Fairydust

On my way into the library today, two boys were walking out. Little boys. One of them had his hand cupped to his ear and was exclaiming, "I can hear the choo choo! I can hear it!" He mounted the steps and as his little head came up over the crest of the staircase, he cried, "I can see it too! I can see the train!"

His mom, bless her heart, said, "You can see the choo choo? No, I don't think you can."

And that's how little boys forget how to fly.

It is springtime and there is magic in it.

Yesterday I sat on the sidewalk shoveling dirt into pots with my hands, replanting the strawberries Mom dug up from her garden to give to me. There were so many little buds of strawberry plants hanging on for dear life, I had to keep going to the backyard to find more empty pots.

This morning I woke up to birds singing--birds singing and a face full of lavender roses beside my bed. I ate strawberries and Nutella on crepes, with a big white mug of thick pulp orange juice. I opened the windows and ate in the morning light.

At lunchtime, my roommate asked if I ever go to the park by our house to read. "What park?!" I said. Turns out not five minutes walk from our house there is a massive park, with trees you can build forts inside and a pond and bridges and plenty of grass. And swings.

All anyone needs to be happy is swings.

This weekend is Maiden Voyage 2 of the flyrod. I don't name inanimate objects, but if I did, his name would be Henry. Or, come to think of it, Rod would be better heh heh. And by better I mean more apropos. Which is French for fitting.

It is springtime,

and there is magic in it!

love

This weekend I did the photography for one of my mission companion's weddings. Married already! And another missionary that was with me along the whole ride--there when I started, there when I finished--is coming home next week. Him coming home is kind of a bullet to the gut. I guess part of me thought it would never end. Part of me thought he'd always exist in France, walking up and down the aisles in trains, contacting people on busses. Part of me thought all of us would always be living in mission land, going in to the mission office, having conferences every couple of weeks, doing that silly wonderful grocery shopping every Monday. Now that they're all coming home, I'm realizing that it does end. A year and a half is actually a tiny, tiny amount of time,

and it goes
and it goes
and it goes.

I thought those relationships would be forever too. And they are, but they shift. I thought they'd be constant like the constellations, all neat and tidy in their little formations, makin neat and tidy little animals and warriors in their heroic groupings across the sky. But you come home and realize people have lives and social groups and maybe didn't secretly hope to be friends with you for the rest of forever. Ha. It's like all the stars still exist but they don't make Orion anymore... they make... well... a bunch of individual stars with individual solar systems and orbiting planets. We aren't in relation to each other anymore.

Once my friend said her greatest fear was that other people didn't love her as deeply as she loved them. I get that now. I would do anything for any one of those missionaries or for those people I met in France. I love them with all my heart. I guess I get what my friend's fear is. What a beautiful fear.

Someone -- I think it was Hemingway -- said the way to get over a woman is to write a novel about her. And so maybe I'll do that about what happened in France. There would be epic battles where a tiny group of brave and shining people go face all the evil forces imaginable. And they'd do things like ride horses with forcefields shooting out of their staffs to save each other, and figure out the riddles that unlock doors that have been locked to goodness for centuries, and release thousands of dead people from the curses of past mistakes, and let what virtue is theirs pass to those around them. They'd forget the taste of strawberries and give every last drop of themselves to restoring goodness and hope. They would sacrifice and they would love. Yep.

Blehhh I just didn't know loving people in this way existed.
Blehhh and it just gets worse everyday.

Go on a mission people.
Get baptized first if you haven't done that yet,
and then just go.

To My Friends

Alright. This post has to happen because until it does, I can't move on with my writing life! (Or my life period, for that matter.)

So here's how we're gonna do this--the question no one actually cares to ask but can't seem to stop themselves from asking: "How's the adjustment back from your mission going?"

First matter of business, I feel super weird about the fact that I have a blog. I keep waiting thinking maybe it'll go away or maybe I'll remember why I started it in the first place. Ha. No such luck. So instead I'll just keep it going for the moment, for my friends or anybody who cares.

Second item: on Thursday last, in the middle of the cleaning-supplies aisle in the grocery store, I burst into tears. Like, BURST into tears. I was somewhere between the OxiClean and shoe polish. The butter is so expensive in America, and all the produce is organized maniacally like a factory, and the entire width of the yogurt "aisle" is shorter than my arm, and apparently sometime in the last year and a half they stopped making the only kind of laundry detergent that I liked. Also, everyone around me is speaking English.

I mean, I tried to pull myself together. No one except crazy people burst into tears in the middle of the OxiClean and shoe polish. I am not crazy. I just can't find the food I like because it's all in France!

So to summarize: I am currently incapable of grocery shopping.

Then we've got the daily "I just said what?" moments: Today a guy showed up at my door. More like I showed up at my door and he was outside plugging his phone into our porch wall (??), so I let him in, and he commented on how I was wearing two different colors of socks. I retorted, "They're gray and black. Gray and black aren't colors." Yep I actually said that. No social tact.

This is, of course, to say nothing of the fact that I suddenly have a streak of benevolence-bordering-on-affection for bugs, white eggshells creep me out, I want to use exclamation marks all the time!, and I still reach for the flush button on the top-center of the toilet.

What is to be said about this. Well, it took me two months to write. Talk about a blockage. I'm not entirely sure how one goes about breaking an 18-month writing hiatus, but likewise I'm not entirely sure how one goes about saying something about those 18 months that could wrap a pretty little bow on it all and let it be tucked away somewhere nice on a shelf to sit for the rest of forever. I think I'm hesitant to let go. Once you think through everything and set those thinks down on paper, the book is written. So I imagine this will be the work of the next few years--working out what my mission meant then and what it means now and what words are the hooks that untangle it all.

So thanks for being patient with me.
Love,

Blackberry Picking (Welcome Home)

Blackberries.
Sneaky little devils.
They hide in the shadows in their black skins
and squeeze your mouth if they're picked before they're ready.
And the only way to know if they're ready is if they burst and bleed all over you when you pluck them.

Today I picked 19 blackberries off a branch a foot long.
19 heavy-hanging worlds
that pulled that one foot of a branch down to the earth.

Bees skipped from one to the next.
I left blackberry-blood prints on the leaves.

One Year LYON

It's four in the afternoon, and it's super dark outside and there's a huge thunderstorm. It's been like this all summer. Tender mercy from Heavenly Father to His heat-stroke-prone daughter? Yep.

Sr Floisand and I profited from our trip to supermarket Carrefour today by buying 20 euros worth of yogurt. Chestnut, plum and honey, Grandma's rice pudding, chocolate, Swiss mountain berry, coconut...yep. Stocking up.

Guess what delightful thing happened this morning? I washed my clothes and they all came out pink because I left a shirt in there that had too much dye or something and then I accidentally put the wash on hot. Ooops... But the delightful part is that I saw what happened, and I just started laughing. Not even mad-laughing, like really laughing. It was just really funny to me. I think this is a good sign. If nothing else, I no longer care if all my clothes get turned pink in the wash. That's a pretty good change I think.

Also my little camera got dropped and now it's broken. Everything's falling apart these last two weeks. Lucky I guess. I'm just hoping I can keep it all together until I get back. If I lose my journals on the train I mean airplane, then I really might cry. Maybe not though. Sister Floisand shared something really awesome with me that I've been thinking lots about and is helping me. She said that on her mission, she's just had the attitude of, "If my companion gets the bigger piece of cake, it's okay because in a year and a half I get to see my family, and that's all I really care about anyways." She said that helps her a lot to not stress when she misses busses or things are unfair or people say mean things. I think about that for life: "You know, at the end of my life, I'll get to go back and be with God, so I don't care." Ha. Funny how the little things that bother us from day to day totally fall away when we think of life in those terms.

Oh, also this week I got yelled at by a bus driver. I was just talking to this guy I was sitting next to, having a normal conversation (which was especially funny because I wasn't even really pushing the conversation, this guy had lots of questions and I was just answering :) and suddenly this big bus driver man turns around from the front of the bus and starts yelling in really fast French and I was so taken aback I couldn't understand what he was saying, and I'm just kind of looking at him like, "Huh?? Me?" And he's like "Yes, YOU!!" And the guy next to me's like, "He thinks you're trying to sell me something. It's fine, monsieur, we're just having a conversation!" So woot I can check that box off: got yelled to/threated with a hundred euro fine for contacting on a bus.

Also, today is my one-year in Lyon anniversary. We ate at a darling cafe.

Bastille Day

 Bastille Day (the 14th of July, as they call it). 

Happy independence-from-the-French-monarchy!!! Listen to some "Red and Black" and think of me.

We got special permission to go watch the fireworks! So we went with our friend from the ward Adeline (in the picture with us holding a french flag)...and with a bunch of other members and all the other missionaries. Look at that bridge full of people! Really fun.
 

Angel Jedi Leadership Council. Favorite day of the year. Best part is it happens every 6 weeks :) I like this picture the best because you can see President in the background. I love that man a lot. Ah. Such a good day.