It’s happened again. Another harrowing national tragedy. This time in Boston, during that city’s much-beloved marathon, on Massachusetts’ annual Patriot’s Day, a day of holiday and celebration.
More innocent lives were lost yesterday, April 15. More bodies were maimed, more souls damaged, more children left without a parent, more parents’ lives ravaged by the loss of a child. Another beautiful day in April, forever marked by catastrophe and sadness. Today is the six-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting. This Friday, 18 years will have passed since the Oklahoma City bombing. As in the 1996 bombing at the Atlanta Olympics, a jubilant time in the life of a city has been twisted into ugliness, a blood-red-letter day of mourning. As in December’s horrific mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, children are among the victims. As on all these days and on September 11, those of us still standing are shakier, less steady.
Perhaps somewhat guiltily, we are relieved that it wasn’t our time. Not yet, at least. But we know it could easily have been us. It could happen to any of us. And increasingly often, it does. Our family was concerned, in particular, about friends from our church. The daughter was running the marathon, and her parents were there to cheer her on. Luckily, she is young, strong and very fast. We learned through Facebook that the family was unhurt physically.
Now, as a nation, we will pause. We will mourn. Many of us will pray. We may find ourselves at a loss for how to proceed. But then, as we always do after such calamities, we will rally. We will come together in love and support of those who died, of those runners now missing limbs, of those who have lost loved ones, of those who will assist friends and family as they face years of surgery and difficult recovery. We will stand up and say that we refuse to get used to this. We refuse to accept such violence as the natural order of things. And through our shared strength and determination, we will show that no matter what, the power of goodness will win out over evil. Immediate proof of this is demonstrated by the many people who stepped in, selflessly and heroically, to do everything they could to help injured strangers.
My prayers will continue to go out for all those impacted by this tragedy, and for all Bostonians, who, I would imagine, take personally this despicable strike against their hometown.
Our group was a few minutes late in returning to the bus after touring Mont Saint Michel. The Chickamaugans, hopping mad because of the delay, demanded an apology. I can’t remember if we apologized or not. If we did, I’m sure we managed to ooze contempt and condescension. Our traveling companions had clearly missed the magic of Mont Saint-Michel. That night we were to stay in nearby Saint-Malo in a French boarding school, empty over the Easter holidays. The trip to the Lycée Jacques Cartier didn’t take long. The school, in a pleasant wooded setting, consisted of long, low gray stone modernist buildings. It appeared to be very new at the time. We immediately went to dinner. In a big room adjacent to the dining hall were several huge round basins for washing hands. The water, controlled by foot levers, came out from the center in a smooth round sheet, as in some fountains. Bars of soap on metal rods extended out over the basin. Seven or eight people could wash their hands at once. It was the highest-tech lavatory we had ever seen. Dinner was unremarkable. After dinner we headed up to the dormitories. The girls all slept in one enormous room. Partitions that approached but did not reach the ceiling separated the space into smaller areas, each with six beds. My friend Jackie, her mother and I found ourselves rooming with three Chickamauga girls, much to our dismay. The bathrooms were of great interest. There were eight shower stalls and perhaps even more bidets (a word I misspelled biday throughout my journal), but only two toilets. Very strange, we thought, but consistent, as our hotel room in Paris had had a bidet but no toilet.
That night, of course, none of us was in the mood for sleep; the camp-like living quarters spoke to the fundamental need for teenagers to indulge in late-night antics. Our Chickamauga roommates seemed to have forgotten their animosity toward us after the bus incident, and we gained a new appreciation for them. They entertained the crowd with comically rendered country songs, liberally borrowing from episodes of the TV show Hee-Haw. My friends and I considered ourselves too cosmopolitan to admit to watching that show, but we had to say that the Chickamaugans could have starred in it. They had the requisite country twangs, the goofy, expansive personalities, and they really sang well together.
After the North Georgians had concluded their performance, Jackie and I joined Katie and Rebecca in the room they shared with other friends from our school. We were engaged in some sort of forgotten silliness when one of us happened to look out the window and notice several boys hanging around outside. We didn’t know them; they were evidently French locals. This was an unexpected and exciting development. My memory of what follows is hazy, and my journal, surprisingly, doesn’t record the details. My guess is that windows were opened, and intercultural flirting began. The boys felt sufficiently encouraged that they tried to scale the building and climb in the windows. Seems like I remember one of them standing on a portion of the lower roof. When it looked like they were really planning to storm the barricades, our group tried to backtrack. We didn’t really plan to invite them in. How do you say Never mind in French? I assume we locked the windows and hissed Arretez!Allez-vous!Va t’en! The commotion awakened one of our chaperones. She addressed the boys with severe words, the gist of which was unmistakable no matter the language. After they had retreated and disappeared, she treated us to similarly severe words and herded us back to our little beds.
Although Jackie and I returned to our room, we still had no intention of sleeping. We sneaked off quietly to the expansive bathrooms, hoping for further distraction. To our delight, we found a couple of forgotten bras hanging on hooks outside the shower stalls. They were for full-figured girls, unlike us, and made for ideal comic props. Whatever we did with those bras (and I can’t remember), it was the height of middle-school hilarity. It must have been near 3 AM when we returned to our cubicle. I had never been to sleep-away summer camp, and I never would go, but that night, I got an exhilarating taste of it.
It was Jackie’s birthday yesterday. After all these years, when we get together, we still tend to stay up late, talking and laughing. The difference is that today, we catch up on the current events of our lives while also reveling in so much shared history. It’s one of the nicer things about growing older. It makes the present moment all the sweeter.
It was a cold March here in Northern Virginia, but spring began with real promise. On that first day of the season, it seemed as though warmth, bright color and new life were truly on their way. Then, somehow, the pause button was pushed. Or maybe it was the reverse switch, because throughout the rest of the month, we got the weather we should have had in February. We got the snow that the kids had hoped for all winter. Mornings were frosty, with icy winds and various threats of frozen precipitation. Afternoons were only somewhat less bitter, and nights were consistently cold. Buds and blooms put themselves on hold, understandably unwilling to emerge in the inhospitable climate. I needed every bit of my winter dog-walking gear, from the woolen hiking socks to the mittens and fuzzy scarf.
When the first warm weather arrived last Friday, it caught me completely off guard. I had almost given up hope that spring would ever again feel like spring. The morning felt expectedly chilly, but by the time Kiko and I returned from our walk, he was panting vigorously and I was carrying a bundle of outer wear. That afternoon was absolutely perfect weather for April. Saturday was warmer still. On Sunday, even I was digging around in my closet for shorts and T-shirts. Yesterday the temperature reached 80 degrees. Kiko, who had spent the entire weekend sleeping in the sun on the patio, took refuge in the shade of the porch. He had the exhausted, overheated grimace he wears during most of August. Today the expected high is 82. On Wednesday, it might reach 90.
It’s a tiresome and ungrateful practice to complain about the weather, especially when there are those not so far away who continue to suffer in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, not to mention other natural disasters world-wide. Still, couldn’t we have had another Pause on Saturday, when the weather was pleasant and actually spring-like? Instead we got Fast-Forwarded. But the neighborhood sure looks beautiful.
I love it when the reddish buds of the maple trees
create the look of a rose-colored wash.
A spring-flowering magnolia, in exuberant bloom.
These hearty purple vinca flowers appeared in late February.
At last they look comfortable, as they bask in the sun.
This small tree flourishes despite its proximity to the path of my daughter’s rope swing. Its buds open to reveal raggedy flowers with a lemony fragrance.
On the bus to Normandy, once again my friends and I battled the urge to close our eyes in sleep. Mrs. Correll resumed her patrol duty, walking the aisle, tapping shoulders, urgently entreating us: Wake up! Dont’ miss the beautiful French countryside! As soon as I noticed the loveliness of the landscape we were passing through, I had no more trouble fighting drowsiness. This was the idyllic countryside of fairy tales: rolling hills, pastures and fields neatly enclosed by fences and hedgerows, small cottages, many with thatched roofs and ivy-covered stone walls, the occasional grand manor house. The chic Parisians had disappeared, replaced by timeless country folk engaged in timeless pastoral activities, like the farmer above, carrying a hay bale on his back. We saw French sheep, horses, cows and dogs. They looked somehow more charming and worldly-wise than their Georgia or Kentucky counterparts. It was cold outside, but the sun was bright and the land was poised for the greening of spring.
The drive took nearly four hours. We shared the bus with a larger group of high school students from the north Georgia town of Chickamauga. The French countryside evidently held little charm for them. Restless and bored, they whiled away the time by pining for the far-away, all-American life. They bemoaned the typically much-missed delights: juicy hamburgers, thick steaks, “real” toilet paper, cold Cokes, water with ice. Mrs. Correll had made it clear to us well before the trip that if we uttered such clichés we would risk her wrath. She would not hear us talking like ugly Americans. We were a sophisticated group, she stressed. We knew we weren’t especially sophisticated, but we didn’t want to disappoint the teacher we revered. Seeing the Chickamaugans behaving boorishly inspired us to try to act cultured and urbane. We considered them to be country bumpkins. I’m sure they thought of us as annoying little city twits.
Mont Saint-Michel, seen from our bus window.
My first glimpse of Mont St. Michel was magical. I was not alone; the vision was sufficient to switch the Chickamaugans’ attention away from the pleasures of home. I’ve returned to Normandy twice over the years, and each time, the initial sighting of that towering castle-church on the rock, rising out of an immensity of flat sand, retains its unique power.
According to medieval texts that recount the beginnings of Mont Saint-Michel, in the eighth century, the archangel Saint Michael appeared in a dream to Aubert, Bishop of nearby Avranches. He commanded Aubert to build him a church upon the rock. When difficulties arose, as one might expect with such a tricky architectural undertaking, the archangel was said to have worked miracles that allowed building to continue. Aubert’s church was consecrated in 708, and word spread of the majestically situated church divinely ordained by an angel.
By the twelfth century, Mont Saint-Michel had become one of Europe’s premiere pilgrimage destinations. In an age that valued visible, tangible relics of a saint’s earthly life, an angel might seem an unlikely candidate to become a popular pilgrimage saint. Saint Michael, a heavenly creature who never dwelt on earth, could offer no bones, blood, hair or instrument of torture to be venerated. But Aubert and those who succeeded him in tending the shrine were creative and enterprising; if the people wanted relics, they would have relics.
Some pilgrims may have come for the relics. Probably more came to soak up the romance of the place itself. Its exceptional location and the drama inherent in the site offers its own enchantment. Thrill-seekers made the pilgrimage because it entailed risk and adventure. Getting to the church on the rock meant navigating the bay’s capriciously shifting sands and the rushing tides that transformed the mount into an island twice daily. There was also the danger of losing one’s way when the thick fog settled in.
The church and the buildings of its surrounding village seem to grow from the rock.
A series of fires required sucessive rebuildings. With each disaster, reputed miracles were interpreted as proof of Saint Michael’s continuing support. He had not abandoned the site. On the contrary, he required a bigger, taller church. The Benedictine Abbey that stands today was begun in 1023. While portions of this Romanesque building remain, most of the church dates from the Gothic period. The archangel was traditionally worshipped in high and lonely spots, and the church that evolved over the centuries might be seen as a sort of architectural portrait of Saint Michael. The building’s massive heaviness and its apparent unity with the rock reflect the military saint’s enduring strength, while its soaring height stretches toward his heavenly domain. On stormy nights, as lightning struck, wind howled and thunder rumbled, the medieval faithful claimed to witness the archangel’s battle with Satan at the top of the mount.
That chilly April day in 1975, our group hadn’t had to brave the elements to reach Mont Saint-Michel. We weren’t exhausted from months of walking in all weathers and through difficult terrains. But we were tired of sitting, and delighted to get off the bus. As we hurried along the causeway, a few of us may have been nearly as excited as some pilgrims before us. The view of the mount retained its drama even at close range. Winding our way up the narrow, cobblestoned street, the adventure continued. The story-book town, with its tightly packed medieval buildings, the upper levels jutting out above those below, was quaint yet scruffily authentic, not a plastic Disneyesque quaint. Inside the church, the shadowy crypts, cut into the depths of the rock, were austere and fortress-like, making the soaring nave, with its pointed Norman arches and tall clerestory windows, appear all the more gloriously luminous.
Dusk was approaching as we climbed to the top of the ramparts to look out over the vast expanse of sand and sea below. The wind was picking up. There was no lightning, but the atmosphere felt charged. That night, we did not see Saint Michael engaged in a furious war with the devil, but the possibility didn’t seem at all far-fetched. What a spectacular sequel to our Super-8 movie Dark Secrets we could have shot at Mont Saint-Michel!
This all-encompassing view of Mont Saint Michel was taken by a neighbor in 1937.
Because we fared well with our first batch of decorated eggs this season, my daughter and I pushed on. We experimented with natural dyes, without success. Boiled red cabbage suffuses the kitchen with a pungent smell and yields a vibrant reddish-blue color in the pan. Yet eggs left in this liquid for an extended period emerge an innocuous, industrial shade of gray-white. The same is true for beet juice. This might not be the case if we had boiled the eggs slowly with the vegetables, as we have done, with good results, to make our reddish-brown onion skin eggs (See post from April 2012). Surprisingly, only frozen blueberries mixed with water imparted a substantial but subtle color (a dull gray-blue, seen on the egg in the top center, above).
D and I soon turned to the stand-by, store-bought egg-coloring kit. We wanted to try some easy techniques that did not involve paint or markers. Outside in the biting March wind, we foraged for interesting bits of foliage and flowers. We arranged a sprig or a leaf on each egg, wrapped the egg tightly in cheesecloth, tied the ends with yarn and immersed the egg in the dye. We had used the cheesecloth technique before when decorating some of our onion skin eggs. (Pieces of old nylon stocking, recommended by some, did not work for us; they didn’t create a secure enough hold.) This cheesecloth process produces messily impressionistic images, as on the eggs above, instead of clear-cut stencil designs, which suits us fine.
My daughter created this interesting design with nandina leaves, wrapped very tightly to show the weave of the cheesecloth.
We made bolder patterns by simply wrapping rubber bands
tightly around the eggs before dyeing them.
For this design we used a sprig of pine needles bound with a rubber band. It reminds me of waving seagrass in front of a beach fence.
We made polka-dotted eggs by applying stickers before dyeing.
We used a variety of stickers for the eggs above. Our failure to remove the stickers immediately after dyeing made for the only stress of the evening. We spent considerable time trying,
with incomplete success, to scrape off the shredded stickers and the gooey residue.
We used tape to create simple rectilinear designs. It peels off far more easily than stickers.
Charles Wesley eloquently summed up the message of Good Friday in the words of the following hymn, which he composed in 1762.
Its title comes from the last words of Christ from the cross,
as told in John 19:30: It is finished.
‘Tis Finished! The Messiah Dies
Tis finished! the Messiah dies, cut off for sins, but not his own.
Accomplished is the sacrifice, the great redeeming work is done.
The veil is rent; in Christ alone the living way to heaven is seen; The middle wall is broken down, and all the world may enter in.
‘Tis finished! All my guilt and pain, I want no sacrifice beside; for me the Lamb is slain, ’tis finished! I am justified.
The reign of sin and death is o’er, and all may live from sin set free; Satan hath lost his mortal power, ’tis swallowed up in victory.
This year, my daughter and I continued our Easter-week egg-decorating tradition, but we kept the techniques simple and our approach low-key. We dyed these eggs using the tablets from a basic egg-coloring kit and decorated them using acrylic paints or markers. I am happy to report that no family members were harmed, either emotionally or physically, during the decorating of these eggs, which is more than I can say for some years.
For other approaches to egg-decorating (and the upheaval they have provoked), see several posts from April 2012.
Yesterday, our daughter went to New York City on a whirlwind, 24-hour trip with her drama class. The group left from the school by bus at 5 AM, and returned at 5 AM this morning. They saw two Broadway shows–Newsies and the eagerly awaited Matilda, still in previews. A Newsies cast member led the kids in a dance workshop. They had some free time, so I’m expecting a a full report on wandering Times Square characters. Are the Naked Cowboys in season yet? Were there plentiful sightings of Elmo, Shrek, Hello Kitty, Grandma Liberty and the Tin Man? How was the singing waitstaff at Ellen’s Stardust Diner? D is still asleep, so I haven’t heard the details of the trip yet. I’m very grateful to the drama teacher and to the parent chaperones accompanying the group. I’m especially thankful that I was not among them. While I enjoy New York in small, metered doses, I’m relieved that crowded, pre-dawn bus rides are predominantly in my past.
As D was preparing for the excursion that launched her spring break, I was recalling the days when I looked forward to my own eighth-grade adventure. I mentioned in an earlier post that I had the unlikely good fortune to participate in a school trip to France and England. (See A Small Reunion of the Rutherford Hall Gang, Nov. 2011.) As I said then, it was a rare event for a group from the Atlanta Public City Schools to venture anywhere for spring break in the 70s, much less to Europe. It was just about unheard of then for middle-schoolers in our area to take part in such study trips. But we were blessed with a dynamic and unusually dedicated French teacher, Martha Elizabeth Correll. She decided we must see France, and we must see it with her. We loved and admired the young, fun and charismatic Mrs. Correll. She seemed to be fond of us, too. She found a bargain-priced trip through the now extinct Foreign Study League. Nine of us, including several of my best friends, managed to persuade our parents that this was an opportunity not to be missed.
Mrs. Correll encouraged us to keep a journal during our trip, and naturally I saved mine. In my first entry, dated a few days before our departure, I mentioned my vague fear of flying. I had never been on a plane before: It couldn’t be especially frightening, could it? Katie, who wouldn’t ride the roller coasters at Six Flags, had flown before, and she wasn’t scared.
Above, most of our group at the Atlanta Airport, ready to board the plane to New York. Several of us hold our blue and white Foreign Study League carry-ons. Our teacher, Mrs. Correll, is at the far right, in her signature, whimsically decorated bell-bottom jeans.
My journal from the actual trip continues on the subject of airplane travel. The flights were unexpectedly smooth, I reported. Apparently I was expecting a roller coaster experience, despite Katie’s evidence to the contrary. But every aspect of flying was novel and amazing, if not particularly enjoyable. I wrote at length about the unbelievably cramped quarters on the overseas flight, the tiny bathrooms, and the unidentifiable food (my friend Jackie maintained that we had been served baked rat).
After a sleepless night on the plane, we arrived in Paris in the gray dawn and boarded our bus for an introductory tour of the city. I recall powerfully the miserable war I waged against my leaden eyelids during my first, much anticipated hour in a foreign country. We were surrounded by legendary sights, yet the yearning for sleep was overwhelming. After the discomfort of the airplane seats, the tour bus provided an ideal environment for snoozing. Most eyes were closing, most heads were bobbing. Mrs. Correll, ever vivacious, walked the aisle, rousing us. She hadn’t taken us with her to France so we could sleep on a bus. Once in the heart of Paris, I shook off some of the muddled fog of half-sleep. After stops at the Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame, nearly everyone was awake enough to feel rejuvenated by our surroundings. Avoiding sleep became even easier once we noticed that our Parisian guide, Salvador, was charming and exotically handsome (so French!).
Rebecca, me, Jackie and Katie in our hotel room on Easter Sunday morning.
Because my expectations had been low, our hotel was a pleasant surprise. It had one of those old-fashioned elevators I had seen in movies, with a folding iron grille in place of a door. Our room was almost grand, if slightly faded. I liked its high ceilings, ornate wallpaper and elegant fireplace. Its large size was fortunate, considering there were five of us in it. Katie and Rebecca shared one double bed, Jackie and her mother shared the other, and I got the single. I remember being cold at night and sleeping huddled under my coat. We had been told not to expect a private bathroom, so we were surprised to find a spacious one with lavatory, bathtub and bidet. The toilettes, as we learned to say, were down the hall, in claustrophobic compartments. One of our friends went in one and couldn’t get out. He was finally extricated by a team of chamber maids speaking in baffling, rapid-fire French. After that, we were all careful about locking the door just so.
The 13th-Century Sainte-Chapelle, built by King Louis IX.
Our three-day visit to Paris was like a fast-paced tasting menu of the city’s highlights, most of which Mrs. Correll had discussed with us previously in vivid detail. She wanted us to understand and appreciate the history and culture of France, as well as its language. Paris came alive for us during that short time because our teacher had prepared us well. We heard some of the Easter mass in Notre-Dame. We saw the forbidding Conciergerie, where Marie Antoinette spent her sad last days. We beheld the lovely Sainte-Chapelle, the Gothic jewelbox that Saint Louis built to house the Crown of Thorns. We wandered the Latin Quarter, alive with bohemian student activity. We explored the courtyards of the Sorbonne, where Mrs. Correll had studied.
We watched old soldiers playing boules outside Les Invalides, fishermen casting their nets from the Pont Neuf, and children sailing paper boats in the Luxembourg Gardens. Everywhere there were Frenchmen carrying baguettes and wearing actual berets. We spent some time (not nearly enough for me) in the Louvre. Of course we walked the Champs-Elysees. We cruised the Seine at night in a Bateau Mouche. I got to witness first-hand the view I had most anticipated–the tip of the Île de la Cité with the lacy spires and flying buttresses of Notre-Dame just behind.
I loved the wealth of intricately decorated Easter candies and pastries that beckoned from the windows of small shops on narrow streets. Never before had fruit and vegetables looked so beguiling as they did in the city’s outdoor markets. Even displays in butcher shop windows were strangely beautiful, recalling old-master still lifes. We ate in cafés and brasseries, and learned that a croque-monsier, an omelette, or anything with frîtes was a good choice. We learned that French ice cream is served in minuscule metal dishes. And we found that paying for our meals and managing francs and centîmes was as difficult as we had feared.
Real Frenchmen, real baguettes, and real berets.Some of our group (dressed in the height of 70s middle-school style), in the gardens at Versailles.
We were busy during our three days in Paris. But we weren’t so busy that we missed getting a sense of the city’s unique, ebullient, quirky atmosphere. Sooner than we would have liked, it was time to head to Normandy, to Mont-St-Michel, and on across the Channel to England.
A blog about motherhood, marriage and life: the joys and frustrations, beauty and absurdity, blessings and pain. It's about looking back, looking ahead, and walking the dog.
