Month 7 - The Birth Month - of the Year 30

I’m a big birthday person. No surprises there. Who else do you know that celebrates a birthday all year long?!! Every year I’m treated to about a week of celebrations (my friends tease me mercilessly about this). Therefore, because this year was a major milestone, I dedicated a whole year to it. When July 28^th is gone, I plan to keep celebrating (and blogging) the rest of the year.

I am not sure why I put so much emphasis on my birthday—or maybe I do... My dad asked me recently what I expected to happen on my birthday and I replied that I usually expected nothing less than fireworks and the stars to fall; I didn’t know how else to explain it. I always have a sense of expectancy and excitement that surpasses anything I have usually felt about past Christmases. This excitement can be both good and bad. Sometimes a silly person like myself is disappointed when the stars don’t fall and when she realizes that it is just another day. Such enthusiasm also places a certain unintended burden on my friends and family because they don’t want to disappoint me on my birthday. I am a birthday tyrant, I guess.

So…my “new” thing this month was to get my mind off of myself! J I tried to focus on giving gifts to others--thirty gifts, in fact. These gifts were by and large not financial or tangible. A gift might be helping someone in a very simple way. I wrote several notes to people letting them know how much they have meant to my life. Obviously, I am not going to detail the thirty gifts because to say any more would be tacky in the extreme. Instead I invite you to peruse some pictures I’ve posted of past birthdays. Perhaps you’ll even find yourself in one of the pictures!

 

7.28.81



The day after I was born, my mom watched Princess Di and Prince Charles get married on television. Perhaps that is where I got my princess complex. (By the way, that is my dad, not my mom -->)



3rd birthday



5th bday--first one I remember





8th birthday



Back in the day, a birthday at McDonald’s was exciting. I mean, look at our expressions.

Of course, I wanted to dress like a princess for my ninth birthday. This picture never fails to make my family laugh—a drama queen in the making. What could the surprise be? A pony? A trip to Disney World?

A Huffy bike in girly colors. Wishing now the "surprise" face was staged for the photo.

Besides McDonalds, Pizza Hut was also the cool place to go for 10^th birthdays…apparently. It was 1991, the year of the ridonculously big hairbows and fluorescent sox.

 My favorite birthday gift. Millie lived 16 years, dying just last year. (It's a goat, by the way. The picture is a little dark.)

For my 20^th birthday, my friend Julia orchestrated this really great surprise party for me at RJ Gators. That’s me getting “pied.”

21^st bday celebration at Applebees

Okay, so now I am realizing just how many surprise parties I've had over the years! Yet I was gullible enough to still be surprised by most of them. This my 23rd was a surprise as well.

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The grand entrance

      

   Guess What?! Surprise!!!! (24th)

<--- My 25th -- not a surprise :)

26th--House of Blues with the sibs

Bravo's at Northlake--28th

Last year’s birthday would have had great pictures, too, but alas, I was working at a children’s camp in Virginia where photographs were forbidden! Even though I was a stranger to everyone I worked with up there, they really blessed me on my birthday. The entire camp sang to me, random children gave me impromptu gifts, and my co-workers gave me a lovely little party. My favorite gift was a scrapbook in which each girl I’d worked with wrote a page filled with sweet messages. I realized last summer how loved I really was as cards and packages from back home poured into camp and people I’d just met tried to make me feel special.

If this journey down memory lane has done anything (more than try my readers’ patience), it has reminded me of the many years of love, friendship, and good memories I have enjoyed.



My 18th birthday was neat because I was working at a Christian retreat center in the mountains and all of my co-workers surprised me with a party in my room.

Month 6 of the Year 30

My memory is apparently not the greatest. Although I once prided myself on my ability to recall specific details about people and events from my childhood, now I’m often at a loss when people say, “Don’t you remember that time we…” No, I don’t; I’m getting old. Now others, like my sister, remember better than I things that I have done or that have happened to me.

For example, I recently reread two novels. Unintentionally. After waiting nine months to dive into my ambitious summer reading list, I realized that I had already read two of the five or six books I first tackled. As I read I would think, “Parts of this are sounding eerily familiar.” What is worse, I didn’t enjoy those novels the first time I read them, so it was a double downer. If only I had first checked my list against my sister’s memory. When I told my sister what I have been reading this summer, her response was: “Haven’t you read that before?”

My second lapse in memory this month was in trying to recall the details of a story I wanted to share; I could remember a bare outline of the event but none of the specifics. Thankfully, I’ve relied not on Allison’s memory for this story, but on my own handy travel journal. But first…

This month I had the wonderful experience of painting my first picture! I am not very artistic and I haven’t done any art work since middle school, probably, but my friend, Debbie Matthews, kindly agreed to take me on as a student so that I could produce a painting in a few short weeks that was decent enough for me to hang on my bedroom wall.

I met with Debbie three times in her home where she introduced me to many things painting-related, such as how to create perspective, how to apply different brush strokes, how to mix colors, how to use dry brush technique and make and apply a wash, and how to use a sponge to add texture. My painting was to be an impressionistic rendering of a path winding through the forest; it had a dreamy and romantic quality to it that I loved. Debbie cautioned that it would be challenging, but she said we could do it; I figured I might as well go for it while I was going!

Painting was fun but challenging and I was so afraid I would mess up. I needed step-by-step instructions from Debbie on how to…pretty much do everything. As I began painting, I was thrilled that what was supposed to be a picture of a path through woods actually looked like a path through woods! One of the many things I loved about working with Debbie was that she would gush: “Oh, I love it!!”--and be sincere. I think one of the marks of a great teacher is inspiring students to think they can do it; I have far from mastered that in my teaching so Debbie was an awesome model for me.

By the end of our third session, my first painting was completed, signed, and ready for hanging. But to see the finished product, you have to keep reading! (Okay, you could technically just scroll down to see the pictures but I hope you’ll take a minute to read the rest of this highly fascinating entry.)

Well, I obviously did not have any substantive memories of myself as an artist to reflect upon this month (and I probably would have forgotten them if I had). I have visited several art museums, however, so those experiences will have to suffice.

The first art exhibit I really appreciated was an impressive one of Monet’s paintings. Allison had urged our visiting the exhibit, and I hadn’t quite grasped its import until, standing among these breathtaking masterpieces, I said incredulously, “Are these, like, originals?!!” Allison, of course, had a heyday with this (“Did you think we came here to see copies?!!”).

My first foray into the world of fine art.

After this unpromising beginning, however, my appreciation for art has increased.

A few years ago, my sister and I visited the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen, France. Unfortunately, it was one of those rush-rush visits in which we attempted to cram as much of Rouen and as much of the Musée as humanly possible into a few brief hours. Allison and I were forever missing trains in France and had already missed one earlier that day, so we were trying to be especially careful not to miss the last one back to Caen.

With only little more than an hour allotted for the Musée, we separated—turns out, a bad idea for me.

I think we may have been the only ones in the museum that afternoon, because museum staffers were always lurking around us, friendly but a little smothering. Well, a middle-aged male staffer evidently surmised that this American tourist needed a tutorial on the art I was viewing. He approached as I was taking in a beautiful Monet of the Rouen cathedral and remarked that this was the most beautiful piece in the series. Had I been to the cathedral? (Yes, we had booked it all over the cathedral as part of our whirlwind tour of Rouen.)

In broken English, my staffer began discussing some painting trick of Monet’s and led me back two rooms to a painting I’d already viewed. Trying to be polite by humoring him, I nevertheless inwardly revolted about losing time seeing the same painting twice. Hidden in the painting were the phrases “Vive la France” and “Vive la Republique,” and he instructed me to look for them. (It was kinda cool, I admit.)

My unsolicited museum tour guide led me to another Monet (which I’d already seen) and he showed me a face in the water of the painting. O-kay. When another worker came up and began excitedly discussing in French another face in the painting, I edged away and slipped into another room. Our train was leaving in less than an hour and I wanted to cram in as much “culture” as I could; it’s the American tourist’s motto, after all.

Before I knew it, the staffer was at my side again, showing me more “tricks” in another painting. He had me stand at different angles around the painting and observe how objects in the painting changed as I changed positions. I just kind of obeyed whatever he told me to do; well, he told me to stand here and look at the painting from this angle so who am I to refuse?

The fun continued as he and another worker (a female) trailed me. Finally, Allison emerged from some obscure gallery, and instead of rescuing me from my well-meaning stalker, she took in a few more paintings.

My staffer suddenly veered from the professional to the personal. How long had I been in France, had I been to Paris—which must have made Rouen seem so small in comparison—tee hee hee (did I mention his constant titter?).

Then he made some comment about “your boyfriend” and that was my aha! moment. You see, ladies, when you are unsure whether a guy’s stalking you in a museum and offering heaps of helpful advice indicates a sincere desire to be of assistance or something more, a reference to the boyfriend settles the matter. He hopes you’ll deny the existence of such a personage. Happily, I was no novice at such a ploy. My sure defense was to deflect with a laugh and to proceed to the next painting (because that had worked so well before, right?).

I was a bit flustered by this point; he kept speaking to the side of my face or my retreating back—I’m not sure which. Due to the broken English, I didn’t quite understand him but I did catch when he said, “very beautiful” and looked significantly at me.

I blushed because I thought he was directing those words at me, but as Allison and I discussed later, he may well have been referring to Paris, Rouen, or Monet, for all I could comprehend.

At any rate, Allison, who’d been in her own little world and thus blissfully unaware of her sister’s discomfiture, reappeared and unknowingly rescued me, hastening me off to our waiting train.

Now, as I promised for humoring me, here are the photos:

Month 5 of the Year 30

Plan A did not materialize this month but I had a couple of incidental “firsts” that will pinch hit for Plan A.

Early this month I participated in a book signing. I wrote in February about South Carolina People and Places and, following its publication this month, the four of us (authors and illustrator) autographed copies at the university bookstore. It was such a neat experience; I’ve wanted all my life to autograph my book so it’s pretty cool to have that dream realized. Two things are necessary when autographing: having a cool signature and a pithy comment. Well, seeing that my handwriting peaked when I was around 14 so that my signature looks like a bubbly teenage girl’s (and I have the pink floral cell phone to match) and that weeks later, I’m still waiting on a pithy remark to come to mind, I suppose I failed the two requirements for an effective autograph. Hopefully, I will work on this before I write and publish the next great American epic…

My second “first” this month is a little embarrassing because it makes me realize that my firsts are other people’s twentieths; there’s still so many things in life I’ve never done, but I hope to have many more years in which to experience them.

The day after the book signing, I flew on an airplane by myself for the first time (without friends or family accompanying). Flying is always a bit nerve-wracking to me; for some reason, the abundance of external stimuli at the airport overwhelms me: the voices over the intercom, the hordes of passengers scurrying by, the multiple gates, zones, and lines. Everyone else seems to know exactly what they’re doing while I walk around doe-eyed, trying not to look as clueless as I feel.

Even so, I planned my solo trip to Tampa to visit my sister this month. Upon arriving at Charlotte-Douglas and printing my ticket, flustered, I asked the agent, “What do I do next?” Now I had already been tutored by others as to what to do next, but I suppose I needed confirmation. A mere twenty feet away was step #2: the security checkpoint. There I benefited from watching and imitating other passengers as they removed shoes, liquids, and dignity, and passed it on through the x-ray machine. Sure, I’d done all that before, but it had been four years so I was a little rusty.

Once I’d finally made it in one piece on board the plane, my next concern was being able to pick up my heavy carry-on and stow it in the overhead compartment. I prayed: “Lord, please let there be a strong man nearby who will pick up my bag for me.” Sure enough, when I came to my seat, there was a tall, strapping Marine seated next to me who kindly placed my bag overhead. No big deal. You know, it’s the most miniscule details that get me worked up—but the possibility of crashing—I didn’t worry about that at all. (I noticed my obsession with details again when I spoke at my old school last week; before speaking, I fixated on the microphone and whether I would be able to adjust it to the right height when I was onstage. I wasn’t.)

Well, the flight was lovely—said Marine and I talked and talked almost the whole flight (I had forgotten to unpack my novel due to my anxiety to get that bag stored). As we landed, I got a little nervous again about those nitpicky details. I was a little overwhelmed about finding my way to baggage claim because my sister had provided such vague directives as “take the shuttle” and “ride the escalator.” What shuttle where? Which escalator? Her response to my fears was something like: “Elisabeth, young children and the blind fly alone; you can do this.”

Finally, we landed. When I fly, my ears fill with screaming pressure and it usually takes a few hours after the flight for them to clear (and yes, I chew gum the entire flight). The first time it happened, my sister and I had landed in France. We had not slept all night and we were trying to navigate a foreign airport laden with bags, and I was partially deaf. I would ask Allison if I was shouting, but it turns out I was whispering. The pain and semi-deafness persisted so long, I wondered if I’d gone deaf in Paris…you know how your mind imagines the worst in those situations. (I hadn’t.)

Anyway, I arrived in Tampa partially deaf, smiling sweetly and nodding when I didn’t understand what the Marine or the other seat partner was saying. Perhaps that was dishonest or plain stupid, but it seemed the thing to do at the time.

My kind Marine friend collected my bag for me and I pretty much followed him like a puppy dog off the plane and around the airport. Indeed there was a shuttle, but it was not quite so intimidating now. I don’t usually advocate following strange men around but these were desperate circumstances and he seemed reliable. Case in point, he eventually pointed me in a different direction from the one in which he was going, and I found myself in baggage claim greeting my sister.

I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily an expert flyer now; on the way back, I had Allison tell me twice where to go and what to do to get myself from Tampa to Charlotte, but I’m sure if I flew more often, I would conquer it before long. I can see myself now, striding through the airport with the self-assured gait of the frequent (thirty year-old) flyer.

Month 4 of the Year 30

               This month requires an embarrassing confession. Up until this month, I had never run a mile in my life. Not that this has really weighed me down or hindered me so far as I can tell, but it does seem a little ridiculous that I haven’t done it. For one, I’ve just never been really interested in running as a hobby. For two, I don’t think my body is equipped to run distances. And for three, I’ve always had a voice inside my head when I run that says, “I’m gonna have a heart attack, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna stop running now.”

                Not that I’ve always possessed such a three-pronged rationale. Some of my childhood memories involve me running barefoot down the rows of my dad’s garden. The soft, cool soil felt indescribably delicious beneath my feet. I can remember my dad saying I ran like a deer, and I believed him.

                Kids aren’t as kind as your dad, however. I played baseball and softball for years, and I remember one of my little teammates telling me that her mom said that I ran SOOO slow…and this was when I was running as fast as I could! I suppose I got the slow gene. While my dad, sister, brother, and sister-in-law have participated in long-distance races and I trust are/were fast enough runners, my other brother earned the nickname “Speedy” by his coach for his leisurely running pace. The same coach nicknamed me “Speedy, Jr.”

                Okay, so playing sports taught me that I resembled a turtle more than a deer. Playing baseball also showed me how incredibly flat my feet were. During third and fourth grade, I played baseball with boys which meant that I had to play in the outfield. Our practice field was strewn with rocks and my poor feet could feel the rocks through my shoes. The pain I had in my feet and legs led to my getting orthotics especially molded for my feet, and these really helped. As any girl knows, however, being told to wear “supportive shoes” is the death knell to footware fashion. For a few years, I call them my “awkward years,” I wore awful high-top Reebok shoes. They were supportive, alright, and ugly as homemade sin. They came in black or white and I alternated between those colors over the years. What preteen girl really has a chance, I ask, when she wears black high-top shoes to middle school, rain or shine, summer and winter. My mom would probably say I developed character by wearing those shoes, and, at any rate, my feet were well-supported. (Thankfully, I ventured away from wearing orthotics and high tops in high school and so far, I’ve been okay. Hopefully I can avoid them until I’m 80.)

                Which somehow leads me back to running—that is what I was going to write about this month, wasn’t it? Earlier this year, my super-energetic friend Kristina proposed that, for my year 30, I participate in a mud run event, which would involve running three miles and doing some insane number of obstacles while covered with mud. People actually PAY to do this type of thing. The mud part didn’t bother me; it was the amount of running that made me turn it down. Even so, I decided that I would try running for really the first time in my life on my own. So, with my I-pod cranked up to drown out my labored breathing, I started running. And, for the first time in my life, I ran a mile this month. Not to brag, but I’ve actually built up to 1.1 miles, but who’s counting? I’ve even thought about working up to a whopping 1.5 miles, but my hips are usually screaming at me by mile 0.8 so we’ll have to see about that one.

                Month 4 represents a great personal victory--I did something I thought I couldn’t do.

BOOK SIGNING!! May 5th from 4:00-5:30 p.m. Winthrop University Bookstore

Blonde Nite Pics

Month 3 of the Year 30

                This month I will not ask you to indulge me in a history of my hair because that would be both a brief and a dull recital. I am one of those people who has worn basically the same hair style since 8^th grade. Before 8^th grade, I had a long jet black mane that cascaded to my waist. Not nearly as glamorous as it sounds, my hair was actually very awkward-looking in photographs. I had lank, limp bangs which I tried to model after my idol, D.J. Tanner from Full House. If her bangs one season were fluffy and sprayed, so were mine; if hers were growing out and arched to the side in the next season, so were mine. At least then I had a hair plan and standard. Since then, for well-nigh seventeen years, I’ve pretty much worn my hair parted on the same side, bang-less, somewhere between ear and shoulder-length. Ne’ery a perm, ne’ery a rebellious purple dye job. Always sensible. Okay, so I’ve told my hairstory after all.

                It will come as no surprise that when I considered changing my hair for the year 30, I was too conservative to consider it seriously for long. Bangs get on my nerves. Color is expensive (except for the highlights Revlon and my friend Deana give me once a year). But despite my fears, I needed to do something drastic, something crazy--and for me this was going blonde. For such a measure, I needed a gutsy brunette friend who would go the distance with me. I thought I’d found the perfect friend for this in a girl I’ll call “Cassie.” So last year I started hinting at the possibility of us dying our hair blonde in 2011 and the first time I mentioned it, Cassie seemed game. However, every month thereafter she came to me with: “Um, Elisabeth, I don’t think I can go blonde…” Excuses. The boyfriend wouldn’t like it. Her “hairdresser” didn’t approve. 

                Mind you, I was mostly bluffing anyway since I was too poor, too practical, and too scared to permanently dye my hair blonde. Then Carriel, after church one night, suggested that being blonde need not be permanent; we could wear a blonde wig for a day. Bingo! After procuring two costume wigs from professors at my university (evidently faculty parties are the real parties on campus), we set a date for our blonde transformation.

                When we met at Cassie’s on the 18^th we assumed blonde personas along with our blonde hair (terribly stereotypical, I know). I was Krissi, the earnest one, intent on discovering whether fate had dealt her a cruel turn by making her brunette. Cassie was Candy, the spacey sidekick who was merely along for the ride.

                Our two greatest challenges were our natural timidity and our desire not to look like “women of the night.” The nature of the wigs—long, brassy, and very obviously fake—combined with our heavy makeup did not assuage the latter concern. As for our timidity, we overcame it…somewhat.

                Our first stop as Krissi and Candy was at a friend’s house, where we hemmed, hawed, and blushed. A little disorganized about where exactly we would go from there, and inhibited ever so slightly by Cassie, er, Candy’s timorousness, we opted for a gallery crawl in North Charlotte. We envisioned walking down a busy street, ducking into a coffee shop, and talking to people. Instead, with me at the wheel, we wound up at some dark shopping center/square where, nevertheless, we steeled ourselves under our blondeness and went to face the world.

                As we approached the square, passersby definitely did double takes but our goal was to act as natural as possible. And I mean, did I mention how ridiculous we looked? Cassie’s wig was white-blonde, crimped, a little tangled in places, and bushy. My long yellow hair kept shedding but more importantly, the part or seam was very apparent running along my forehead and through the part. Moreover, sometimes our brown ponytails peeped out under the blonde in back.

                At this point in the night, in this darkened shopping center not exactly bustling with people, we would feel like we had accomplished our objective (to see if life was more fun as a blonde? Or merely to discover if we possessed chutzpah?) if we could walk ourselves into a crowded coffee shop and order coffee without running away. That became our objective. Our first foray was unsuccessful. The coffee shop contained nice people with normal hair and we just couldn’t force ourselves to walk in. “Let’s just keep walking,” we said.

                Next door was a convenience store/deli where the people didn’t look quite as nice and their hair wasn’t quite as normal, so we felt more comfortable about entering. We walked in, all smiles, nodding like dignitaries to a few wondering women while we made our way to the candy aisle. Determined to buy something, Candy grabbed a pack of M&Ms and we checked out. The cashier, obviously not ‘merican, carried on a normal conversation with us but I couldn’t tell you what he said since we were still jumpy. The wigs didn’t phase him at all. Now that I think about it though, it was a little strange that he directed us to a “very nice” place out back. We, unthinking, heeded him—and it was nice, but not that nice.

                As ostensibly we were enjoying taking pictures “out back,” inwardly we were ratcheting up the courage to face the coffee shop people. “Okay, we are going to make our way back around the building, walk in the door, go right up to the cashier and order coffee.” Didn’t seem like a difficult plan.

                And we did it. We met a few more questioning stares before entering the shop but we did it. Candy may have been fighting the giggles, but she managed to slink right up to the counter and tremulously ask for a latte. We smiled and talked as naturally as possible to the cashier, but he knew something was up with us (I wonder how?). Finally, with a knowing smile, he said, “You’ll have to give me the number of your hair stylist.” Our cover was blown.

                What we were impressed by at the coffee shop was that no one cared much about our ridiculous wigs. Candy and I became more like psychologists than thrill-seekers, hypothesizing what people were thinking when they would glance our way curiously but then absorb themselves in their coffee or cake. We asked a lady nearby to take our picture and she did so gladly without blinking an eye. Some gazed longer than others, sure. The bottom line is that I think most people remember what their mamas told them: staring is rude.

                After awhile, the hot, itchy wigs became one with our scalps and for my part, Krissi took over. She was a fun girl, as was Candy. We were finally at home with our blondeness. Leaving the shop and driving away, we shared deep personal stories with one another and didn’t even notice that we were wearing faux hair all the while. After a couple more stops, including a McDonalds drive-thru, we had to retire our wigs for the night and reenter the atmosphere of being a brunette once more.

                Do blondes have more fun? Probably. I’m just glad they let us share their experience for one brief night.