80

My Grandmother turned 80 last month.  As I may have mentioned a time or 20, we all think she’s a pretty special lady (as any family should feel about their matriarch).  She’s the only grandparent my sister, cousins, and I still have with us and has been playing the role of step-in parent for my mom and aunt for a while now.  We pretty much had to sit on her to convince her that we needed to have a party to celebrate this truly momentous occasion.  She did concede and we welcomed 100 of her nearest and dearest friends into her house for a celebration in her honor.  While that wasn’t a surprise, we also managed to orchestrate the arrival of over 130 birthday cards and well wishes, which stretched her birthday into a nearly 2 week long celebration.  When I spoke with her on her actual birthday, her absolute glee at the way this all worked out (and I think all of our relief at her overwhelming excitement) was palpable.  We are all so blessed to have her.

Grandmother has taught me a lot, some of which I didn’t even realize until the past year.  She taught me how to make drippy sandcastles and to enjoy the theatre.  She encouraged us to be creative (the 5 of us vividly remember spending one summer week wallpapering a refrigerator box, which then served as a fort, a puppet theatre, a house, a hiding place, and God only knows what else).  She endured over a decade’s worth of gingerbread house making at Thanksgiving, complete with sisterly and cousinly bickering, collapsing roofs, falling walls, and vanilla wafer shortages.  She taught me how to be a good friend, a good member of my community and my church.  She is truly a good citizen to our Commonwealth and country.  She taught me how the smallest gesture can mean the world to someone.  She’s taught me the importance of knowing who, knowing where, knowing how you came from.  All of these are things that quickly come to mind, that lots of other people think about when they think of Grandmother.

There’s one more thing though.  It’s not a secret, it’s just not fun to think about.  My Grandfather died in March 1978, 14 months before I was born and only 4 years or so after he and my Grandmother uprooted their lives and moved to Chilhowie (where my Grandfather grew up and where Grandmother had only been a frequent visitor).  Instead of returning home to Glouchester or back to Richmond, she, instead decided to stay.  She made a brand new life for herself.  And while even now she’ll talk about missing living on the water, she fits so perfectly into her life now, people assume she’s a native.  That type of bravery is often overlooked and I’m lucky to have a real life example of it only a phone call away.

37. Visit RMWC (without being bitter)

As most of you know, I graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in 2001.  RMWC was the perfect place for me to go to college – small student body, small campus, lots of tradition, lots of red bricks (including some made in Chilhowie!), small classes, good professors, good food, good friends.  As it should be, going to RMWC remains one of the major defining markers of my life.

So, in August 2006 when it was announced that it had been recommended that the Board of Trustees vote to begin admitting male students and when the board did so that September and when in August 2007 the first male students arrived on campus, heartbroken only cracks the surface of how I and my sister alumnae felt.  I was lucky in that in addition to 4 years of wonderful memories and countless friends, my last visit to campus had been for my 5 year reunion (a year early) in May 2005.  We stayed in the dorms and, being just 4 years post-graduation, it was almost like we were just back in school, even if just for a few days.

A year ago, when I set about making my 101/1001 list, I thought visiting the former RMWC, now Randolph College, would make me mad.  That I’d be filled with bitterness and anger.  And I knew that I needed to go back and not feel that way.  That I needed to find space in my heart and my head where I could come to peace with the changes my dear RMWC had undergone and be grateful for the time I had there and all that it had given and continues to give me.  So, on Monday, while driving back from a weekend at Smith Mountain Lake, I stopped by campus.  I wasn’t mad.  I wasn’t bitter.  I was just sad.  Sad when I saw boys coming out of Main Hall unescorted by their female hosts.  Sad when I saw boys in the dining hall eating lunch on a Monday (and not just brunch on Saturday or Sunday). Sad when I went by the (new) Bookshop and the only RMWC items they had were license plate frames and glassware (nevermind being told it must have been a “long time ago” when I told the student working there that I’d worked at the Bookshop when it was in the little house).   While Frank Baum (via Dorothy) had us to believe that there’s no place like home, more often than not, I think it’s more likely that you can’t go home (or at least the home you place on the pedestal where you keep your most precious memories).

As I tweeted, R(MW)C is one of the only places that can both make my heart swell and sink at the same time.  And, I wouldn’t change that for the world.  I will love you Randolph-Macon evermore.

... where voices serenading in the night, sing of loyalty and love

coming soon…

I haven’t forgotten about y’all (all 4 of you that are reading).  Before I leave for my very first work trip ever next Tuesday I promise to post about some of the following:

• seeing Marc Broussard in concert at the Birchmere last night (amazing)
• going to Smith Mountain Lake for Columbus Day and visiting R(MW)C (no bitterness, just sadness)  - bonus 2 things off the 101/1001 list
• my Grandmother’s upcoming birthday
• a general update on the 101/1001 list
• the fact that all of the folks I grew up with are now married except for me

In the meantime, hop over to Annie’s Blog.  She has a great feature where she features one of her readers/fellow bloggers each week and this week, she featured Bindu!

winner of the week: the internet

The internet and I may have had one of our best weeks ever.  A sampling of some of the very awesome things that have been floating around this week:

• After all the (understandable) talk about texting while driving, the New York Times has a really cool interactive that gauges how well you can multi-task while driving.
• All of the Mad Men characters (and quite a few of the series’s inanimate objects) are very active on Twitter.  A few Thursdays ago, the characters on Twitter orchestrated a prank on Pete Campbell and the whole thing played out on Twitter, so I tweeted something about it being like a bonus episode.  Next thing I knew, I had an email from a journalist doing a story about the characters being on Twitter and the effect on the show.  We exchanged emails and spoke on the phone, and her article was published on MSNBC this week.  I’m quoted on the 2nd page nearish the end.
• Speaking of Mad Men, check out this parody of the show from Sesame Street.
• I’m loving everything about Glee (Wednesdays at 9 pm on Fox – watch it, you won’t be sorry you did) and could wax poetic about it for hours.  The Glee kids sang Queen’s “Somebody to Love” this week, which was awesome.  In looking for a video clip of it, I ended up finding this fan video/montage that someone made to the single that’s for sale on iTunes.  And it’s even more awesome than watching the Glee kids perform the song.
• Jim and Pam are getting married on The Office next week (it’s been a long time coming (that’s what she said)).  Anyway, NBC’s promo monkeys have been in overdrive and super excitingly have been using a bunch of the season 2 (aka the season of Jim’s longing/unrequited love) clips for the commercials.  The first one uses scenes from the season 2 finale in the parking lot and left me in tears.  The one that played after tonight’s episode was just amazing (warning slightly spoilery, but oh so sweet) – he knew he was waiting for his wife!

  Thanks internet for a great week!

four

9/27/05

My niece, Kylie, turned four yesterday.  She had her South Carolina birthday party a couple of weeks ago, where she got her first bike.  She had a small(ish) party in Chilhowie on Friday night, where she got books and clothes and toys and, most excitingly, a soccer goal!

1st b'day, 9/2006

It’s so hard to believe that she’s already four.  It’s one of my very favorite memories and one of the truest blessings of my life that I got to be in the delivery room when Kylie was born.  And now, she plays with Barbies and rides a bike and plays soccer and loves everything about being a girl and is ready to learn how to read and likes to be scared and knows exactly what a scarlet macaw looks like.

2nd birthday, 9/2007

Four years can be both an eternity and can pass in a heartbeat.  It’s hard for me to really remember life before Kylie came around – for me, so many of the big milestones in my life are like that, they so very much alter the very fabric of my life that it’s hard to remember how things were before they happened (my mom’s wreck, my grandparents’ deaths, my gastric bypass surgery, and Kylie being born are all that way).

3rd birthday, 9/2008

I love being around Kylie (and her brother, Colt) for many reasons, but one of, if not my very, favorite reasons is that when we’re all with them – all the grandparents, the great-grandmothers, the aunt, the uncles, all the extended family – you can almost see the unconditional love that streams toward them and the joy they bring to us all seems to bounce off of them and radiate back to us.  Again, so lucky and blessed.

Happy Birthday, Kylie!

4 years old! 9/2009

serious business

This is week 5 of my fancy new job (look I’m even on the website – it’s official!) (also, at which point does it stop being new?) (also, is it okay to use multiple sets of parenthesis in a row?).  As I may have mentioned at some point, currently, I’m working from home.  The ability to telecommute was one of the many things that made this job very appealing to me, but to say I wasn’t a bit trepidatious going into this would be a complete lie.  I’m not always the most disciplined person, I tend to procrastinate, I like the social aspect and camaraderie that comes from having coworkers in close physical proximity.  Amazingly, I fell into a pretty regular pattern quickly – work from our house in the mornings, eat lunch, then find some place with free wi-fi to work in the afternoons (Panera Bread, Busboys & Poets (despite their status as a socialist enclave), and the Shirlington Library are current favorites).  In my 4.5 weeks with the Franklin Center, I’ve managed to get a relatively large amount of work done.  Building a development program from the ground up is a daunting task and having all the choices in the world is almost as paralyzing as having no choices at all when it comes to strategic thinking and planning.  We’re chugging along, moving forward, laying the groundwork for next year, etc.

One of, if not the, most frustrating aspects of this new job has nothing to do with the work or my co-workers, but with the fact that few of my friends or family members take the working from home thing seriously.  I truly believe that they think I sit around all day in my pajamas watching television and goofing off.  That because I don’t get up and go to an office outside our house, but instead sit at a dining room table, my work is less valid, my job less “real.”  They don’t think about the fact that because I’m flying solo, I’m my own IT department, my own procurement officer, my own supervisor and assistant.  That when, last week, my work laptop refused to connect to the wireless in our house and my blackberry stopped getting emails, I couldn’t go whine to an IT guy, but spent about 90 minutes on the phone with Comcast and Dell, then spent another couple of hours troubleshooting email and blackberry issues until I fixed the problem. All by myself.  And I knew this was going to be the case, that on top of a lot more responsibility and a different organizational model and mission, I was going to have to function in a very independent manner, I just really wish my friends and family could understand and respect it.

It is nice that I can grocery shop during the middle of a workday if I need to.  Or I can run a quick errand or sleep in and work late.  But working from home also means you never leave the office.  That the work computer and documents and everything else are always there.  Just waiting for you.  Taunting you.  Wondering why you’re watching television (even if it is the weekend) or chatting with friends (even if it is 8:30 at night).

Working from home also means your entire kitchen full of food is always available to you and that the exercise that was built into your life as a public transportation commuter is now gone, which is clearly reflected in the way my clothes fit.  So on a semi-related note, look out South Beach Phase One, I’m back.

faith

I struggle with my faith a lot.  Not so much with questions of what I believe, but with remaining as faithful as I should be, as I need to be.  I attribute a lot of this struggle to my inability to find a church home here in northern Virginia and the fact that I haven’t made church and actively practicing my faith a priority in my daily life.  This struggle is always more pronounced after a trip to Chilhowie and attending services in the United Methodist Church there (the church I grew up in, whose current preacher is the same one that saw me through confirmation and is, alongside my Pi-Paw and immediate family, most responsible for my spiritual growth, education, and maturity).  I remember in some of my dark days in Richmond, when I so desperately wanted a new job, when I was so beaten down by circumstances that I didn’t feel like I had much control over, saying to my friend, Sam, that I didn’t even notice when I was praying, that I was almost in a constant conversation with God because I needed Him so much at that time.  And that’s missing for me right now.  Even though a lot of things are going better for me, there are still plenty of things that I need help with, guidance on, things I need to turn over to Him, but for reasons I can’t even figure out, I just can’t seem to do it.  And I just miss feeling and noticing God’s constant presence in my daily life.

My drives back from Chilhowie to NoVa are always filled with rambling thoughts and Sunday’s drive was no different – thinking about work stuff, worrying about my mom and dad, thinking about the wedding I’d attended on Saturday night and Colt’s baptism on Sunday morning, and working out plans for Grandmother’s upcoming 80th birthday.  I was also feeling a bit empty, like I hadn’t been home long enough to get the heart refill that usually comes with a visit to the mountains or maybe it was David’s especially haunting and touching sermon about being ready for death, I’m not really sure.  I do know, however, that when Matt Wertz’s “I Will Not Take My Love Away” came up on the iPod, I had tears on my checks and don’t know if there was really a more appropriate song for the way I was feeling.  Matt may not have written this song about faith and God’s love for us, but that’s how I heard it on Sunday night.  It was the perfect reminder, for me, that even when we may stray and have other priorities, He’s still there for us.

Lyrics:
I will not take my love away
When praises cease and seasons change
While the whole world turns the other way
I will not take my love away
I will not leave you all alone
When striving leads you far from home
And there’s no yield for what you’ve sown
I will not leave you all alone
I will give you what you need
In plenty or in poverty
Forever, always, look to me
And I will give you what you need

Listen here.

what’s in a name?

I go by my middle name.  Which means I’ve spent 30 years answering to “April” at doctor’s appointments, at the first day of school/classes, in job interviews, and in numerous other situations (well, typically it goes like this: Nurse/Receptionist/Teacher/Bank Clerk/Prospective Employer: “April <looooong pause> Be-tee?” Me: “Bay-tee, actually.  And I go by my middle name, ‘Gwen.’”).  People ask me why I don’t go by my first name all the time and I really don’t have an answer besides the fact that that’s what my parents wanted/decided.  My Dad goes by his middle name, one of my uncles has a nickname that is in no way connected to his given name save family history – really, how do you get “Pete” out of “Richard Gray.”  And, honestly, I’m so far from being an April that I can’t even imagine being called that on a regular basis.

This all leads up to Friday night, when we were at the Majestic and I was told by our favorite bartender that Gwen wasn’t my real name at all.  I guess I understand his point, but what’s the point of even having a middle name if it doesn’t count as being part of your “real name?”