Author: Natalie Hart

Humbling: Being the Problem

~ Natalie Hart ~ 7 Comments

In the summer of 2007, I was freelance editing this book: A Practical Guide for Life and Ministry: Overcoming 7 Challenges Pastors Face, by David Horner. It was a good project, pretty well-written and well-organized, with engaging stories about church life and what seemed like good advice. I was well into Section Five: Learning to Grow Through Your Troubles. I was shaking my head at all the terrible congregants who make life difficult for their pastor. At least I wasn’t one of “those.”

Until, of course, I was.

Right smack dab in the middle of editing that section, I lost it at church. I’m not saying I raised my voice or snapped at someone. I went ballistic: high-pitched, barely intelligible screaming and crying to one person on the phone in front of someone else. I wrote an impassioned email to my pastor. Because I was right. And because I’d worked so hard at the church for so long, I had no doubt that he’d see my rightness, too.

Thank God he didn’t.

A little background. One year earlier, our church administrative assistant and my partner in the dance ministry was arrested for and charged  (later convicted) with embezzling money from the church and from our pastor. This was a serious sucker punch for me. I’d thought she was my friend. We not only danced together, but I also trusted her guidance when she told me God wanted us to “flow” in a given dance, which means we don’t choreograph it, we go where the Spirit leads us to. This was not in my tradition, but I prayerfully did it, and it was a tremendous and intense experience. We’d prayed and cried for and with each other. And we’d laughed so much.

The church didn’t handle it particularly well. As often happens in multiracial churches, everyone “went to their corner” and most of the white people voted with their feet, including almost all of the other children’s ministry leaders. We talked about leaving, too, but after a discussion with the pastor, decided to stay. The correct phrase for my attitude would be soldiering on. I went back to leading the children’s worship program (which I’d been about to hand off to someone else who left). Being one of what were now only two teachers, I was downstairs with the kids half of the time, two weeks on, two weeks off. We were also back to having all the kids together, age 3 through second grade, which leads to less worship and more crowd control.

I also wound up taking over the administration and leadership of our church’s Calvin Institutes of Worship grant. I went to the opening retreat/conference mostly because I was available during the day. The language on our grant application (done by the embezzler) was so garbled and jargony that I couldn’t understand what the grant was about, and I had to talk about it repeatedly. I was in tears or on the verge of tears almost the whole few days. But as the conference went on, God inspired me to really take charge of our group.

It was a tough year. We were all hurting, but gritted our teeth and pushed ahead. It was also a good year. Through studying multiracial worship and church life, we were drawn together and encouraged that what we were doing was worth it.

However, I know now that I kept a little part of my heart hard. I nursed grievances. I expected problems. And when my calculations for the grant disbursement didn’t match those of the money team, I lost it, utterly and completely, to one of our financial managers over the phone, screaming and getting nasty and personal in a way I will be ashamed of forever.

The pastors let things calm down for several days and then called a meeting. Nobody was treating me like I was right, so I wasn’t hearing anything until the woman I’d screamed at faced me and said, so simply and quietly, “I feel like you’re accusing me of doing what embezzler did.”

That’s exactly what I was doing. I’d never gotten the chance to confront my old friend, never gotten the chance to be upset with her, never dealt with the betrayal at all, so I took it out on this other woman. Everyone knows what it’s like to be blamed for something you didn’t do. It’s a horrible feeling. And I’d just done that to her at my highest possible decibel. I was the problem.

I cried and apologized profusely on the spot. I apologized to the man who’d witnessed my end of the phone call. And then a few months later, I confessed this story and asked forgiveness of the woman in front of our Women’s Fellowship group. She gave me her forgiveness, something I’ll always be grateful to her about.

And all the while, I had to edit these chapters about what it’s like for the pastor when there’s a problem person. Unsurprisingly, this is one of the defining moments in my church life. I am a better congregant, a better leader, a better Christian for having failed so spectacularly, for being forced into the humble position of asking for forgiveness and being granted it.

This experience also informed my recent decision to leave the church that had taken such good care of me in that low time of my life. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision done in a blaze of emotion. It was the culmination of a six-month period of prayer and conversation with my husband and with others. Even so, it’s breaking  my heart. This is the week of “lasts”: last praise team practice for my husband, and for me, the last time dancing with one of the kids, last time giving the second grade “graduates” their Bibles, last time leading children’s worship. It might be the last time I’ll worship with some people I love. I’ve been cleaning up my office and straightening up the story materials, finding old photos of now-big kids back when they were little, wallowing in nostalgia. I’m just plain sad. Grateful for how important this place has been to me, but sad.

No pithy ending for this longish post. It just isn’t in me today.

 

Humbling: My Inner Pharisee

~ Natalie Hart ~ 1 Comment

Ten years ago, the church women’s group I went to studied a book called 12 Steps for the Recovering Pharisee (like me). The premise is that all those dozens of daily explosions of irritation at people in the grocery story line, drivers on the highway, etc. make you like the pharisees: you are putting yourself above those other people because you’d never do what they’re doing, except of course, when you do, except of course when you do it you have perfectly legitimate reasons for doing it. It was initially striking and convicting. By the end of the book the message was diluted, because it seemed like everything you thought made you a pharisee. Still, it has stuck with me all these years.

I had a not-so-recovering pharisee moment last week and I feel like I’m paying for it now.

Last Friday, I was pulling into a parking lot to do a little grocery shopping. I had to wait what seemed like forever for two women to move diagonally and painstakingly slowly across the aisle and through the spot I was aiming for. One woman was older, but she was speedy compared to the younger one, who hobbled and shuffled like a woman in her 90s. There was nothing visibly “wrong” with her and she was laughing at the older woman ahead of her. I am not proud of it, but I said unkind things about that woman in my head. I was smug about my relative physical fitness and vigor. Classic pharisee.

Classic enough that I recognized it immediately and changed my mental script. I reminded myself that she might be recovering from an injury, or knee surgery, or have a chronic illness, so that the speed and manner in which she walked may be an enormous victory for her. I tried to be glad for her. Still, it gave me a vague sense of, “I’m going to pay for that original attitude by being forced into something similar.”

And I was.

At 3:30 that morning, I awoke with pain every time I took a breath and terrible pain in my neck and shoulders. I thought it might be heartburn or asthma, so I took some Tums, some Advil, heated up my neck roll and deep breathed myself to sleep. Same thing at 5:30. Woke up for good at 8:30, and after the pain increased every time I moved, and I was breathing more and more shallowly to avoid the pain, I woke my husband up and had him take me to the E.R. They plopped me in a wheelchair, rushed me to a room, two people slapped a dozen 3M stickers on me and hooked me up to an EKG machine and who knows what else.

There is no place else in this piece to also mention the relatively minor indignity of having to ask my young male nurse to escort me to the bathroom so I could change my periodical supplies. Yes, while having this emergency, I had to deal with that.

Thank the Lord, it was not a heart attack or a blood clot. It was pleurisy, inflammation of the lining of the lungs. Scary and painful, but not life-threatening.

They sent me home and told me to rest and take Advil-type stuff. I did. Usually, when I’m sick, I hate being hovered over and cared for, but I was a good patient on Saturday. I stayed mostly in bed with my laptop and a bunch of books, sending chat messages to my husband when I wanted something. Sunday, I was okay. If it had been any other Sunday, I would’ve stayed home from church, but it was our 2nd last Sunday there, and my last chance to say an official good-bye to our pastor, so I went. Then I rested and went to an evening event, where I lasted an hour — looking totally normal, but feeling tapped-out.

Monday, more activity, but moving slowly and looking normal. Tuesday, more activity yet. I even went on the treadmill at the gym: a totally healthy-looking woman going at half her normal effort level and quitting after only 20 minutes. Even that was too much. I had a lovely and fun day, but I pushed myself too hard, and today I’m paying for it with a little pain back in the lungs.

Have you caught the theme: I look totally normal, especially with the full armor of make-up on, but I move like a sick person. The woman in the parking lot has her revenge.

There are people who would tell me that God sent me pleurisy as a punishment (after all, it’s unusual for a perfectly healthy person with no cold or bronchitis or pneumonia to up and get pleurisy), but I prefer to think of God using this event to teach me to be kinder in my thoughts, to engage the fabulous imagination he’s given me to spin narratives for people I see who might initially annoy or puzzle me, to give people the same benefit of the doubt I give myself. To get off my f^@&ing high horse, because I really have not earned the right to be there. To be more humble.

 

Humbling: Kids’ Opinions

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In honor of a humbling experience this weekend (Saturday morning trip to the ER with piercing pain on breathing, diagnosis: pleurisy), I’m going to do a few posts on humbling experiences.

Number One: Asking kids for their opinions of my writing.

I’ve written the first in what I hope to be a series on novels based on the biblical story of David and Saul. I’ve tried to aim it at the middle grade audience — mostly at my son, who was 11 when I started writing it, just turned 13 now. I’ve never written for that age group before, so when I finished all the drafting and after my two mothers read it through and I’d incorporated their comments, I recruited my son and some of his friends. The deal was, if they read it and answered 9 or so questions, I’d give them a small honorarium and I’d put them in the acknowledgments if this thing was ever published.

I’ve gotten five response sheets back so far.

They were mostly good news. All the boys said it held their interest from the very beginning, they mostly understood the passage of time (it being B.C.E., years run backwards), they all enjoyed the level of poetry/psalms included, and they found the ending generally satisfying and believable (given that it’ll be a series; as a standalone, it’d be a bad ending).

After that, there was little they agreed on. I let all the comments percolate for awhile, and I hadn’t even thought about making changes until this weekend. It’s fascinating how, even among this small group of 5 guys, age range of 11 to 14, certain responses split by age. The younger two liked the battles, including killing Goliath and the lion, best and got a little bored when David played for Saul and when he was shepherding. They weren’t as into Saul’s story, which makes sense for their age group: the drama of grownups isn’t as interesting as the drama of kids. They wanted to know more about the battles.

The older three didn’t mention anything about Saul being an issue. One of the older boys got bored during a family dinner scene during which David interacts with Merab and Michal for the first time (Saul’s daughters, each of which had just been offered to him in marriage). There is plenty of tension in that scene, some of which is David fighting his sense of place and his sense of Michal’s crush on him and his growing attraction to her. I don’t think I’ll mess with that scene too much, because boys that age can have their own tension about more romantic scenes, and, on the other hand, one of the adult women who’s read it wanted to know more about the stuff between Michal and David. Although this is a book written for young people, their parents may likely read it as well. I certainly read a lot of what my kids do, including other middle grade and young adult stuff for my own enjoyment. How to balance those two interests? Should I even try?

There were a couple of points the older boys made that I am going to work on: one scene of David’s early days at Saul’s fortress was a bit slow to get going and another piece of character motivation wasn’t clear. I’ll look at the battle and army scenes to see how I might expand them a bit to show more detail.

But what to do with Saul?

I’m going to keep him and stop calling the book “middle grade” and call it “young adult.” Saul and David are perfect foils for each other. Their stories start out identically, but because of who they are and what they bring to the table, their stories diverge dramatically. All that time David spends playing for Saul and overhearing Saul’s ramblings teach David a great deal about how not to be king. The interplay between the two is where the story is meaty for me. If the older kids didn’t object, I think I’d do better to keep Saul and stop aiming it at the younger side of the age range.

Maybe that might even entice potential agents to ask for a full. At my stage in publishing, I’m querying literary agents with a descriptive letter and however much of the manuscript they like to see in order to get someone to ask for the full ms. I haven’t gotten even one request.

Humbling: Repeated rejection.

On the one hand, this isn’t surprising. Rejection is par for the course. I’ve been rejected for other projects many times without it bothering me this much. Except that I know this book is good. Not perfect, but good. Really good. We’ll see whether calling it YA will garner any more interest. If not, I’ll be doing a lot of research on self-publishing and searching for a good cover designer.

Failure to be Grateful For

~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

My friend, Chris Robertson, who works at the Acton Institute, posted this line on Facebook this morning: “Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.”

I felt that one in my gut. A conviction in the true sense of the word: I had been tried and convicted of succeeding at things that don’t really matter.

And then I clicked through to a blog post that responded to that line with the assertion that if Christ is Lord, everything matters.  The author, Jake Belder’s concern is to not let people divide their lives into good = spiritual pursuits vs. bad = everything else. Belder doesn’t want Christians to be so farsightedly focused on their personal salvation that they don’t see their daily lives as opportunities “to demonstrate Christ’s rule over all of life, offering the world around us a foretaste of ‘what is unseen’ – that glorious future when the whole of creation is redeemed and everything finds its fulfilment and flourishing under the consummated rule of the true King.”

I can get behind that. Almost. Except for the headline, “If Christ is Lord, Everything Matters.”

Because everything does not matter. It does not matter that I can get the highest score in online Boggle every 10 or so tries. It doesn’t matter that my new rug is still driving my nuts by throwing off pills and dust creatures. It doesn’t matter that I am not model-thin. It doesn’t matter that I have an unpoppable pimple on my cheek that I have to force myself not to touch dozens of times a day. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t dusted behind my books in at least 4 years.

The last one has a caveat. I’m not inspired by a holy approach to doing the dishes and folding laundry and brushing my teeth. I’m fine with them being mere chores. If the holy approach to chores gives you a more peaceful and godly life, I think you’re awesome. I really do. To me, they don’t “matter” except insofar as I want a reasonably clean, safe, and organized house because otherwise I get anxious and that spills over into areas that matter more to me.

I’m sure we each have a list of things that consume our thoughts or our time that we’re aware don’t truly matter. Even Paul, no slacker when it came to working for the kingdom, does: “I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead I do what I hate” (Rom. 7:15 NLT).

It happens over and over in the Bible: people focus on the symbols of obedience to distract from their disobedience. In 1 Samuel 15, the Israelite army has just defeated the Amalekites. Saul was supposed to destroy everything and everybody, but he didn’t. He and his men kept the best of everything and destroyed the rest. (In a side note, I think Saul was in a tough position: it was a long walk to Amalek, gathering the tribal army along the way, waiting for the Kenites to move to safety, then doing all the defeating. The army would’ve expected to be paid with plunder.) When Samuel confronts him, Saul twice explains that they saved the best of everything so they could do a big sacrifice at Gilgal. Samuel comes back with, “Obedience is far better than sacrifice. Listening to Him is much better than offering the fat of rams” (15:22 NLT).

Moreover, you can succeed at what is called in dance, “marking it.” There are some rehearsals in which you don’t dance full out, but just enough to get a sense of the performance space. It’s boring to watch and merely technical to do. Similarly, you can succeed at living a safe, medium life, never stepping out despite fear, never trying anything new, never risking embarrassment in the Lord’s name. That’s not a success I’d trumpet.

Going back to the quote that started this all, “Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter,” I want to bring in a different perspective on failure: the scientist’s. They fail all the time. They, like hitters in baseball, might even fail more often than they succeed. Each time they fail, they learn. Each failure is important.

This hits me where I live today, because I feel like I’ve failed at something that matters: I’m leaving the church I’ve loved for nine years.* I’m sad and I’m anxious, but I can’t stay. I’ve learned so much there about serving the Lord and His people, about prayerfully pushing past fear and past the sense that my way is always the right way, about throwing my body, mind and strength into loving the Lord and serving His people. This good failure of mine changed the course of my church life and my faith life. I’ll always be grateful to it.

 

*I apologize to my church friends who may be hearing this for the first time in this venue.

 

Diaries: Unexpected Sweetness

~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

We’re whipping through the years, now. There was one entry each for 1979 and 1980. One is so earnest and dear and the other makes me cry. In a developmental note, I was no longer writing in block capital letters, but in lowercase, loopy cursive.

December 22, 1979   I have to pay better attention to my father. He is getting a lonely look on his face.

I have no idea what was happening. It was close to Christmas, which was a time my dad loved. He went all out but did his main shopping on Christmas Eve after work, which cut it close because that was the night we opened presents. He’d come home laden with bags and head straight upstairs to his attic office.

I believe 1979 was the first year my dad got one wish: we had oil fondue for dinner that night. My mother wouldn’t do it until my brother was 10 and she felt we could safely handle a pot of boiling oil on the table.

After dinner, Dad would disappear upstairs again, wrap everything in newspaper, write on the tags that they were from Santa (including the gifts he bought himself), and bring them all down. We’d tease him about the packages being from Santa. He’d insist. We’d get down to business.

I also don’t know whether I did pay better attention to him. The diary is silent on this. I hope I did.

April 24, 1980      I saw the movie “Lovey” today. It was fabulous! Today, I also wrote my first french letter. It was fun. I always seem to enjoy those things. I enjoy almost everything. God gave us so much to enjoy! To me, my understanding and love of God is growing. And when I pray, it is almost always from my heart. Almost every day I thank God for my parents and teacher, they are so wonderful.

When I read the above, I was puzzled why I’d been watching that movie. After a little research, I figured out that it wasn’t the film version of the Judy Blume book, Forever, her book about “going all the way,” which my class read avidly, especially the pages that had been pre-folded-down for us.

Not at all. Lovey: A Circle of Children was a 1978 TV movie about a teacher of autistic children. Here’s the description from Answers.com:

Lovey: A Circle of Children, Part Two is that TV movie rarity: a sequel that is every bit as terrific as the original. Jane Alexander repeats her role from 1977’s A Circle of Children as a volunteer teacher specializing in autistic and emotionally disturbed children. Hannah (Kris McKeon) is an 11 year old child nicknamed “Lovey.” The girl is given to loud, unexpected and quite violent tantrums, and for a long time it looks as though Ms. Alexander will never get through to her. The social worker’s efforts to help Lovey put a severe strain on her off-hours love life. Despite the soap-opera trappings, Lovey: A Circle of Children shines with the light of truth from first frame to last, with Jane Alexander matching the brilliance of her earlier performance in the same role. Like A Circle of Children, this sequel was based on the autobiographical novel by Mary MacCracken. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

I remember this movie: the calm tones of the teacher, the tantrums of the girl. I know I’m not the only girl who went through a phase of devouring books and movies about kids with developmental or emotional issues. All that nobility and persistence. And tears. I’m certain it made me cry, then. It’d make me cry even more now, I’m sure.

I wonder what I was doing when I wasn’t praying from my heart? Was I just rehearsing words? Trying to pray before bed and falling asleep in the middle?

I like thinking about that twelve-year-old girl who got really into things and wanted to love and understand God was grateful to God for almost everything. I’ve gone through intense times of gratitude since then, and they’re wonderful.

The year we moved back to Grand Rapids from NYC was another such time. We decided to move, my husband got a job that was a promotion in his field, we bought a car, I got pregnant, and we bought a house, all in the space of three months. And then in December I got to dance as Mary in a Lessons & Carols service while I was pregnant — one of the best experiences of my life. I can’t say I was a ray of sunshine all the time, but I was deeply, deeply grateful to God for all of it. Then the child arrived and exhaustion and insecurity took residence for awhile.

You know, I still get enthusiastic about things. I still want to love and understand God. And I’m often grateful.

However, I am not feeling too sunny about sharing the upcoming diaries. The excruciating high school years — exclamation points galore, gushing, soul-bearing, ridiculous behavior. That we all go through it doesn’t make it any better….

Diaries: October, 1978

~ Natalie Hart ~ 4 Comments

I was not a consistent diarist. The prior entries for 1978 are from January. The next ones are from October. At least I’d write a few entries in a row before losing steam. Actually, this is something I still struggle with: full of good intentions but not so full of sticktoitiveness. I get more disciplined as I get older, but it’s still a “growth area.”

10/7/1978   Today at modern dance we learned how to use the balls.

I loved that class. It was actually rhythmic gymnastics, which I was really good at, but my cousin (who I took the class with) didn’t take it the second year and I was too shy to take it by myself, so I dropped it. I wish I hadn’t. I had the flexibility and gracefulness that the sport requires. Coulda been a contenda! Can’t do anything about that now. At least I still use those skills many Sundays when I take out the big ribbon on a stick to wave during praise and worship. Although I got it tangled around my neck once and I tied such a multi-knot in the air that I had to stop and undo it this past week, I try to make patterns with the ribbon that go with the words of the song.

And, out of all the things that I’m discovering are still an issue for me, these 30 years later, this one is not: I’m not afraid to be really good at something. It isn’t considered very feminine to boast, but I’m going to do it: I’m really good at Zumba. My spot is in the front line, right by the mirror, and I dance the living daylights out of every number. I came in almost late this morning, and when two other regulars saw me, they said, “Oh good, here comes our teacher,” which we had a laugh about. My theory is that I’m not snotty or obnoxious about being good at it, I’m not falsely modest although I do highlight when something is hard for me, and I take such obvious joy in it that nobody can feel I’m lording my Zumbabilities over them. Also, I just plain love it, and I’m not letting anything get in the way.

10/8/1978   I felt so stupid standing at the church doors handing out newsletters. Boy, is Mrs. M. ever pregnant. It looks like she’s about to burst. I went over to E.’s house, we listened to Grease twice. It was freezing outside, no wonder R. wore mittens to Church. Near the cottage it snowed. Here it rained and hailed.

Oh, the self-consciousness of the tween. No idea what the newsletters were for. And I don’t remember noticing adults all that much, so Mrs. M. really must’ve been ready to have that baby. This is the problem with trying to tell a self-conscious child not to worry about it because nobody is looking at you: they often are. It was apparently ridiculous enough to wear mittens to church in early October that it became one of a half dozen diary entries for the year.

Conversations between my daughter and her friend bear this out, too: it’s all about the other people in their classes. So maybe I need to revise the advice, turn it to: “Whether you do nothing or something, some people will love it, some people will talk smack about it [shrug]. So you might as well do something.” Not that anyone will listen to that, either, but a mother’s got to try.

10/9/1978   There wasn’t any school for us today. Guess why? It was Thanksgiving. Oma and Tanta Re came over for the turkey dinner. After supper we saw some slides. Most of them were from Holland. Today was chilly and if you were going to be outside for a while, you had to wear a jacket.

10/10/1978  Today was Guides. I showed “Sparky” my stamp book and she said she would send a tester.

Let’s set aside the nod to the expectation that other people would be reading this with the “Guess why?” Although that is happening now, it’s silly in a ten year old.

I think these two entries are connected. A relative from overseas brought me a huge envelope of international stamps for my collection. It could very well have been Tante Re. I still have the stamp book. I have pinned a post on using stamps in art, and now that I see these all again, it makes me want to take them out of their little book and put them on the wall.

And now I’m going to give ten-year-old me a hug. She was a sweet little thing.

Words, Glorious Words

~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

I’ve been reading one of my Mother’s Day presents, Stephen Fry’s The Fry Chronicles.

In the introduction, he says that he is not a practitioner of brevity; where someone else uses 10 words, he’ll use 100, which is true. He blames it all on his love of words. And he uses some great words and fun turns of phrase (turn of phrases?). Here are some that sent me to my dictionary, most of which I could get the gist of in context, but wanted to see what precisely he meant.

caravanserai: a Near East inn with a large courtyard to accommodate large caravans

prolix: writing or speaking at great and tedious length

evangels: good news in general; also the good news in the New Testament sense, a doctrine or guide
I’d read this as a variant of evangelical, but it isn’t at all: it’s what the evangelical believes in.

calumniating: slandering

anathematize: (I’d never heard the word as a verb) to slander, to pronounce something an anathema

All of these words were on the same page (p.46). Three of them in the same sentence, which is so fun that I’m going to share it here:

For myself, I’d always thought Leavis a sanctimonious prick of only parochial significance (my own brand of undergraduate sanctimoniousness at work there, I now see) and certainly by the time I arrived at Cambridge his influence had waned, he and his kind having been almost entirely eclipsed by the Parisian post-structuralists and their caravanserai of prolix and impenetrable evangels and dogmatically zealous acolytes.

I group memoirs in two broad categories: thrill rides that sweep you along and engross you in the story of this person’s life (the other Mother’s Day present, Storm Large’s Crazy Enough is one of these), and charming and interesting stories that leave enough room for you to think about your own life while you read about this other. Fry’s memoir is of the latter kind, so I’ve been remembering and analyzing who I was during my college years. No introspection in this post, though (that’ll wait until later). Now, more fun words.

lacunae: minute cavities in bone; air space in tissue of plants; missing part of a manuscript or argument

seraphically: seraphs are the highest order of angels, so this is angelic in the extreme. As he uses it, in a story about a wife smiling seraphically at their friends after her husband has been an obnoxious jerk, I imagine that it’s a bit aggressively angelic. Or, I guess, so far above it all angelic that her husband’s behavior doesn’t even register.

nubiferously: I think he made this one up. Based on nubile, which refers to young, sexually attractive persons, usually female. But this is how he used it:

At tea, the nubiferously chain-smoking pair of Tom Stoppard and Ronnie Harwood visit our rather showbizzy box.

Stoppard was 71 and Harwood 74 at the time of this story. They were chain-smoking like young, sexy girls? As if they were under the delusions of the young that they were going to live forever? No idea, but it’s a fun word to say.

fell-walking: fell is British word for a hill or area of high land. He uses it an a description of who people imagine pipe smokers to be, as in “they wear woolly knee socks and take brisk walks in the hills.”

obstreperous: This word appears in a favorite picture book from growing up, but I’d forgotten it. I’ll have to trot it out in children’s worship when the kids are noisy, boisterous and unruly — at least they’ll learn a new word.

When asked, the word I say is my favorite is susurration, a soft murmur or whisper, which I first read in a description of the sound of a light breeze through tree leaves. How about you? Any favorite words? Words you read that sent you to the dictionary?

 

 

Diaries: Romance Edition

~ Natalie Hart ~ 1 Comment

I will have a 10-year-old daughter for only one more day, so, in her honor, I’m going to utterly embarrass myself and reveal my romantic obsession at her age: D., the older brother of my friend and classmate E. Although we were two grades apart, we went to a tiny (and I do mean tiny) alternative Christian school, so we were in the same classroom. (Note that while I identify everyone else by initial, I use my cousin Esther’s full name because she is no longer with us to object to my using her name.)

He was the perfection of boyhood and I fell in love immediately upon seeing him. I liked him for years. Years. Here we are sledding (I was in heaven but also freaked out enough to maintain a reasonable distance between us):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fri. 2/3/78 D. gave me 40 cents to spend. Now everybody’s teasing us. I’m glad. I’m expecting a call any second.

Mon. 2/6/78 Today all the grade 5’s had a fight. It’s sort of O.K. It all started when D. broke Esther’s radio. This is what a note said, “If you don’t get E. and I this and that you have to kiss Natalie.” Just before D. got on the subway he said he’d phone me. Esther just phoned me. [I later added: He didn’t.]

Tues. 2/7/78 Today Esther had this silly plan for me to spy on her and D. She makes me so jealous because every day she has something to say about D. I wouldn’t be surprised if D. hated me. If he does hate me I’ll just love him the same, and more. Some day all my love life is going to be ruined because of her. Today my stupid parents wouldn’t let us see the guests. All we had for supper was a tiny bowl of soup.

Fri. 2/10/78 Today was so exciting. D. walked me home.

Oh, the drama. The insecurity. The blowing tiny gestures all out of proportion. All my love life ruined….

I remember the day when D. was going to have to kiss me. This was a terrifying possibility, so I shoved aside the three-seater couch in our lounge and barricaded myself behind it so nobody could get near me. Although perhaps being kissed in such a publicly pressured way would have saved me from years of pining. My 3rd grade boyfriend kissed me on the landing of the exterior steps while everyone was running up to our classroom after lunch and it was the end of a beautiful thing.

We’d been together for what felt like ages, but was probably less than a month, holding sweaty little hands during lunch and class movies and arranging to stand next to each other when the class walked in the hallways so we could hold hands. I ignored the teasing and thought we were perfectly happy, but his buddies pressured him into the smooch. Embarrassing me so in front of the whole class was enough to tell me he wasn’t for me. That was it. The red-haired boy who pulled my chair out for me every day when I came to class stepped in to provide balm for my wounded pride. Although that only lasted until my birthday pool party, when he dunked me nine times, making me gasp and gulp water those last few times. That was it for him.

With D., I was not so fickle. I liked him from age 9 until my early teen years. It never developed into anything more real than vague compliments and flirting, either, which means I have a sweet memory of that crush. There’s very little reality to intrude.

In a non-romance moment, I sounded then just as silly as my kids do now when they get incensed at parental action. It’s kind of cute.

Anyone want to share embarrassing personal stories so I don’t feel alone?

 

Diaries: January 1978

~ Natalie Hart ~ 1 Comment

Number two in the ongoing series of exploring my old diaries. In January of 1978, I’d be just ten years old.

Ten was my first birthday back in Canada, after three years in Australia — winter activities instead of pool parties. I went to bed early the night before my birthday because I was kinda sick. When I woke up, I came downstairs. My parents were sitting on the built-in couches (white painted wooden frames that my father built, black, wide-wale corduroy cushions that my mother sewed, total 70s awesomeness). I sat down and waited. But they didn’t say anything about my birthday and no presents materialized. I thought they were messing with me. So I gave expectant looks, made what I thought were leading comments. Still nothing. What were they waiting for?

For my birthday. I’d only slept for a couple of hours.

We went to the planetarium for my party. I think the next year was my famous ice skating followed by decorating and filling of gingerbread sleigh party. Now that I’ve tried to make gingerbread houses my own kids, I am forever in awe of my mother for hand cutting those 7 sleighs.

Anyway, back to the diaries:

1/24/78: Yesterday, R. and I danced to Shaun Cassady record the she had gotten for her birthday.

1/25/78: This morning when I woke up my room looked like I had my door closed. Rainy day. Snow night.

1/26/78: Today we had a blizzard. In Ohio it was -100F because of the wind. We had a hard time going home. J.B. acted like she was the boss of the whole world.

So that’s a little slice of me at 10: dancing to embarrassing pop records, early writerly pretensions, and social drama. I believe my cousin R and I even wrote a fan letter to Shaun Cassidy. “Da Do Ron Ron” loomed large in all our social gatherings that year. At my cousin Esther’s birthday that month, we danced to it in a wild circle, weaving around the South African rugs and drums in her living room.

The second entry is me trying to describe the quality of the light on that dim morning. Had I yet read Anne of Green Gables? At some point, I went around constantly describing my world as if Anne were seeing it and describing it in her fanciful, flowery 1908 way, but this is too early for that.

The last entry shows the Canadian toughness. There was a blizzard and school was not cancelled. No, indeed, we went home on the streetcar and then subway from our tiny Christian school just like normal, although we would’ve had to wade through drifts and keep walking against wind and shove our way through adults on their commutes.

The difficulties of this situation were not, however, enough to stop our little group from irritating each other. This is yet another reminder to let my kids complain about other kids and get all heated up about things that happen on the playground or in the classroom without needing to comment or provide perspective.

That last one is the toughest for me. I want to provide the perspective of my years and knowledge to moderate their extreme views of other children. But they’re kids. Most of my attempts will only cause them to never tell me anything ever again or to always go away when they want to talk. I’ve been working on reigning that in (except for calling kids “stupid;” I draw a hard line on that one). So this perspective I’m gaining on myself is teaching me how not to force perspective on my kids. How’s that for circular?

My next diaries entry will take us into excruciating territory: ten-year-old romance. Can’t wait.

In the meantime, enjoy this photo of the couch I described above and me at another birthday:

Wonderful: Nobody’s Boy

~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

When my father was 8 or 9, he was home sick from school. He picked up a French novel, Nobody’s Boy by Hector Mallot (although I’m sure he read it in Dutch translation), and devoured it. He hasn’t read it since, but remembers being totally wrapped up in the adventures and misfortunes of Remi, an 8-ear-old boy who is sold by a cruel foster father (after being raised by his loving foster mother while the father is working in Paris) to a traveling musician.

The musician is, lucky for Remi, a warm taskmaster. Although Remi does have to walk with him all over France and learn how to play the harp and sing and act in little pantomimes with the rest of the troupe, the rest of the troupe consists of three dogs and a monkey. Master Vitalis also teaches Remi to read and write. It’s a hard life, but he’s treated well and he loves the dogs. But alas, while defending Remi to a policeman, Vitalis strikes a police officer and is thrown in jail for 2 months, and Remi has to survive on his own.

A sick little boy on a barge (Arthur) hears him playing the harp and invites him on board. Lucky for Remi, he is invited to stay on the barge with the boy and his mother to keep Arthur company. He does and he’s very happy there, and the mother and Arthur grow to love Remi. Once he’s out of jail, they ask Vitalis whether Remi can stay with them. But alas, Vitalis will not let him go. Things go downhill from there.

That’s how the book goes: lucky for Remi, followed quickly by, but alas. He meets kind people who can see “he has a heart,” and cruel people who won’t listen to him and throw him in jail. He lands in the lap of luxury, but never takes it for granted, and always works hard, which is good, because he’s soon yanked back into the vagabond life. The twists and turns of Remi’s life are dramatic — sweet, funny, tragic, harrowing.

Nobody’s Boy was written in 1878, so the language is courtly and old-fashioned, but the story is not too old-fashioned in the telling. There aren’t pages upon pages of description. All landscape and cityscape descriptions are just what a boy that age would notice, and they’re generally told to give us insight into him: does this place make him afraid, hopeful, happy, sad, etc.? What clues does it hold as to whether things will go well or poorly?

It’s considered a classic in children’s literature, and I enjoyed it. But most of all, I love the image of my dad as a little boy, sick in bed, captured by his first novel, reading as quickly as he could to see what would happen to poor Remi. I can’t remember what that first book might have been for me, (Anne of Green Gables or Little House on the Prairie most likely), but I remember it for my son: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I’d given it to him for pre-bed reading and came up at 10:30, and he was still going, wide-eyed with wonder. Getting lost in a fictional world is one of the best things ever. Do you remember what that first “wow!” book was for you?