Walking back after work, I looked UP. And it made me smile.
~Natalia
After All
23 Apr 2013 1 Comment
in Kiddos, Parental, Swimming, Work
It’s been raining all day and I wore TOMS to work, only to take them off halfway back to the train and walk barefoot through mud puddles all the way to the train stop.
I worked this evening and sometimes my tired, my impatience slips through more than I’d like it to, and I get to the end of the day and it worries me: do these little athletes know that I love them?
I write about what is important to me, what is on my mind, but the end of the semester is occupying so very much of my thoughts, I worry about sounding repetitive.
It’s as dark as a room in the city with no curtains can be, and I’m lying here listening to the hallway, creating this post on my phone.
I saw the mother for seven minutes this afternoon and she gave me a purple umbrella, two clementines, and a box of crackers and I dutifully used that umbrella all the way back to the train (barefoot though I was) and I ate the clementine between the Argyle and Berwyn stops on the Red Line; saved the crackers for later.
I stopped for a moment in the entryway at the pool, talked with the little swimmers waiting there. And one little boy- Tommy, six years old, buzz cut- wrapped his arms around my waist all of a sudden, which shouldn’t have surprised me because his sister, all dimpled smile and grow-up teeth, she told me before that I’m his favorite, anyway.
And I rubbed his fuzzy head and thought, “Maybe they do know how much they’re loved after all. Maybe it’s really just fine.”
It’s all gonna be just fine, after all.
~Natalia
Natalia Could Have Married a Mexican, Part One
16 Apr 2013 1 Comment
in Fear, Food, Humour, Sleep, Spanish, Train, Work
If you’ve been around a little while, you might remember a rather dramatic story that I related to you about a young man stumbling onto campus, telling me I was pretty, and so thoroughly flustering me that I ended up giving him my number on the spot, mostly because I was too unnerved by the entire experience to formulate the word “no”.
It was a great story and a time of my life that I look back on with nostalgia. And also general confusion, because I’m still just not sure why…
Anyway.
I ride the train to work, as I’m sure many of you are aware. An hour there, an hour back; soon my cumulative train time will be measurable in months, or years even. These train rides became, over the past months, a source of rather high stress for me, and as part of my No Fear regimen, I began listening to Chip Ingram sermons in podcast form during my commute. Thus, my time on the train generally looks something like this: Going to work, I listen to Chip in a rather dozy manner for approximately 12 minutes, before completely loosing all consciousness for the next 30 minutes. Then I wake up to a new podcast now playing in my headphones, my neck stiff and my mouth dry from all this sleeping-on-the-train-head-back-mouth-breathing. I am truly at my most attractive while sleeping on the train.
However, least you think I’m wasting my (free) podcast subscription by never actually listening to them while I’m awake, I spend the return trip re-listening to the same sermon. This is because 1) I change trains twice on the way back to school and therefore must remain conscious, and 2) I do truly want to hear these sermons.
So today. I did the whole fall asleep listening to a sermon, wake up with four people staring at me and wonder if I was snoring deal on the way to work. On the way back, I missed the train by roughly 240 seconds, and consoled myself by going into the little convenience store next to the tracks and continuing my semester-long search for a bag of Takis. You know: mexican chips that look a bit like cigarettes and taste like fire and chile. They’re the best. I’ve been craving Takis de Fuego for weeks now, and I was pleased to find a suitable substitute.
So I sat on the first train, ate my mexican fire snack, and listened to Chip tell me all about the book of Revelations.
The second train is where it got good. First, there was a young girl, whose age I estimate to about nine years old, who was entertaining both her family and everyone in our general vicinity by answering the trivia facts that her father proposed. Did you know that the teleprompter stopped working during one of Bill Clinton’s speeches? I had no idea. It was so good, people, that I turned off my podcast. That wonderful preacher, the auditory gold that has gotten me through weeks of train fear: I turned it off.
And then the child got off the train and I sat there and alternately ate my Fake Takis and then decided to have (temporary) self-restraint and put the bag back in my purse, only to open it four minutes later. It was around this time that I truly noticed the individual sitting across from me. I’ll not pain you with the detailed description that I could provide, but suffice to say: He was hispanic.
If you are unaware of my passion-bordering-on-obsession with all things Latin (including men), I encourage you to type the word “Spanish” in the search bar of this blog and peruse the results. Or, if you don’t have time for that, I’ll summarize: I like hispanic guys. The end.
But this guy. So we’re sitting there, and I’m texting a friend or two, but there is no sermon-listening occurring, and him and I wander eyes around the train car, and I look out the window a lot, but I know that he’s there, and I know that he knows that I’m there. So we make eye contact every couple of minutes, which sounds more awkward to write than it was in real life.
And then, oh friends, and then, the door that you’re not supposed to open but someone invariably does; the door that connects the two train cars, opened and a large, highly intoxicated individual stumbled through. My seat being on the opposite side of the car, I could not fully appreciate what was going on, but my hispanic eye contact friend could, and he raised his eye brows and tilted his head towards me, amused smile playing on his lips. I looked over in time to watch the large man spill something on a fellow passenger, who leapt angrily out of his seat, while the drunk one swung unsteadily across the aisle as the train accelerated forward.
{Part Two coming soon!}
~Natalia
Rose, Bud, Thorn
05 Apr 2013 Leave a Comment
in College, Elementary Education, Friends, Work
We have a meeting once a week. In Nelle’s room. There are these six of us, plus Nelle, and we all have our spots, just where we’ve gotten comfortable over this year, and every Wednesday, 9:30, the bed is my spot. Someone else used to sit on the bed at these meetings. When there were different people in this group, and we planned events, prayed for, a slightly different floor. Someone else used to have this prized spot.
But they’re not here anymore, and every Wednesday, got my sweats on, I’m all tucked into that bed with the white comforter.
Nelle’s the leader, of the floor and the meeting, and she asks if we’d prefer business first and then fun, or fun and then business. We say business first, and in the end, it’s only the Katie girl and I who stay for the fun; sometimes these midweek meetings are hard to stick around for.
There’s a little pause, and we have to discuss if talking about our week, checking in, is business or fun, but the argument goes that we spend half the meeting always on this question, so it must be business. I voice my opinion, but I try not to boss, even though I’m sitting on the bed, taller than anyone else. I lie down and curl up, feel less bossy that way.
It’s always the same every week, I’m not sure why we have to discuss this week, because we always share, talk, pray to begin. And every week it’s always the same because Nelle’s a sweetheart, and she’d rather not say it, but these week check-ins, someone called them “Happies and Crappies” and the title stuck and every week, it’s an inside joke on repeat. Gwen, she sits in front of me, leaning back on that white fluffy bed, and Nelle says we’re sharing “highs and lows” from the week.
“We’re sharing what?” someone asks, always the same game. Gwen and I, we look at each other, and the smile hides faint around our mouths; we know it won’t be long. And Nelle, she knows our game now, of course, but sometimes we still get her and she’s clarified that we’re doing “Happies and Crappies” before she realizes it, and Gwen and I, we laugh. She said it.
But there’s a discussion more (everything must be discussed) and Nelle’s listing all these ways to talk about a week just had, and by the time she’s told us there’s another way, a tougher way, we’re listening close. Rose, Bud, Thorn, she says, ticking three words off with slender pale fingers. Good, Hopeful, Bad.
We like that. I even sit up from my bed lounging.
My Rose, my Bud, my Thorn, they come to mind instantly, but I wait the required pause before I raise my hand tentatively. I’m involved and comfortable in this floor girls meeting, but I still don’t want to monopolize, don’t want to dictate. So I wait just a moment, then shrug, quiet. I can go…
I work backwards, backwards, because the Thorn came chronologically first, fear in the night that I’m too disoriented, too unawake to confront head-on. Then a Bud, because three work days in a row is a wonderful opportunity with my sweet athletes, but it’s also six hours on the train, and did you know that the Jen, that angel of a friend, she came with me one day?
And the Rose is the last, and I can feel the giddy inside me just a little again, but I’m really not sure I can communicate the fun, the happy, the this is right of that lesson plan, and those Elementary Education classes. It’s not just the class, either, or even the homework: I taught with a partner last week, and me and this partner, we worked so well together, communicated so strong. And the professor who stands at the front? I’ve people here and people there that I want to be like, but this woman, she’s on the short, short list of people I want to be.
And then I’m done talking, and Nelle goes next, we go around to the right, but I like that Rose, Bud, Thorn, and I’m still thinking of this because thorns come with roses and roses come from a bud, and you really can’t have one without the other.
~Natalia
A Break
02 Apr 2013 1 Comment
For reasons unknown to me, my body can handle getting up at 7:20am every morning for days, weeks, months on end. Go to sleep early, go to sleep late, it really doesn’t matter: I can get up at 7:20.
But, but dare I try to get up before 7:20, even something seemingly harmless and tame like 7:12am, well then, brace yourself because I might as well not have slept, that’s how tired I feel.
I’ve gotten up at 7am (or before) both of the last two mornings, and this combined with working at the pool Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday evening means I’m doing homework whenever I have a chance, and fighting off sleep when I’ve barely had dinner. All of these elements combine for the cumulative effect of rather short posts for you.
But Thursday afternoon will come in the blink of an eye, and Nelle has instituted Required Fun Time on Thursday evening, and one class on Friday morning is really nothing to struggle over, and then voila! The weekend!
My professor asked the gathered class at 8:30am this morning, while I sat in the front row and alternately blinked fast and raised my eyebrows as high as I could to stay awake, what we were all living for. Easter’s over, what are you looking forward to now? He said.
Someone said nothing. Several said summer. I said 3:30 on Thursday afternoon, which is when class is over, PCM is cancelled (Chicago Public Schools, thank you for having Spring Break), and I can not work, not do homework, not be moving, or not even be awake, should I desire.
There are things to do; coaching my littles and interacting with prospective students here on campus (one of whom introduced herself today by way of declaring her readership of this blog and I was suddenly highly concerned that my cover was somehow blown and she and everyone else would soon realize what a doofus I am in real life). My teaching class featured math, science, social studies, and Bible elementary school textbooks in every corner of the classroom, and flipping through those glossy pages so energized me that I spent the hour after lunch furiously typing up the lesson plan that we’re turning in on Thursday.
I planned a second grade lesson on the exclamation point, the period, and the question mark, and I’m simultaneously so tired and so excited to teach that I cannot quite verbalize the feeling that those textbooks, that lesson plan produced in me.
It was a good feeling, of course.
But I’m doing all this stuff, and I’m sleepy, sleepy now, but I really wouldn’t choose to change anything, and this is the life He’s have me lead, and do this, I’m in His will, and really: this week will never happen again. So I’m just going to keep on at this, and soon (oh, real soon) it’ll be Thursday afternoon, and time for a break.
~Natalia
Pool Mornings
17 Feb 2013 1 Comment
It was only two mornings spent on the pool deck with these small athletes. Nothing out of the ordinary, really; we have meets that last much longer all the time, and I’ve spent many more consecutive hours at that particular pool. But these two morning felt settled, felt like routine, and there must have been something significant about them because I’ve spent the rest of the day missing it all, just a little bit.
My guys, there’s eight of them this weekend. Four little girls and four little men. They’re all on one end, one little section, of these cold metal bleachers, and they’re all sitting in the same seats, too. The littlest girl and the smallest boy, they sit in the front. I suppose that’s good because small people are easier to walk past, in this narrow passage between seats and pool. They’re sitting there because their backpacks are there, but they’re really not sitting at all. They stand and they watch and they cheer and they jump, but they do very little sitting.
The girl, she’s a doll, but I’d say that about all these children, wouldn’t I? Deep, bright, baby blue eyes, and blonde hair, too. But you can’t see that because she asked me to put her swim cap on at 9 in the morning, and she’s not taken it off. She’s lost two teeth, the bottom two teeth, and they’ve grown back in white and jagged- the natural bumps on new adult teeth not yet worn down. I know her teeth because I see them frequently because this sweet, tiny bundle of energy, she smiles. She smiles sitting, she smiles standing. She grins and she glows and she’s so small, I picked her up off the diving block and set her down gentle on the pool deck; she dives better from there, anyway.
The little guy next to her, well, he’s the talking one. Eight years old, I’ve folded his clothes a million times these two days because little boys loose things frequently and it makes me feel motherly to fold his t-shirt, fold his towel, and put them back in his backpack all over again. Life is an adventure no matter how old you are, but it’s especially exciting when you’re in second grade, and I could write a small book about the things this tiny young man’s related to me these past months. Today I’ve heard about the Auto Show and his sister’s ice skating and the time he found out he was on the team. He’s told me about his new swim suit and how he’s going to rinse his goggles free of chlorine and it makes me smile to hear his little voice go.
The one on the end, she’s been around awhile. I’ve seen her grow up just a bit, and she’s almost nine, and I sat on the bleachers because the other two had gone and she stood right there in front and I said proud. I say it because we’re supposed to, and I hope it feels good to hear, but I say it too because they gave an award for the most points scored and you know which little girl won? This one, my girl did. I would have been proud anyway, though. She’s moving up, because children grow up and little ones move on, and I asked another boy, he’s also moving up, if that’s a good or bad thing.
What’s a good thing? He asked- little boys sometimes are rather distracted.
That you won’t see me anymore! It’s not exactly true, though, because their new lanes are beside mine, and their coaches laugh with me in the five feet that separate us, and I’ll see him every day. But he’s not in my group anymore. My kid? Always, they’re all always my little athletes. But they’re growing up and it makes me proud.
But this kid shakes his head and grins a grin that I know, because he knows, too. Sad thing! He exclaims. And I know that it’s been a good time, good meet, good season for them, too.
~Natalia
Several Sentences and a Couple Fragments
12 Feb 2013 1 Comment
in Little Sisters, Photos, Spanish, Train, Work
I eavesdropped on another Spanish conversation on the train today.
Really blatantly eavesdropped.
Then I texted the Mother to remind her to remind me that I’m going to marry a Spanish-speaking man.
I was so engrossed that I almost missed my stop, and I dawdled lengthily before finally uprooting myself and booking it off that train.
I came back to school and got a spicy chicken patty with melted swiss on top and sat in my room in the dark and dilly dallied over doing anything productive.
So I checked Facebook and drank lemonade and licked swiss cheese grease off my fingers, but I still left oily fingerprints on my phone.
I forgot to tell you that before I left for work, I dumped the contents of my closet bin on my bed.
So I came back to the room with a styrofoam box containing ranch dressing and the aforementioned spicy chicken with swiss, and the whole deal with Facebook was avoiding dealing with the Mount Horeb of random on my bed.
And then Jen came into the room and she sat at my desk chair, prohibiting me from doing so, so I got into gear and reassembled my closet, while Jen watched my slide show screen saver.
The slide show screen saver is simultaneously a very good and highly obnoxious thing, because Hello! Fun pictures to look at all the time! Oh hey, I had forgotten about that time! Oh, wait! I need to look at ALL THE PICTURES right now. Homework/real life/ relationships/ work can wait!
See? Good and bad.
But mostly good, because I didn’t even know this picture existed until this afternoon.
Tanga Manga Park
Mexico
March 2010
~Natalia
Didn’t Miss Everything
30 Jan 2013 1 Comment
I coached a swim meet this evening.
Rather a frequent occurrence, although weekday competitions are less common.
Four coaches, 80 athletes, three hours,
it was a fast-paced event.
And that’s good- I’m glad is was well-run,
and that we weren’t dawdling around,
waiting to hurry up and wait some more.
But I didn’t sit down until the end
also means
I wasn’t in the same place very long
also means
I didn’t get to spend much time
with the kiddos tonight.
I saw them, yes. And we communicated, of course. But my words to them were mostly shouted above the general noise of 25 littles gathered around, and it’s hard to make eye contact when they’re all wearing goggles.
I saw them and I spoke with them, but even conversation one on one is short when another of my guys is in the next race, and I barely have time to bend down eye level and offer a high-five and a smile before I’ve straightened my back and am yelling at the next one to put his goggles on and get on the block.
I liked tonight’s short timeline, but the tradeoff was time with little athletes I love interacting with, and I rather like that time.
There were no long breaks, and the usual games and jokes and conversations that characterize time with swimmers and time with other coaches were in short supply tonight: we just didn’t have time. But I was still there, and I still worked and watched and cheered and taught, and I didn’t miss everything.
I didn’t miss little girl, eight years old, she’s still just a little unsure. I can wait behind the blocks with her the first time, but second race is trickier because I need to be elsewhere, so I’ll send a 10-year-old sub instead. And older child is wonderful, and she knows what she’s doing, and she’s holding the younger one’s hand, and she gets her on the block right when she’s supposed to, and I’m so proud of both of them. I’m back and forth up the pool deck, but I’m still watching the child and my little assistant coach, and my heart catches and swells to see that the helper didn’t leave when the child dove in, which I had rather assumed she would.
She cheered and she yelled, and she collected her charge at the end of the pool. She high-fived and she smiled, and the pair appeared in front of me, grinning both. And I congratulate the little, and thank the big, and they’re both done, I think.
But helping hands and gentle, compassionate hearts aren’t finished yet, and this older child, she’s still working, working. She helps younger find backpack, boots, coat, and they hunt up and down, searching for a Hello Kitty towel gone missing. And finally, possessions are claimed and home beckons, and the little hugs the bigger, and it grabs my attention even more because two children just barely introduced, support so well, care so free.
And I was busy, quick at the meet tonight, but I didn’t miss everything.
~Natalia
Fire Alarm Semester
19 Dec 2012 1 Comment
Completely unexpected, but somehow, not really surprising at all. My last final, my last educational obligation of 2012. This semester end with this and the faint taste of anticlimactic is clinging to my tongue.
We’ll take a quiz in a couple of minutes; the professor must finish lecturing first. It’s unexpected, I suppose, to hear a lecture during finals week. We all know this isn’t going to be on the test. But learning is learning and there’s not going to be a scantron final for life, so you might as well take it all in now.
But we’ve not even closed notebooks and tucked binders back into backpacks when the thought that there’s a car blaring its horn in the hallway strikes me confusing. But we’re on the third floor and of course there’s not a car in the hallway, and it occurs to me to wonder if they use different sirens for fire and lockdown.
Professor pokes his head into the hallway and we all sit, all wait. It’s a little nerve-wracking to be on the top floor, furthest from outside, furthest from safe ground, when the fire alarms in the hall is blinking white and screaming shrill.
Whispers gain momentum across the class, and we’re all in limbo really. We’re too big to be scared, but uncertain wears the faces of all ages and this can’t be a drill- they wouldn’t do that during finals week. Would they?
Professor’s back and we’re packing backpacks. Footsteps quick and we’ve been told since littles that elevators are not for fires. The group reconvenes in the Commons and the odd doesn’t strike me until now, because I sat in the same seat for an entire semester, only to take the final quiz in the lounge in the Commons while the fire alarm screams loud two buildings away. And I’m using a rolling tray that catering left as a desk, and the metal is cold against my arms as I lean over thoughtful.
And the whole thing is so very unexpected and odd, but I’m home for Christmas now and the fire alarm escapade, the most recent Moody memory emblazoned on my mind, somehow seems to be the only thing that fits. But it’s making me nervous, too.
I’m nervous, just a little unsettled, because this whole semester just seems to have been too.. gentle. I didn’t live day-to-day, dragging myself through days and classes, keeping it together for another chapel, another assignment. I didn’t crash out mid-semester, crumbling hard as assignments met friendships met work met real life.
I made it through the whole semester, and I loved it.
My heart drank deep of the blessings God lavishly dumped everywhere I looked. Feet, heart, body planted immovably in Jesus Christ and the stamp redeemed child that He’s placed on me, I settled soft into friendships on the floor, at school, off campus. I didn’t go looking for it, but the image of God in His creations, and human hearts that drip the grace of Him, grabbed me surprised and joyous at every turn.
Classes in a weekly schedule that I like to think I had some control over choosing are really no more than God’s tools to instruct my mind and reveal Himself more. I can count on very few fingers the times homework seemed pointless, which makes sense because all truth is God’s truth and when learning thinly masks the glory of a Creator God, of course this education has depth.
There was work and family and another job and travel and the city and PCM and everything was wonderful this semester. And I know God is at the root of it all, and provided it all, and I’m so very thankful.
But deep in the back of my heart nervous is unsettled small; the fire alarm’ll go off soon, no?
~Natalia
I Guess
09 Dec 2012 Leave a Comment
Three days, almost all day,
on the pool deck
with little athletes I love quite a bit.
There was home and family
and a big ole Christmas tree in there, too.
It was a good weekend,
and I don’t regret any of it.
But I hope very much
that the crash afterward isn’t
so very hard.
Because…
well, maybe I don’t have a reason
to hope for that.
Because God’s been pretty faithful
to give what I need
and take what I don’t.
So, I guess I’ll just be content.
And get right through this.
I hope.
~Natalia
