Twenty-Six

Somewhere between twenty and thirty, 

between euphoria and a patched-up, pieced-together heart 

 you begin to realize what it means to be human,

what it means to give and to receive,

to praise with a cracked and trembling voice.

It is then you learn that sometimes

you cannot hear God 

without first finding a cave to listen in,

and it is then you are wizened one moment 

and just a babe crying for comfort the next.

It is then you measure friends 

by the strength of the cords that bind your hearts, 

by the way your diaphragm aches after laughter,

your eyes swell shut after tears,

and your soul pines for God.

____________________________________

I'm twenty-six now. Thank you, friends who are reading this and friends who aren't, for being both ballast and wind as I've needed them this year. You are a true comfort, a true joy, a true gift. 

My family (of the church variety) just completely blew my mind today by giving me a whole bunch of money towards a new car. I don't deserve it, but I feel so loved and so cared for. It's not the money so much as the love that makes me feel overwhelmed, humbled, and young, so young. Beautiful people, beautiful body of Christ.

God is a puzzle, but He helps us find pieces as we need them. 

Twenty-six finds me grateful for each of you, brothers, sisters, mother, nieces, nephews, friends. Thank you.

I Like Sharing Chuckles...

...so before I go off and do the things that need doing before tomorrow, please enjoy this message from a seller on Amazon. I had ordered an item through my mom's account, and needless to say it never made it across the ocean to me.

Hello , Nancy My dear friend , we are so sorry for any inconvenience that we have caused you dear . But we have to be frankly to tell you dear the package is detained by the Customs , thus we have given you dear the full refund , and please just check your account in the following day and you will be sure to receive it soon . Have a good day and if you still have any problem , really thanks for you dear can contact us firstly . Vilin

Reader, dear, my dear friend, dear one, please have a good night.

Of Horses and Farewells

With our time in Alaska quickly drawing to a close, I went on the last adventure of my time there: horseback riding with Aponi out in Palmer, Alaska.

Aponi was really hyper and excited. It might have something to do with the coffee she had just ingested...

After an hour of driving, we made it. Hurray!

Aponi's horse, Princess. 

This is the best you're gonna get of my steed. Her name was Patience, and she had more spirit than the name might imply. I was glad of that. I like interesting horses.

The scenery was breathtaking, as I've come to expect here. 

We shared a shallow lake/river/glacier runoff area with tourists on ATVs part of the time. They made the water and sand look pretty fun. A bit messier riding what they were on than what we were on (and a good bit less peaceful), but still fun.

This is our guide, Hosanna. Yep, I asked her about her name before we even started. She was a Christian and soon found out I was, too. That made our four and a half hour horseback ride full of pretty rich conversation. God sometimes works things out that are so bizarre there is no explanation for them but Him. There's a tremendous amount of the story I'm choosing to skip over here for reasons of my own, but suffice it to say that Hosanna and her family are well out of the ordinary, and the world seemed mind-bogglingly small and large and strange and wonderful all at once by the end of the ride. If you want to know more than that, you can ask me about it in person.

[We hit it off so well with Hosanna that she invited us to come to her house the next day. Mom and I went.]

Four and a half hours is an awfully long time to ride a horse when you haven't done it in a while. Aponi was beginning to wilt rather noticeably by the time we stopped for lunch.

"Back on the horse?!" 

She had been so excited she was giddy just a few hours before, mind you.

And that was the horseback riding adventure (extremely abbreviated version). 

Mom and I said goodbye to Aponi, packed our bags, and flew away home.

I'm afraid that marks the end of this particular escapade in a faraway place. Now it's back to the normal stuff. But when you return to the familiar after immersion in the strange, the familiar gains a newness that makes it fresh. To an Alaskan, the hills and forests of our very own bit of earth right here would be just as charmed. I write this as a temporary Alaskan who is now back in New York and, truth be told, rather glad to be home after all.

Home is home, and that's what it comes down to. 

In the end, I'm a person of roots.

The Hazards of Flight

Glass door.

Poor bird. 

(Gus, I'm calling on you again. What is it???)

And for those of you who like happy endings, yes, the poor little dear bird survived.

A Post for Pops

I don't know that many people were aware of my dad's quirky love of rocks.

On more than one occasion, I pulled out a lumpy object from my Christmas stocking and unwrapped it to find a couple of polished stones, gleaming and smooth in my palm. He had a hard time walking by the rock booth in the middle of the mall come Christmas time (the only time he frequented the mall, I think).

I inherited that quirky love of rocks with a vengeance. Just check out the rocks at the very bottom of this post from last summer. And if you saw my suitcase, you'd know that its extra weight is mostly due to rocks. Rocks from the top of Flattop, rocks from the bottom of the lake in Katmai, rocks from the beach in Naknek, rocks from Crow Pass, rocks from...

As soon as Andy pointed out a place called The Rock Shop in Anchorage, I knew I had to go.

It was the most overwhelmingly amazing store I have ever been to (which perhaps isn't saying much from a non-shopper like me, but trust me anyway...).

There were rainbows everywhere in one of the corners because of the prisms hanging in the window.

This geode was just about my height (and it only cost four and a half grand!).

Here's to you, Dad. May the eccentricities that made you so strangely lovable live on.

Being a Shameless Tourist

It's Aponi's fault, really. As an actual Alaskan, she can't really visit touristy places without losing self-respect. Now that we were there, though, she could go to all of the places she had secretly wanted to visit without losing face.

The best shop of them all was a place called Wild Berry Products. Even the outside was amazing. It had a little train station and cottage off to the side...

...and a gold panning apparatus (at least that's what I think it was).

It also had my mother on the porch and my niece, Aponi, fleeing my camera lens by running behind that pillar with the 5225 on it.

She could run, but she couldn't hide.

Inside was a customer-stalking polar bear...

...as well as the world's largest known chocolate fountain.

The actors in the original Willy Wonka had each signed a photograph of all of the cast members. There was also a movie-original Wonka bar and golden ticket.

Look! A tourist!

[That polar bear was relentless.]

There's nothing quite like polished rocks. In fact, I'm saying barely anything about them right now, because the whole post after this is devoted to the subject.

Aponi helped me fill my satchel.

Caught her. That's her camera face.

She couldn't hold it for long, though.

What was staggering about this particular store, above and beyond its polar bear, its chocolate fountain, and its rock mine, was its fine chocolates so carefully crafted right there in the store.

This is just the key for the berry jelly chocolates. There were also truffles and creams and nougats and fudge and chocolate-covered-everything-else.

Aponi was thunderstruck (I'll admit, I was, too...). 

Mom, on the other hand, was hard-pressed to avoid being somebody else's version of fine food.