I've recuperated very slowly this week. I went to work everyday, but often I had trouble keeping my head up, and my first real meals were on Friday. I had a lot of trouble with my knee, also, more pain than I've had since I began last summer with the Celebrex. Part of the problem, I think, was that I couldn't keep down any medication for the first three days, except my blood pressure pill. But the worst problem was sleeping on the guest bed, which has the mattress from hell on it. Once I was recovered enough that I felt I wouldn't give this bug to DB, and I could sleep once again in our bed, my knee felt better.
I still don't have much oomph. I did walk 3/4 of a mile on Friday, but shopping yesterday in my favorite supermarket wore me and my knee out. Today I climbed to the third floor of the parish house to teach class without trouble, but I haven't done much since I got home from church. I really want to go back to bed, but I know I won't sleep tonight if I do.
I have been reading Frederick Buechner' "Telling Secrets", which is the third in his autobiographical series. The following excerpt goes a long way to explaining why I write in a journal:
"My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours. Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally. If this true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also spiritually.""Telling Secrets, A Memoir", Frederick Buechner, pg. 31.
Stories are such a part of me, and such a heritage from my father's family, that I couldn't NOT tell them. I tell stories when I teach both children and adults. I tell stories to friends, family, and sometimes strangers. I teach others to tell stories. I'm afraid I've begun to repeat myself, but I really don't care. I think stories are what keep us all connected.
My mother's family didn't tell stories. I know very little about them. I'm sure my Grandmother Mary, the lovely, giggly Finnish grandma with the beautiful skin, had dozens of stories to tell. But she didn't. Probably the Finnish reticence figured into that, as did the hard childhood she had. Her sister, my greataunt Lil, did tell some stories, and it is because of her that I know anything at all about lovely Mary.
My mother must have had many stories to tell; but again, maybe because of her illness, she didn't feel I would be interested. When she died, at 35, her history died with her. Dad grieved too much for too long to tell me much of anything.
My mother's sister is still alive and lives with her husband, my dear uncle, in Florida. Her stories are always edited to leave out the bad parts. I'm sorry about that, because mom's and auntie's stories are a part of my history and a part of who I am.
DB and I are going to Florida to see Auntie and Uncle (I have called them that since I was two years old...and my children call them that also, as do cousins and siblings) in the latter part of this month. I hope I can glean a few stories about their childhood while I'm there.
My own story continues: I have my interview (interrogation?) in front of the whole Commission on Ministry on March 14th. If they give me the OK, then I begin my internship the week after Easter. At this point I'm not nervous; I have put this whole matter in God's hands. No doubt, as the Rector and I drive up to the Big City that day, I will become anxious. However, I will leave myself open to what God wants me to do.
Life is good; thanks be to God. Amen.
6:00 PM
It's snowing again. This might be a big storm...a foot or more is predicted. The ground was warmish when the snow started three hours ago, so the snow is just now beginning to stick. And we had been able to see a little green grass here and there! My poor snowdrops will be frozen out and/or covered again before they have a chance to poke their heads up.
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