Prairie Dogs, Hikes and Sticky Children

When it's been too long between writing sessions (and work writing, as fun as it is, doesn't count!), my brain gets a little antsy with all the ideas and words floating around. Eventually the ideas and words congregate, form a swarm and start beating ever so more insistently on the inside of my head. And my head, spurred by the swarm, craves to enter the space of letterings. Back in the saddle for a short blogging stint.

I have been absent but for good reasons (yeah!). I spent the second week of June in Estes Park directing a Christian youth conference - without my kids. It was a wonderful week, and my soul was fortified in different ways by

how God helped to work out the details even as I panicked every day about something or other. On one day in particular, I had several activities to coordinate and no good way of either contacting people or having a central place to find people on the expansive YMCA ground with limited cell service, but the people I needed to find either showed up at my room door or were easily located walking near the lodges.

the hilarious incident of the prairie dog in the lunchroom and coaxing the poor, diseased thing out of a corner with a cardboard box while Ashley Rieves stood on a cooler and shrieked (we are forever bonded) and praying no one came down with junta virus.

watching incredulously as a young man who had strayed from his group on a hike to rock climbing ran down the trail breathlessly, so happy to see us and his dad and explaining that he had taken a turn on what he thought was the right trail BY HIMSELF.

a hike up Twin Sisters, a 11,400 foot peak with a group from Independent Presbyterian Church. I stood at the top peak with four men (me, the only woman - that's the group in the picture) feeling victorious, feeling scared for my life that I might be blown off the top, loving the adventure of knowing what I wanted to achieve but adjusting at every step to the trail (dirt, roots, rocks and finally large, rough boulders), the weather (sunshine, overcast, snow, wind), my thirst, my hunger (M&M cookies satisfied low blood sugar at the top), my aching knees and the group. (Much of the way I contemplated how much life is like a hike - an idea of where we want to get to but know idea of what that trail will really look like and needing resources and friends to help us navigate directions and the trail, and needing to adjust to new discoveries).

laughing hysterically with Rachel Rieves and Frosty Howell - a table will never mean the same thing again when I see Rachel (wink, wink).

watching 270 high school students and youth leaders worship together each night.

calling my mom on Wednesday and her asking me, "Alexa, are you high or relaxed or . . . " and me replying that I was hanging out with friends from the south (how my adopted accent resurfaces!). My southern friends thought this was quite funny.

spending a late night with new friends and old friends (Amy Lowe!!) swapping stories and other fun things (wink, wink).

having a week of going and going and going without children but still not getting enough sleep.

calling home Friday evening in tears because the last dinner was near disaster, and I was exhausted and so homesick and being able to hear home.

feeling like such a woman Friday evening, having kept it together all week and then needing to just sit down to have a good cry and to talk to those I love and then getting back up to finish the week (Rachel and Frosty assure me I was just being human, but I felt a little wimpy at that low point).

ending the week with brunch with the Lowe's by the river and coming home to my sticky, half naked children watching cartoons and spending the day with them and Michael.

Worst Mother of the Day

I thought I'd just - for the heck of it - throw my hat in the ring for this one. After all, I let my kids play in the street water after it rains and in the hail (but it was small hail, fun to eat and I didn't know there was a tornado warning yet). Today started out quite good. Asher didn't get up until 6:30, but then he self entertained. And Harper was happy in her crib until around 7:30. But shortly after, Asher decided it was THE day to be bandito Asher, aka big, bad brother. So for a good two hours, I attempted to do a little bit of clean up, breakfast making and feeding, and dressing while Asher was a bandito, perching on the living room chair and darting out to steal Harper's baby and blanket ("gengki" as she screeched it) while also serving a good dose of hits, kicks and whips with Mardi Gras beads. I lost count of how many time outs Asher had and how many toys he lost the privelege of using (don't even ask me about the foam swords he can't use for a few days).

I decided it was finally time to take the two bags of bread heels I'd been saving to the duck pond and feed the birds there, something new and exciting, and the weather was beautiful. Oh, yes, I was thinking, mother of the day, right here. Innocently enough, I made two phone calls on the way and found out that I had a slight emergency with the youth conference I'm working on - a surprise extra 10 attendees!

We unloaded at the duck pond and had a good time chasing geese, not worrying about all the goose poop on the walkway, throwing bread willy-nilly, watching the stork float around the pond, eating bread willy-nilly, watching for more geese and ducks to feed. Shortly after we arrived, the geese started to migrate to another part of the pond, so we started a nice walk around the pond.

We stopped at an inlet where Asher wanted to walk down and see if he could find any more birds to feed. "Careful," I told the kids, urging them to step back from the water. I snapped some good pictures of the kids, the pond and the Rocky Mountains to our west. It was gorgeous! My phone rang, a call back about the surprise emergency, and I answered it. As I was hanging up, I saw Harper f a l l i n t o the water - threw my phone down, tried to reach her from the shore as she started to sink face first, yelled s*%! several times, water closing over her back, stepped in, grabbed the back of her overalls and hoisted her up, wondered if I could remember CPR, checked her face to see that she was surprised, soaking wet but perfectly fine. THANK GOD. I was shaking, and a woman asked if she was okay. No thanks to me, yes. Harper burped, and I wondered how much of the filthy pond water she had taken in. Sweet Asher looked at me and said, "Harper almost floated away." Again, thank God.

We enjoyed the rest of our walk, my shoes squishing and my clothes almost completely wet and Harper drying slowly in the sun, and almost two more hours together at the pond. I was so shaken at one point that I wanted to verify with someone that Harper was indeed okay - was I imagining her walking beside me? Thank God I wasn't. Needless to say, I didn't let either Asher or Harper get closer than three feet from the edge of the bank, and I learned a valuable lesson about multi-tasking.

My New Favorite Personality Test

The Myers-Briggs typology will probably always be a favorite personality test of mine - as an INTJ, I love systems! and gaining more knowledge about myself and my friends - but recently one of my co-workers introduced me to True Colors, a personality test with four categories that are color based. We spent one of our staff meetings learning what our colors are, what each others' colors are, and the strengths, weaknesses and ways to communicate with each other. We all had fun during the meeting.

I am green and feel so at home with systems, knowledge, deep thinking, efficiency, analyzing and not following rules that don't make any sense (this may have been the biggest ahha for me - I am typically a rule follower but how irritated I get by nonsense rules!). It's always fun for me to understand more why I act the way I act and how to communicate better with other people. As a green, I tend towards information and shy away from emotional, people interaction (so don't ever be shy about calling or e-mailing me for purely informational reasons); although, life has taught me the importance of friends and taking the time for emotions and sharing emotions with others. You can join the fun by taking a free test at www.truecolorscareer.com/quiz.asp.

Maybe I'll Just Pitch a Hammock

Even though I am often thinking about the future and future plans, I still don't have much patience waiting for things to happen in the future. Take previously described new garden bed - I know it will get better and better each year, but I want an instantly beautiful garden with big wonderful hollyhocks, spreading Russian sage and phlox that has multiplied all over the place. I can envision it so why isn't it THERE already! Patience, patience.

I am improving in my sense of things happening in the future. Owning a home has helped. While I will gratify my urgent desires by making lists of projects, I can also see how over time the projects will unfold through the years, how I can space the projects out and still be quite happy in my home (perhaps happiest in the spring when I can get out, ride around the gorgeous old town neighborhood under the spreading trees and past blossoming plants, getting out of rooms I obsessed about during cold weather). Patience, patience.

Perhaps it's finally being in my thirties, but I am starting to see the unfolding of seeds I planted or didn't plant many years ago - the resulting community that I live in. I get a sense that, not to break a deeply emotional and complicated human experience down solely to economics, relationships - how we treat others - are investments. Not karma but the results of how I've been with others. More and more I value and consciously nurture my friendships because like so many things in life (my the list is long, when I consider it - education, cars, houses, kids, pets, gardens, retirement accounts, anything with a future) what I put in now will directly affect what they are like in the future. Relationships are long term projects, unfolding over and through the hills, down cliffs, up steep climbs, beside the ocean. How clearly I see the consequences of choices.

While feeling this investment immediately, and the importance of now, I also am intimidated by the consequences of my choices and the power I hold in what I do and do not do. How much effort I put into projects at work - what I choose to push forward - may make a profound change in the future. I found at St. John's that my education was what I put into it. If I didn't read, didn't participate in class, didn't engage, I lost. I can feel now that life also is what I choose to make of it. Change is now (if you have a chance to see the "Great Debators" do so - I cried when Samantha debated at the University of Texas. I get chills thinking about it).

Maybe I should have better understood investments and choices earlier - I think several people tried to get me to really understand. I suppose I fumbled along fairly well. Sometimes the power of my choices is deeply energizing and sometimes it is deeply overwhelming to the point that I want to pitch a hammock in my new garden and stay there to watch it come to life. Swing life away.

Transplant

Wow - how this month as passed me by. I suppose it's the gearing up for the annual Reformed Youth Movement conference, the garden planting, the working, the time to enjoy being outside, the watching the weather to see if my town was going to be hit by a tornado (for which, I don't have quite a category for in Colorado - so common in Alabama but not here, though common enough that we have sirens and a speaker system which tells us to take cover and when things are all clear. I felt a little like I was in a communist country with a deep male voice broadcasting all over the city), the enjoying of my fascinating children, the sorting through requests for grant writing, and the spending of wonderful time with good friends.

I got it into my head to turn the back six feet of my backyard into a new garden bed, joining it with one already there. I have a great vision of a huge garden back there, that I can look at from kitchen windows. But classic Alexa - good idea but with little consideration of the execution (though I did plant low maintenance and low water plants so I at least thougth about my energy in the future). It's actually turned out quite good so far, but the time and investment was more than I thought it would be. A lot more. Perhaps, I should also step back from my perfect view of the garden and let it unfold some on it's own. Just relax!

As a part of the big plan, I moved a Russian sage from another side garden to the back garden to give it more space and sun. I put the dear, two-year-old plant in the ground, and within minutes (and I do mean minutes) it wilted. Oh, the shock! it said to me. Why did you tear me away from my cozy home? What did you do to my roots?

I have tried not to obsess about this plant, tried so hard not to anthropromorphize the lovely thing, tried not to let it keep me up at night. The first day, I checked in the plant regularly. I talked to Michael about my worries. I check on it daily. I've even stroked it a few time and encouraged it that things will be okay. I may have even prayed for it. Well, it's still not happy about the move, but I think it's putting up a fight.

The transplant made me think of a close friend who found out last Friday that she and her family will - baring a miracle - have to move out of state for her husband's job. They don't know where yet or when, and she's brokenhearted. Her family moved to Longmont with the intention of staying and minstering in this community. After seven years and with kids now in high school, they are facing a move again. Transplanting is hard, and in plant speak, there is actual shock.

How I pray that my friend will be able to stay in Longmont. Selfishly, I've had enough of friends moving away. I am brokenhearted about being the side garden who seens dear friends lifted from their homes to far away gardens. No doubt, transplanting can be a good thing - potted plants sometimes are ready to be transplanted, needing a bigger pot, outdoor plants sometimes need new locations, and organ transplants save lives (and, as I just discovered online, random, can give a person a new face). I pray such becomes the case with my friend's transplant.

What's in a Name

I talked some in my very first blog post about the importance of words and names to me. Words can hold undue power - what they say, where they say it, how they're put together. One of my ideas of heaven is hearing the most beautiful combination of words. I love the aesthetic of words and carefully turned phrases.

I thought for quite some time about whether to change my name or not last year, when I first faced divorce. I talked to different people about their choice, the ramifications in their children's lives, and the reason for their choices. These ranged from the ease of keeping their married name to the need to cut that marital tie. I thought about the few friends' and family I have who kept their maiden name even into marriage, and how doable it is to have a last name different from my children. I remembered a sophomore music class with a revered St. Johns' tutor, an aged, gay man who wore thick, black rimmed glasses with one lens clouded to hide his eye, and him telling me during one class, "Alexa Van Dalsem. Such a musical name." I remembered how much I loved my maiden name, the tie to my dad whose middle name is Alexander, my name's exotic sound and reference to one-sixteenth of my family origin - a small town the Netherlands called Dalsem. I talked to my mom, and she remembered me saying that I told her I was going to change my name, "so I wouldn't hurt Michael's feelings." I have no memory of this. I do remember changing my name for him, as an act of submission.

In returning to my maiden name, I have felt more finally the end of my marriage, the regaining of my identity, a healing because for so long I haven't felt like me, like this is my life, and a strength standing on a name that meant so much to me in my family roots. I don't have a family home to return to, but my name change has felt like a homecoming. I have felt acutely in this change the life experience of "Always we begin again."

At the same time, the change has been tough, a representation of a family tie that I have lost, no longer being a daughter/sister-in-law in the Behmer family and losing a relationship I treasured and enjoyed. I have a strong memory from our first year of marriage of standing outside a large Baptist church in Huntsville with Michael, his brother and two of his sisters. It felt so good being part of a large family, having all these loving and protecting (while also lovingly crazy) siblings. I cringed recently when Asher was talking about last names while we drove in the car. From the back seat, I heard him list our last names, his being Behmer, Harper's Behmer, mine Behmer, Dad's Behmer. I slowly told him I had changed my name to Van Dalsem, explaining with the barrage of "why" as simply as I could that some people change their names when they get married or are no longer married. Thankfully, though I imagined him seeing his nuclear family crushed with this symbolic change, he did not seem phased by the information.

I am still adjusting to introducing myself and signing my name as Alexa Van Dalsem. I have started changing all the names on my accounts but put off changing my gmail display name until the summer is over and work with a youth organization conference is done for the season.

(Apparently the image gods are smiling upon me because in doing an image search on Google, I found the above image from a mushroom growing company in the Netherlands. Is that what all this is? The art of growing?)

While I'm at It . . .

If you'll indulge me once more . . . so, I also just might have a rant about the state of feminism these days. Again, to set the scene, at one time I could have also been a poster woman for a feminist liberal (though not quite raging, a little loud sometimes) I'm all about women's rights, equal representation (in life, movies, books, faith, TV), women in the workplace, equality of pay, the view of women, "herstory," etc. Sometimes my feminist side still jumps out of me. A few weeks ago, sitting at the serving bar at LeftHand Brewery, the bar tender (poor guy) asked Michael what he wanted to drink and "what can I get for your lovely lady?" To which I quickly replied with a nice smile, "I am my own lovely lady," with a thank you very much thought bubble. Carrie Bradshaw would be so proud. In a Bible study I lead, one of the women bought me a "Women of the Bible" book because I wouldn't pipe down about the lack of references to women in the study book we were reading.

I was quite happy today while flipping through a series of pictures on the Time Magazine website showing all the lovely women in British and European politics. Apparently, Spain is getting quite a bit of flack because the number of women in the Spanish Cabinet now out numbers the number of men. And the new Spanish Minister of Defense is a woman. And she's seven months pregnant. Oh, yeah. How do you like them apples?

Yet (and here we go), one of the pictures' captions read, "Sarah Brown, the wife of the Prime Minister, like her predecessor Cherie Blair, has found that women in the public eye are still judged more on what they look like than on their brains and abilities." Of course they are. Nice.

There's a commercial on TV featuring Kelly Ripa of Regis and Kelly selling appliances. She does her TV show and then rushes home to do all the mothering duties - cooking, cleaning, finding things, entertaining, raising her children, and dropping exhausted. It's amazing, all the things a woman can do. It's amazing all the things we can do to run ourselves ragged. I read a regular column recently in our newspaper by a woman who is self-titled, "Brazen Careerist." She recounted a time when she had just had one of her children, was working full-time and working on a publishing deadline. She finally got help with everything when - get this - her husband found her in the kitchen stabbing herself with a knife. Uh, yeah. And she goes on about how amazing it is to be a woman and working like she always has.

Let me just put out there that the feminist movement has been amazing for women. I wouldn't trade what I now can do in the world, in my community, in the workplace, on the web, anywhere, for the world. But, I also think my generation and generations to come struggle with putting this new world into play, balancing the many parts of being a woman - in the workplace, in the home, in the community, in the world, in the bedroom, in the marketplace - along with the constant focus on our appearance. I've been struck recently with how dangerous it can be for a young woman to be pretty and attractive. Being a woman can't mean doing everything but in the same ways they've always been done. None of us should ever get to the point where we're stabbing ourselves with a knife for the sake of being a "modern woman."

Ahh, a lightbulb. Perhaps I can be more green by doing less housework - use less water, less energy, fewer chemicals - and save some of the valuable time a modern woman needs.

(Note: How great is that picture after my last blog rant?!)