Prairie View

Friday, January 01, 2010

Making Announcements

Hiromi makes quite a few announcements of his own volition. Almost every night he says, "I'm going to bed." Nearly every morning he says something like, "I slept well," or "I had a lousy night." Or, as one of the few people in the US who actually uses the simple present tense of a verb, he might say, "I go feed the sheep."

In contrast, when I'm tired, or the clock says I should be--whichever comes first, I quietly creep off to the bedroom and turn in. If Hiromi's not there yet, I usually tell him goodnight wherever he is, before I turn off the light. (Wouldn't want to be disturbed to have to spell a word or read and interpret a passage about whether Constantine considered the Donatists a schism group or not.) In the morning I get on with the day without a lot of reflection on whether I slept well or not. I consider my sleeping hours rather unremarkable.

But at the oddest times, Hiromi's willing-announcement mode fails him. Like last night.

We had a church-wide New Year's Eve gathering, which began with a half hour of hot drinks and socializing. Then we had a one-hour service with hearty group singing and voluntary sharing of personal aspirations or goals for our church family, followed by announcements and prayer. Meanwhile, someone on the food committee was busy grilling bratwurst and hot dogs. Right after the service we ate the aforementioned meats in a sandwich, along with many finger foods brought in by those who attended the service. When cleanup was done, Lowell and Judy and Joe and Marilyn organized and supervised some group games, one group gathering upstairs and one downstairs. Others, according to preference, divided into smaller groups to play games. At 11:45, we all gathered again in the sanctuary and had prayer until after midnight.

It was a great evening all around, except for a small disagreement Hiromi and I had about the announcements.

The composition class I taught the past semester does what I call a community writing project every year. The title for this year's booklet is Wild and Wearying Weather: Notable Weather Events in Reno County, Kansas. The students did a fine lot of work interviewing people to record their personal memories, doing research to fill in or affirm details, and writing it all down. After a number of glitches prevented us from getting the books printed and assembled before Christmas as we had hoped (Weird things happened to the numbering sequence in the footnotes when we imported the individual articles into one document, and the editing wasn't quite finished on the last day before break. Also the floors at the school/church were being refinished over vacation, and the floor in the copier room was off-limits when we needed the copier.), we finally got all the books ready for sale on Wednesday. Kimberly took the ones for Cedar Crest and Tim took the ones for Arlington. Tim was going to make an announcement at Arlington, and Kimberly was going to ask her dad to make an announcement at Cedar Crest. I kept the Center ones because we weren't having church till Thursday, New Year's Eve, and was going to decide later whether it should be Seth or James making the Center announcement.

Long story short, the day on Thursday filled up with food preparation, and the planned trip to school to pick up the "weather" booklets didn't happen till we were on our way for the evening gathering. We missed the pre-service social hour entirely (largely because Hiromi ate supper before we left home) and arrived after the service started. I remembered then that I had not arranged for anyone to make the announcement about the booklets, and Seth and James were sitting up front and far away. Just before Hiromi and I walked in, I asked him if he would make the announcement. Would you believe he refused me in that hour of need?

"You can," he said. "Just get up and do it."

Hiromi does not understand about these things. For starters, at our church, while announcements are an equal opportunity affair, custom usually assigns the duty to males. On a personal level, I don't like to stand up in front of everyone at church for many other good reasons. I feel fat. My hair is not clean. My zipper shrank after it was sewed in, and it wrinkles all the way up the back, and it's not sewed in quite deep enough at the top, and it doesn't quite reach the apex of its intended ascent. People will think I did not let Hiromi make the announcement because I thought he wouldn't do a good enough job. What will that suggest about how the roles are divided at our house? And how Biblical they are?

Maybe I could get by without standing to make the announcement. No. Hiromi said to get up and do it.

So I did.

I apologized to Seth and James afterward for failing to contact them in time to have them do the announcing. They seemed heartbroken, as expected--or not.

And that is the inside story of how Hiromi and I deal individually, and together, with the making of announcements.

2 Comments:

  • When i heard you give the announcement i figured there was more of a background to it than it seemed. I was right. =) Thanks for posting the story. And hey, women can make announcements too!

    By Blogger Unknown, at 1/01/2010  

  • I never even thought about it being strange that you made the announcement. I think Hiromi's opinion of making announcements has a lot going for it -- let the person who knows the most about it say it!

    By Blogger Unknown, at 1/02/2010  

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