Catching Up
Shane and Dorcas came home yesterday to their house with a roomful of still-wrapped wedding gifts, newly installed Bontragers cabinets, a not-yet-installed cookstove and microwave, and a non-functional kitchen sink. But otherwise, their new-except-for-the-framing house was furnished and ready for them.
Hiromi finished the plumbing while Joel, Hilda, Grant, and I helped unwrap wedding gifts and record their donors.
Whew! Times have changed. We did not get a single sympathy card at our wedding. Shane, who was getting paid back for his past inappropriate card selections, got quite a few. We never knew about gift registries in our day. And one church family gave Shane and Dorcas a wedding gift just like the one we got with money from my parents as a wedding gift. Shane's employer had given them a bedroom suite--something we don't own yet. Their cash gifts alone were an increase over ours by about a factor of 40. We went to Colorado for our honeymoon; they went to Costa Rica. We saved our wrapping paper and bows; they pitched theirs, except for a small box of bows they saved for me--and the lovely gift bags--another invention since the day of our wedding. We did not return a single wedding gift, but I'm sure they will return some things that are duplicates. Yet I did not begrudge them their good fortune one bit. They and we felt equally blessed by the generosity of our friends.
They spent the day today putting things away, and dropped in here to pick up more of Shane's belongings in time for an impromptu supper. That was nice because otherwise Victor and I would have eaten by ourselves. Shane found some of Hiromi's cucumber/soy sauce/ginger root pickles in the fridge and sampled and relished them. I happily served up hamburgers with all the fixings, peas, and leftovers from last night's relish plate, along with little dabs of fresh fruit--strawberries and grapes. I think it was the very first time that Shane had knocked on our front door before he entered.
******************************
Last night in the middle of unwrapping Shane and Dorcas' wedding gifts I remembered that all of the gifts given at the Costa Rica wedding of my brother and sister-in-law, Lowell and Judy, fit into one laundry basket. Among them was a gift of two store-bought glass water glasses. They came from a family that did not own a single store-bought water glass. All theirs were cut-off jars with the rim sanded so as not to be dangerous.
*****************************
School started yesterday at Pilgrim High. Today I got two phone calls from Norma, the teacher who was hired first after my Sabbatical was approved. I loved hearing from her.
She had two questions: 1) Where is the watering can for the plants? (Oops. I still have it here at home.) 2) How did you do it--for having students bring coffee from home? (Take a poll and find out how much people think they'll drink. Everyone who drinks coffee gets put on a list and they take turns bringing 13 oz. cans or packages of coffee. Those who drink multiple cups a day get their names added again to the bottom of the list, and their names get repeated about as often as the number of cups they drink in a day.)
This whole coffee-drinking-at-school is a legacy of Andrew's, and some of the students are forever grateful. (I think the carpet cleaner may be less so.) Wes, who hardly ever drinks coffee, is fairly tolerant of this frivolity, but we staffers keep asking ourselves if there isn't something wrong when students need artificial stimulants to make it through every school day.
*****************************
I keep trying to figure out how a person on Sabbatical should act. Last week, on two consecutive days, I was asked to 1) Teach a women's Sunday School class the following Sunday 2) Teach the oldest girls' Sunday School class for the coming year 3) Clean up after the sewing every month for the next six months. I agreed quickly to the first two, less so for the last one.
On the one hand, I idealize being just an ordinary middle-aged sister in the church, who gets asked to do ordinary things. I have often been exempted from such things in the past number of years because I was teaching, and I sometimes regretted not having more casual contact with the other women. But I had planned to compensate for that by attending the sewing regularly and becoming part of a women's Bible study group. After all, I already had my supposedly once-in-a-lifetime 2-year job as a sewing leader--before we had anyone assigned to help clean up afterwards. But I sympathize with the poor souls who have to find someone to do these kinds of jobs and don't want to make life hard for them. Four of the women my age are minister's wives, who are routinely exempt from most elected or appointed offices, and that doesn't leave as many "eligible" people as one would think. (I've discovered this in the past when I tried to see if I could wiggle out of other jobs by suggesting someone more suitable.) So I said yes to cleaning up after the sewing.
Joel said recently that he thinks you have to look at a Sabbatical as a job. It sounded good, but what does that mean? You have to work as hard at relaxing as you do at working? I don't think it means that you do only as you jolly well please for a whole year. Yet I think it's not the thing to do to substitute one kind of stressful lifestyle for another, so paying some attention to choosing activities that rejuvenate and restore rather than deplete and exhaust makes good sense. This takes thoughtful reflection, perhaps especially for people who are used to being nurturers and caregivers--like mothers and teachers and pastors and missionaries. Turning off those instincts is all but impossible, even on Sabbatical. After all, Jesus first, yourself last, and others in betwee--een.
I reasoned that the two teaching opportunities, since they are in line with what, in small doses, energizes me, were naturally good candidates for Sabbatical activities. But the cleaning up job--well, cleaning is such a chore for me that I've pushed off way too much of it in my own house during the past six years, and I need a Sabbatical to catch up. Why am I agreeing to do it for other people when I can't get my own done? I think this is probably way too much agonizing over a simple job, and I'm pretty sure you agree, so let's move on.
Just this yet. I'm realizing that outside my home, just as inside my home, the work always expands to fill the available time, and nobody ever promised that life would be simple.
******************************
Lowell asked me the other day if it's true that it takes three people to replace me at the high school. I laughed when I realized that yes, there are indeed three people there this year that were not there last year, and I am the only one who left. But, of course, they are doing more than I was able to do by myself last year, and two of them are not full time.
Andrea is teaching Spanish--something I could not do to save my life. Hilda is spending about half-time at the high school in the learning center--something I did only when Wes was teaching a conventional class and I covered for him there. Norma is teaching some of the same subjects I did, and speech, which Wes taught last year. Wes is teaching comp and Anabaptist history, which I had taught the past two years. Wes also does all the things a principal is supposed to do. And I am very happy for all of them that the work load does not fall disproportionately on any one of them.
I think I already see the benefits of some of the synergy that happens when people work together well and the resulting whole is better than the sum of the parts. Hilda is good at straightening cupboards and closets. She's better than anyone since Wendell (and Wes' wife, Jean Ann, who has given us some welcome help there.) I imagine that the cupboards and closets are especially relieved that I am on Sabbatical.
Hiromi finished the plumbing while Joel, Hilda, Grant, and I helped unwrap wedding gifts and record their donors.
Whew! Times have changed. We did not get a single sympathy card at our wedding. Shane, who was getting paid back for his past inappropriate card selections, got quite a few. We never knew about gift registries in our day. And one church family gave Shane and Dorcas a wedding gift just like the one we got with money from my parents as a wedding gift. Shane's employer had given them a bedroom suite--something we don't own yet. Their cash gifts alone were an increase over ours by about a factor of 40. We went to Colorado for our honeymoon; they went to Costa Rica. We saved our wrapping paper and bows; they pitched theirs, except for a small box of bows they saved for me--and the lovely gift bags--another invention since the day of our wedding. We did not return a single wedding gift, but I'm sure they will return some things that are duplicates. Yet I did not begrudge them their good fortune one bit. They and we felt equally blessed by the generosity of our friends.
They spent the day today putting things away, and dropped in here to pick up more of Shane's belongings in time for an impromptu supper. That was nice because otherwise Victor and I would have eaten by ourselves. Shane found some of Hiromi's cucumber/soy sauce/ginger root pickles in the fridge and sampled and relished them. I happily served up hamburgers with all the fixings, peas, and leftovers from last night's relish plate, along with little dabs of fresh fruit--strawberries and grapes. I think it was the very first time that Shane had knocked on our front door before he entered.
******************************
Last night in the middle of unwrapping Shane and Dorcas' wedding gifts I remembered that all of the gifts given at the Costa Rica wedding of my brother and sister-in-law, Lowell and Judy, fit into one laundry basket. Among them was a gift of two store-bought glass water glasses. They came from a family that did not own a single store-bought water glass. All theirs were cut-off jars with the rim sanded so as not to be dangerous.
*****************************
School started yesterday at Pilgrim High. Today I got two phone calls from Norma, the teacher who was hired first after my Sabbatical was approved. I loved hearing from her.
She had two questions: 1) Where is the watering can for the plants? (Oops. I still have it here at home.) 2) How did you do it--for having students bring coffee from home? (Take a poll and find out how much people think they'll drink. Everyone who drinks coffee gets put on a list and they take turns bringing 13 oz. cans or packages of coffee. Those who drink multiple cups a day get their names added again to the bottom of the list, and their names get repeated about as often as the number of cups they drink in a day.)
This whole coffee-drinking-at-school is a legacy of Andrew's, and some of the students are forever grateful. (I think the carpet cleaner may be less so.) Wes, who hardly ever drinks coffee, is fairly tolerant of this frivolity, but we staffers keep asking ourselves if there isn't something wrong when students need artificial stimulants to make it through every school day.
*****************************
I keep trying to figure out how a person on Sabbatical should act. Last week, on two consecutive days, I was asked to 1) Teach a women's Sunday School class the following Sunday 2) Teach the oldest girls' Sunday School class for the coming year 3) Clean up after the sewing every month for the next six months. I agreed quickly to the first two, less so for the last one.
On the one hand, I idealize being just an ordinary middle-aged sister in the church, who gets asked to do ordinary things. I have often been exempted from such things in the past number of years because I was teaching, and I sometimes regretted not having more casual contact with the other women. But I had planned to compensate for that by attending the sewing regularly and becoming part of a women's Bible study group. After all, I already had my supposedly once-in-a-lifetime 2-year job as a sewing leader--before we had anyone assigned to help clean up afterwards. But I sympathize with the poor souls who have to find someone to do these kinds of jobs and don't want to make life hard for them. Four of the women my age are minister's wives, who are routinely exempt from most elected or appointed offices, and that doesn't leave as many "eligible" people as one would think. (I've discovered this in the past when I tried to see if I could wiggle out of other jobs by suggesting someone more suitable.) So I said yes to cleaning up after the sewing.
Joel said recently that he thinks you have to look at a Sabbatical as a job. It sounded good, but what does that mean? You have to work as hard at relaxing as you do at working? I don't think it means that you do only as you jolly well please for a whole year. Yet I think it's not the thing to do to substitute one kind of stressful lifestyle for another, so paying some attention to choosing activities that rejuvenate and restore rather than deplete and exhaust makes good sense. This takes thoughtful reflection, perhaps especially for people who are used to being nurturers and caregivers--like mothers and teachers and pastors and missionaries. Turning off those instincts is all but impossible, even on Sabbatical. After all, Jesus first, yourself last, and others in betwee--een.
I reasoned that the two teaching opportunities, since they are in line with what, in small doses, energizes me, were naturally good candidates for Sabbatical activities. But the cleaning up job--well, cleaning is such a chore for me that I've pushed off way too much of it in my own house during the past six years, and I need a Sabbatical to catch up. Why am I agreeing to do it for other people when I can't get my own done? I think this is probably way too much agonizing over a simple job, and I'm pretty sure you agree, so let's move on.
Just this yet. I'm realizing that outside my home, just as inside my home, the work always expands to fill the available time, and nobody ever promised that life would be simple.
******************************
Lowell asked me the other day if it's true that it takes three people to replace me at the high school. I laughed when I realized that yes, there are indeed three people there this year that were not there last year, and I am the only one who left. But, of course, they are doing more than I was able to do by myself last year, and two of them are not full time.
Andrea is teaching Spanish--something I could not do to save my life. Hilda is spending about half-time at the high school in the learning center--something I did only when Wes was teaching a conventional class and I covered for him there. Norma is teaching some of the same subjects I did, and speech, which Wes taught last year. Wes is teaching comp and Anabaptist history, which I had taught the past two years. Wes also does all the things a principal is supposed to do. And I am very happy for all of them that the work load does not fall disproportionately on any one of them.
I think I already see the benefits of some of the synergy that happens when people work together well and the resulting whole is better than the sum of the parts. Hilda is good at straightening cupboards and closets. She's better than anyone since Wendell (and Wes' wife, Jean Ann, who has given us some welcome help there.) I imagine that the cupboards and closets are especially relieved that I am on Sabbatical.
posted by Mrs. I at
5:59 PM
1 Comments:
I am so, so jealous of the coffee at the high school! It's the kind of idea that is good and right that it makes me want to veto it because I didn't get to have it when I was that age.
I suppose they have also replaced the folding chairs with Aerons, the cubicles with large open maple tables, and the 25 cent/minute phone calls with free Wifi for all.
By
Anonymous, at 8/23/2008
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