Though I guess they didn't have toilet paper back then...

I'm prepping for my Sunday school lesson at the Latvian church. The youngest classes will be hearing about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, I've decided. The kids usually do a pretty good job of listening as long as I use the felt board to illustrate the story, but I'm getting a little tired of the routine. So I'm thinking this is a great opportunity to let the kids wrap each other in toilet paper.

I wonder if this is a great idea or a bad one? I guess I'll find out on Sunday...

Young one

Sundays after Latvian school and church church, I sometimes help my great aunt negotiate the coffee table, where we load up on sandwiches and other snacks. She can get by without me, but things go easier if I move her chair and walker. Then I see her back to her apartment in the retiree home behind the church.

On the way back today, we stopped in at the church's weekly books-and-things sale so she could buy some cards. Another woman wanted to buy a vase, but all the vases were on the top top shelf, almost touching the ceiling.

"I could get it standing on a chair," said the cashier. "But I am past standing on chairs."

Other people said they, too, were not about to go climbing. I looked around the room and saw it was full of lovely ladies with gray hair. No, I couldn't imagine them standing on chairs, either.

Someone said to fetch the tallest man in church, but then someone else said he might have left.

"I can stand on chairs!" I said.

Everyone looked at me as if just noticing me and agreed. We pulled out a chair and I got up, boots and all, and took down the vase with everyone watching.

I have been realizing what it can mean to get old.

On our way out of the sale to the elevator, we passed another woman leaving the coffee table. There had been an exhibit of a Latvian artist's paintings, with many people in church contributing pieces they owned. Now that the display was over, this woman was carrying a couple paintings in her walker, and I asked her if she could manage.

She said she was fine, and I admired the painting that had struck me earlier. On the one side was a warm and misty tableau, a table full of food and family. The vision faded into the painting's darker half, where and old woman sat in a thick shawl and empty kitchen, smiling at her daydream.

"I predicted my own future when I bought this painting in the sixties," said the woman with the walker. "Dreaming of better days."

What can one say to that?

My great aunt is a wonderful woman in her eighties. She invites me over for tea and shortbread cookies, and I often take her up on it, mostly to hear her wonderful stories about her life and thoughts and family.

While I was there today, I took the shrink-wrap off a literary magazine and helped her tape up a package. I fetched the dishes and cleaned up her kitchen a bit on my way out. She gives me mail to take out, since it is so much easier for me. Last time I was there, she had a fall. Though she was not really hurt, she couldn't get up herself, so I had to fetch some men from church to help lift her. It was scary for all of us, I think.

She acts as if I give her a lot and she can give me only a little, and that is not true at all. Each visit is like reading another chapter or two of a fascinating book -- which makes sense especially if you know my great aunt is a writer, still writing to this day. But it is harder for her to write now, since just living requires so much care and time.

It is good when great-aunts have their grand-nieces around, and when grandmothers have their sons and daughters and grandchildren, and when everyone has a chance to take cookies and tea together.

Simply living

When I started college, my plan was to take off some year to be a missionary, spreading love and help and perhaps even the peace of Christ someplace it was desperately needed. But my grandmother got sick, and I realized that I -- not just anyone, but I, Daina -- was needed at home. I stayed, taught Latvian school religion class, and looked for a job in the area instead. It was all much less of a leap, but perhaps a better fit for my God-given talents.

I thought that I might someday live in a commune, but instead God led me to marry Joe, who is not the commune type at all. So we live in our own house, though we hope to have all kinds of people in an out of it in time. (We are still working on this.)

I always thought that I would live in a house of mis-matching silverware, but Joe really likes the matching stuff, and we got a set for Christmas. It looks very nice. We gave away most of what I had before, though I kept a few of the most beautiful pieces, the old ones decorated with hearts or stars or curlicues, for when I have lunch by myself. Joe and I hope to get much use out of what we have.

I am trying to live the life God would have me live, one based on prayer and good works. I fail miserably sometimes, but in many ways things are going in the direction they should. But I never cease to be amazed at how different this life is than the lives I have at times envisioned.

This article in the Washington Post Magazine, A Not-So-Simple Life, was really interesting to me, and not just because the main subject once thought of becoming a nun but didn't.  She too wants to pour herself out, but has taken the route I once thought I  might, instead of the route I have taken now. 

The online chat that followed the article was perhaps even more interesting for me. The members of The Simple House talk there about something I first read about in the words of Mother Theresa. The lovely old woman who did so much for the poor of Calcutta and the world noted that in the United States, a rich country, the need for material things is often eclipsed by a need for love, especially among the loneliest of the elderly people, those who cannot leave their rooms and have few visitors. But this need is everywhere, in every neighborhood. It inspires me to read about people stepping out to address that poverty of love.

By the way, I've hung out with the nuns mentioned in the article -- on a Friday, pizza night. They're a lot of fun!

I have the gold and the incense...

In a typical night-before-Latvian-school scramble, I'm trying to figure out what item, already located in my own house, most resembles myrrh, which Wikipedia describes as a reddish-brown resinous material once used for embalming.

Quite a gift for an infant, eh?

It thinks it's clever

Woke up to the alarm, got ready to teach Latvian school, had Joe join me for breakfast. It seemed very light outside, so I figured it would be a nice, sunny day. 

It was only after breakfast that Joe noticed and asked why all the other clocks were showing the time an hour later than our alarm clock. Ah! The alarm automatically resets for Daylight Saving Time, but because of the changes this year, my clock fell back a week ahead of schedule. I had an hour's drive ahead of me, and no way to make it in time to teach my first class.

It was the cap of a frustrating few days -- the kind in which I rushed around looking for things I'd lost, only to run into the doorframe. On my late drive to Latvian school, I listened to this song: 

"There's only One who never fails to beckon the morning light.

There's only One who sets loose the gales and ties the trees down tight.

When all around my soul gives way

He then is all my hope and sway.

There's only One, only One

Holy One."

Things actually turned out fine. Some teachers and I rearranged our schedule, so I got to teach all three of my usual classes. And it was indeed a sunny day. When I got back, Joe and I walked to town for a festival, and we saw a play in the afternoon.