From an Unbaptized Girl

I sit in heavy air tonight. It hangs thick around my ears and in my hair and out the screen door where the lightning bugs are beginning to flicker for one more dance in the dark. The fan is doing its darndest to be an air conditioner, but it can't change its nature. It can only swirl the hot air around languidly from one room to the next before it makes its way back again to the kitchen table where I sit clacking keys.

I've been thinking an awful lot lately--about living alone, about the feeling of having finished my first year of teaching, about church. About writing another blog post after what feels like months of finishing one thing only to be caught up in the next. About what it takes to slow down and breathe in the middle of day-to-day craziness...slowing down to notice the smell of watermelon in the park or to pick up a bluejay feather, slowing down to give thanks. About what it means to be baptized after years of thinking and doubting and wondering and being won.

Thinking, too, about what it means to feel a peace that hangs as thick and heavy as the air around me. I don't always feel it, but only having felt it once one learns to know the taste. Even when faced with failure, with one's own state of brokenness, the memory of this peace sticks in the soul like honey and slowly fills up the cracks and sweetens shame with grace.

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I don't have a whole lot of space in my apartment, but I've tried to fill it with things that matter. Some of my dearest possessions (and I kid not...) have been my plants. When I first moved here last August, my best friend from high school and her other-best-friend-boyfriend-nice-boy-Kevin came to visit. We went to a plant and produce stand called Frog Pond (which I was disappointed to learn had neither frogs nor a pond) where we wandered the greenhouses admiring plants. Kevin, who is altogether too generous for his own good, slyly bought me pretty much all of the plants I took a liking to as a housewarming gift. They started out this fall small and spindly. They brought life to the apartment, though, and gave me something to take care of. I felt a kinship with them as they put roots down and grew accustomed to being somewhere outside the greenhouse. I walked into my apartment after school every afternoon to plants that were growing greener and friendlier and bigger by the day. When my African violet burst into bloom, I felt like a proud mother crooning over her first child.

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I don't know what I'm going to say when I'm baptized this Sunday. Baptism is public, and it feels like I'll be dragging some of the deepest parts of myself out into full view for others to look at. What does one say at such a time? I'm not sure yet. What I am sure of, though, is that this is something I want despite the discomfort of public proclamation.

And oddly enough?

 I think it has something to do with the African violet sitting by my window.

Apogee Perigee Big Full Moon Here Ye Be

I'm setting my alarm.

Super Moon

In Honor of Nothing

I truly have nothing to say tonight. It seems that there are so many profound and mundane and in-between things in the world that one should always have something to say. But tonight the well is dry.

So much has been said already, after all. Who am I to clutter the world with a meaningless blog post like this one when some people really do have things to say? Let them speak. Let them ink their words onto the blogosphere.

But I, being puny and human and alone in a small apartment at 9:45 pm, still feel the urge to make my voice heard. The keys click and clack under my fingertips, and I suddenly feel neither puny nor human--well, yes, I guess I still feel human--nor alone any longer. For I, Deborah Anne, have voiced my Nothing into the great expanse.

This one's for you.

After 5 Girls...

...Sister Abigail had a man-child! Honeybuckle is a boy!

Baby Ezekiel and his mama:

Going solo:

I went to visit them both in the hospital yesterday, and he is soft and sweet-smelling and utterly delectable. You should be jealous.

Rambling Man [Or Girl. Or Dog...Or Just Girl and Dog Without the Man]

Easter break afforded me at least one good, long ramble. Sleep is sneaking up on me, but I want to write one more post before I head off to bed. Because my brain is only semi-conscious, this post will be heavy on pictures and light on words.

The dilapidated Johnson barn and barbed wire.

Watching.

Moss is one of my favorite things. I wish I could have a whole bed made out of it. Or I suppose I could just sleep on a rotting log like this one...

Blossoms.

I followed the gulley slicing through our woods until I reached Nanticoke Creek and could follow it upstream. The hoarfrost was still on the lamb's ears and the shadows on the water.

My faithful Huckleberry was a constantly-moving companion. His nose didn't stop twitching the whole time, poor hound. He doesn't go on rambles enough now that I'm in Bainbridge instead of Nanticoke.

It's a dog's life.

This is an awful picture, but this section of creek was stunning. The water was pure magic.

Up and Out.

And Up some more.

Foxes [and other mystery creatures] have holes...

...and birds of the air have nests...

And Debbies? Well, they have Nanticokes. 

Easter (And Fashionably Late, Too)

When we were young, Easter was a conglomeration of family and feasting and Easter basket-hiding and egg-coloring and candy-consuming and remembering--although probably not enough of the last. These past few years have become tinged with less sugar (well, okay...you've got me there...still a lot of sugar...) and a more healthy dose of remembering. Now that I have entered the realm of Adulthood, Easter has become a time for homey joys and quiet thoughts that are often pondered but not shared.

We do, however, still enjoy an Easter feast. This feast has become more sumptuous now that my sister Abigail has a still-new nest of her own, made lovely by her instinctive artistic tastes and clever fingers. This is where a [sadly-small this year] Johnson gathering congregated to celebrate the Christ with good conversation and joyful children and pleasantly full bellies.

The hustle and bustle of a before-Easter-feast kitchen, all hands big and little pitching in.

Our hostess, the beautiful [and very pregnant] Abigail. Baby Honeybuckle has not yet joined us in the Out Here but is sure to come soon, God willing.

Abigail's handiwork. Isn't it lovely? Seeing the picture after the fact makes me want to melt right into the photograph. Funny how making a room into a piece of art can do that.

Centerpiece. We had finished eating by this time and were contentedly lounging on couches and in chairs, talking and reading stories to Abby's gaggle of little girls.

And so another Easter has come and gone. The years go by quickly, and I'm only twenty-two. I wonder how quickly they'll pass a few decades from now...

Little Boxes, Little Boxes

How in the name of Pete can people say it's a small world?

(Granted, I've been caught saying that myself on more than one occasion...)

As I pass house after house, green ones and pink ones and blue ones and yellow ones--with the occasional brick ones and stone ones with ivy climbing up their walls--I sometimes become overwhelmed thinking about the lives that have been lived inside each of them. How homes have been made, and how they have been un-made. 

Perhaps it's the fact that I just started living on my own in August and have my very own space that I've tried to cozy up. It's tiny, but it's lived-in and has started, I think, to borrow my personality. Pictures of faces I love on the fridge, brightly-colored art from the little ones in my life on the walls (as well as from the big ones), plants peeping out the windows, a jar full of marbles on top of a shelf chock full of books, a crazy quilt on the bed... it's become an extension of who I am, in a sense. I've become comfortable here. 

When I think about this, even my street can become a Big World and ample space for imaginings. It makes me want to see inside each house frame, pick it apart. Get to know the people inside. 

Globalization, my foot. Technology has its place, and fingers on keyboards and voices on radio waves and faces on televisions may argue in a thousand ways for a world in which isolation is impossible. 

But I want to know who lives in the house next door.