school who appeared to be suffering from youthful insecurities were in fact suffering far worse.  I have no idea what a scrawny little kid in braces could have done to make their lives more bearable, but I hope just as fervently that I’d didn’t make them any worse.

As for “The Dead Files”, don’t judge me.  I don’t make fun of most of the country spending their Sundays watching grown men jump on each other in tight-fitting clothing. Okay, so maybe I do, just a little!

I Am A Feminist Because I Can Choose To Be One

FeministThis morning I saw a piece on NBC’s Today about a growing trend of young women public proclaiming why they are not feminists on social media.  Their reasons ranged from their love of  God or their boyfriends; that feminism is another word for lesbianism, to most interestingly a feeling that they just don’t need to because the fight for equality is over.  This put my mind in gear to decide where I stand on the whole, feminist/non-feminist question.

I was born smack in the middle of the last century, a mere 36 years after the passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. My mother was born sixteen short years later. In fact, both of my grandmothers and my mother-in-law were born before women could vote.  Young women today can choose not to vote; but they can vote.  How do they suppose this right was obtained?  Did legislators simply wake up one morning, realize there was an outstanding injustice to the women in this county and put the item up for referendum?  Certainly not!  It was the long and hard-fought fight of generations of women and men, calling themselves “Feminists” who helped bring equal rights for women to the forefront.

Women’s suffrage didn’t simply give women the right to vote in this country, it began to allow women to more easily stand on their own two feet as individuals capable of managing their own affairs.  Prior to obtaining suffrage, women were not only treated as the weaker sex physically; they were considered mentally inferior.  As a result they were denied entry into most of the major colleges and universities in the US.

In my own lifetime, (and I don’t feel that old)  feminists worked to gain entry for women into almost all of the colleges and universities in this county. Keep in mind that Princeton University didn’t go coed until 1969 and they were one of the first!  My own alma mater, Rutgers College only began to admit women in 1972,  the year prior to my arrival.  The simple fact is that the choices of where I could study were greatly expanded by the time I went to school and continued to expand throughout the remainder of the end of the twentieth century.  Again, this was not a simple matter of someone changing their mind; it was a long, drawn out campaign to open people’s minds; men and women to the reality that women were capable to studying on the same level as men.  The whole notion that they couldn’t seem silly now, but then it was anything but silly.

Prior to Women’s suffrage, women were excluded from professions considered too harsh for the more delicate sex.  Even if they managed to achieve professional status, they received a fraction of the pay their male counterparts and were viewed as inferior.  Today young woman can choose to do almost anything they want; from astronauts to zoologists, with the exception of becoming a Catholic priest, there were few things my daughter couldn’t choose to do or be.  That didn’t just happen without feminists working to make it happen.

Okay, so maybe politics aren’t a big issue in young women’s lives. Perhaps since they can vote, they just take the work of those feminists from almost 100 years ago for granted.  So what have feminists done for women in this country lately?

Well, for one thing women are now able to decide how they wish to dress with fewer restrictions.  Women are not required to dress covered and confined.  As a school girl, I was required to wear skirts or dresses to school.  Skirt lengths were monitored, sleeveless shirts were not permitted and girls were even sent home for improper dress.  I admit that sometimes I wish there were “fashion police” out on the prowl when I see some of the outfits people wear; women and men, but again, the fact is that the reason fashion has changed and women have the choice to wear what they want in this country has a lot to do with feminists all through the last century from the flappers to the bra burning hippies.  Today, women can choose to wear body-suits or berkas, spiked heals or berkenstocks; the important thing is not what you wear but that you can choose what you wear. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

I guess the way I see it, being a feminist is not about whether you have a career or stay at home with your kids; whether you wear flashy or conservative clothing, stand up publicly for injustice or just work quietly doing you own thing behind the scenes.  Being a feminist is about an awareness that women in this county have the right to choose where they live, how they will spend their money, what they will wear, what they will study, where they will work, if they will work, will they be mothers and wives, or professionals.  It’s all about the right to choose.  Feminists are a big part of why we enjoy these freedoms.

And yes, you even have the right to choose not to be a feminist.  But if you do, just keep this in mind:  the fact you can choose was long fought by men and women in generations past who proudly called themselves feminists.

Joining the Corps of Discovery

Last week Dave and I travelled to Pullman, Washington to visit our son, Andy, who is a visiting professor in the political science department at Washington State University.  In my mind’s eye, I have always envisioned Washington as a lush place with thick forests of green surrounded by green fields so you can imagine how surprised I was when I found myself in a land of rolling fields as far as the eye could see; almost like land locked dunes, with sparse groups of evergreens, few and far between.  In fact, the only place I’ve been where I’ve experienced this vastness of nothingness was when we drove through the southernmost lava fields on the Big Island in Hawaii.  The major difference between the two places was that while the lava field were barren, the fields in Washington were merely sleeping.  As we drove south from Spokane to Pullman on US 195, the first fields we saw were freshly turned, dark and damp but as we continued, where the fields had been tilled earlier, a faint tinge of green covered the land.  And yet further south, the green became more vibrant.  There were very few signs of human life along the eighty some miles to Pullman.  Occasionally we would see a farm tucked in the hollow where the hills met but mostly there was only the evidence that men had been there, not that they’d stayed.  I almost expected to see herds of buffalo along the way.

Driving on the "Palouse" .
Driving on the “Palouse” .

And it was windy!  The little Nissan Versa we’d leased was put to the test as Dave drove through the cross wind.  With nothing to slow its progress, the gusts shook and rocked us; not the best of conditions to be driving in a strange place at the end of a long day of air travel.

We only drove through one real town between Spokane and Pullman; a good-sized place called Colfax.  As we passed down the main street, I noticed the Washington State road signs with the route numbers displayed within silhouettes of George Washington.  My jet lagged brain wondered how this place came to be named after the father of our country.  We were a long way from Virginia and this place seemed so much younger than the Old Dominion.  Almost immediately I answered my own question – of course, this was the land first explored by Lewis and Clark with their Corps of Discovery!  I’d even seen some of the treasures sent back from the expedition on display at Monticello.

I felt an instant kinship with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.  After all, I live just miles from where Lewis was born and Thomas Jefferson, who was President at the time they set out to explore the new land and like them, I’d begun my journey in Virginia.  The major difference between our trips was that it only took me about twelve hours to reach my destination while it took Lewis and Clark more than a year.

view from the Kamiak Butte
View from the Kamiak Butte looking towards Idaho (I think.)

Sure, compared to the Corps of Discovery, my journey was easy but the breath-taking panoramas were certainly something we shared.  While we were on the “Palouse”, the name given to this fertile region that stretches from WallaWalla into Idaho, we had a warm sunny morning to take a hike up to the top of the Kamiak Butte, a rise of almost a thousand feet above the fields.  The views from up there were outstanding.  I’m not sure how far we could see, but it was far.  Not long after reaching the top, the clouds began to roll in across the plains and soon it was snowing.  (Again with the snow. Really?)

As we headed down the path I spotted a tiny sign of spring; a tiny buttercup peaking from the leaves and pine needles.

A hint of spring along the path.
A hint of spring along the path.

My trip to southeastern Washington was an experience that I will remember and revisit for a long time.  When we moved to Ruckersville almost three years ago, it seemed like we were moving to a place that was vast and uninhabited; the population seemed so sparse compared to Virginia Beach.  All three places do have one thing in common that I find necessary for survival; a glimpse of the eternal.  The Virginia shoreline which leads your eye from the beach over the ocean to the horizon, the Blue Ridge Mountains that lead you to the sky, and the Palouse leading across the plains; all remind me of my place in this world.  I am just a small part of something so much greater than myself.  My hope and challenge is to be that little buttercup along the path, a bright spot providing hope and a smile to those who come across me on their path.