Little-ton

I had a dentist appointment yesterday, which was a delight because my dentist and I are tight. I used to date her nephew and, consequently, spent a good part of my senior year of high school watching movies in her basement and Rocky Mountain sunsets from her back porch. She had two appointments cancel at the same time yesterday, so she did all the stuff that the hygenist usually does and it ended up being about 30% tooth cleaning and 70% talking and laughing and catching up. Later I stopped by the grocery store I used to work at to take advantage of a sweet cherry sale and was shocked when one of my old managers not only remembered me but also pretty much everything about my life, including stuff I don't even ever remember having mentioned. This morning, my sister Abby and I packed up a lunch of yogurt and cherries and set off on foot for Barnes and Noble a few miles across town. On the way back, we stopped at church to kick it for a while with my high school youth ministers. Halfway home, we found a baseball lying abandoned in the grass, one of those perfectly worn, dusty baseballs, and we tossed it back and forth the rest of the way. We spent the rest of the day writing letters and reading books. (And also making fun of pictures in her middle school yearbook).

We were walking today, and honestly, Littleton isn't really that little. They only named it that because Mediumton sounded like something in a Ray Bradbury book about the bleak and beige-colored future. I like it when I can string together enough moments I can arrive at by walking or biking and where everyone knows my name (and they're always glad I came) to pretend that I really do live in a small town, though. So we were walking, and I was carrying one of those big purses that's almost too big to still qualify as a purse, and I was wearing sunglasses and capris and making Abby walk on the inside of the sidewalk and instinctively grabbing her hand and giving cars an I-don't-trust-you look every time we crossed a street, and I finally realized, halfway to Barnes and Noble, that I felt like a mom. Not her mom, necessarily... those days ended when she finally got tall enough for her teachers and her classmates' soccer moms to stop giving me disapproving looks every time I came to pick her up from school.

"Oh, so you're Abby's...?" they'd trail off.
"Sister," I'd say with a laugh that I'd always make sound even more fake than it actually was. Which was a lot. Because man oh man, they were annoying. Just once, I wanted to reply with a "DON'T JUDGE ME!" or better yet, a "You don' knOOOOOW me! Only Jesus know me!"
"Oh of course!" they'd flightily reply. "Of course, I just... well, you never do know these days!"
Nope, nope you certainly don't.

Aaanyrate, I didn't feel like her mom, just a mom. With my big mom purse containing my Seven Storey Mountain and her brand new li-berry book and my cell phone and her Sunny Delight, and my mom sunglasses, and this strage, new sensation of protectiveness (which I hear is also a mom thing... not really a my mom thing... but then again, while most of the other moms were teaching their young daughters how to braid their hair and use their Easy Bake Ovens, mine was pointing out drug references in popular music), and with the taking a walk on a sunny day with a hyperactive little girl skipping a few steps ahead or a few steps behind me, I felt very... well... motherly. And I liked it.

I've been blessed with a few good friends who, though the world rolls its collective eyes at such an old-fashioned and simple-minded notion for good young educated modern men and women, still consider it their primary vocation to be a parent. The first time I heard one of them talk about it, I couldn't stop smiling at the sincerity in their voice. What a beautiful and humble act of courage it is, witnessing a 20-something-year-old undergraduate at one of the most prestigious universities in the country respond, "You know honestly, above all else, I want to be a parent. I want to raise a family," when someone asks, as someone always does, what it is they plan to do with their life. Maybe they follow it up with some career goals or a hazy picture of where they see themself in 10 or 20 years, but it's always "a mom" or "a dad" that they mention first. It makes me proud to have such friends, and it gives me courage to respond similarly. I used to exempt motherhood from the "what are you going to do with your life" question because it seemed like a given. Marraige? Children? Of course. Lately, though, something has catapaulted the idea of being a wife and mother out of the "background info" category for me, I think because I've come to understand it as the vocation it is. I went almost 20 years without comprehending what we mean when we pray that our earthly families are reflections of God's perfect love. To think of it that way, though, that although we are to be instruments of God's love in our every thought and word and act, it is only within our families that this divine love is most perfectly embodied... to aspire to live out the vocation of wifehood and motherhood is to aspire to help create heaven on earth. I can't think of anything more incredible.

Anyway it was a long walk to Barnes and Noble. Lot to think about. Especially when you're carrying a mom purse.

The best thing I've ever done

At the present moment I'm sprawled out on our family room carpet, my laptop groaning under the weight of Casa Bigelow* dial-up and my lungs aching after seizing a couple hours of no-one-else-home to catch up on some Vision musical practice, forgetting about how little oxygen the air actually contains at a mile above sea level. And here I thought I was immune to the altitute. And I dare call myself a native Coloradoan. So disgraced right now. Dis. Grace.

*Oh that means Bigelow House. DARN IT no rrrrr's to roll in that one, I HATE when that happens. WHEW, good thing I was here to translate. I figured I'd start warming up now if I'm going to make it big as next year's Rachel Jurkowskanandez [pronounced "yurrrrrr-KOW-ska-NAN-dez-puerrrrrto-RRRRRICOOOO"].

Tour ended yesterday and I got home this morning after a glorious 4 a.m. wake up call and ride to Chicago with Josh and Clarissa. Amid the goodbyes and hugs and the reunions and the more hugs and the past 12 hours (to the minute, would you believe) of getting reaquainted with the little sister I guiltily abandon for 9 out of every 12 months of the year, in all the little silences and moments of peace (including the one right now) it's the words of Andy Lawton that continue to ring in my mind.

"This is the best thing I've ever done."

Maybe it's just because I remember saying the same thing to Jessica after we left the Grotto that night of the Senior Concert. But of all the seniors' beautiful words during wrap up, none rang as true for me as Andy's did. Nothing profound. Just true. Of all the things I've done in my entire life, of all the teams I've been apart of, all the clubs, all the groups, of anything I've ever said or written or accomplished in all 20 years of my life, this is the greatest thing I have ever done. This is the greatest gift I've ever been given. All I've been able to think about since that moment is how grateful I am. Grateful for the seniors, for the choir, for Steve and Karen, for everyone. For the look on the deaf kids' faces in Schaumburg when Matt started signing during the concert. For the guy who came up to me in Red Wing and asked me to teach him to play the bodhran. For the joy. God, for the so much joy, for answered prayers, for the miracles that just happen, without burning bushes and earthquakes and halos and stuff, and for the world that goes on its way and doesn't even realize that everything is new. For the brightest moon ever and the list of all the incriminating things in Mary's purse for Michele to find, especially the original manuscript of Rosa Mystica. For Jessica Mannen who is the best tour coordinator in the entire world and also just... pretty much the best in the entire world. For Cassie's kind words after wrap up and the quote book and getting to teach a 2nd grader named Graham how to play the tambourine on African Gloria. For Andres and his 'fro, hugs and naps and back massages, for nuns and modern art and for the old ladies who made us sing for them after lunch in the middle of the MOA Italian restaurant. For my aunt and uncle who came to the last concert, and for Dismissal Amen, and for that one kid right front and center at Holy Family who fearlessly sang along to everything even though the rest of his peers looked like they were waiting for the perfect moment to storm the gym floor and kill us all. For being initiated. For Sean Pietrini talking and being hilarious. For host families, the Kirner family, the Folk Choir family, for my family and all our families, for Holy Family Catholic High School. For shattered preconceptions. And for not letting go yet and opening our eyes and looking around. If I live to be 15o, I'll never forget that moment.

St. Cecilia, pray for us.


I'm gonna go ahead and refer you to Jessica, who deserves like a twelve minute long standing ovation and the most glorious back massage in the world right about now, for a more comprehensive tour wrap up. I just realized that this blog serves no purpose whatsoever other than to chronicle with poor use of punctuation whatever half-formed thoughts happen to roll across my heart at a given moment and also perhaps to immortalize in cyberspace my passionate embrace of the run-on sentence. I'm glad you're here though. Add you to the list. I'm grateful for you. I hope your day is filled with miracles and wonder.

I'm glad this happened.

Broken as a sign of love

Tonight eight of us got together and made dinner. Sauteed chicken breast, sauteed green beens, rice pilaf (not sauteed) and a delicious brownie dessert (also not sauteed). And ice water. We even set the table. And did dishes. It was one of those truly beautiful ordinary little moments. It reminded me of that one night in Atlanta (was it Atlanta?) when we stayed at Meg Hunter-Kilmer's house, her little house with her used furniture and a simple rosary adorning the living room wall and the jumping room (oh man I almost forgot about the jumping room), and we stayed up late around her kitchen table, a single light on above us, with cookies and lemonade and water and talked about life. And the cool thing was we were all different years in (or out of) school and at all sorts of different places in life, and it was like we were a little family there around the table, brought together in Notre Dame our Mother. I'll always remember it because it was the first moment I've ever felt like an adult among adults my own age. That's kind of how it was tonight: Gathering around a table, sharing a meal we all helped prepare, sitting there for hours talking and laughing, scooting over and pulling up chairs, sharing in the sacrament of one another's company. Beautiful.

Also, a HUGE congratulations to the class of '07!!! Oh man, I feel like a mom... I'm so proud. I'm not going to lie, I cried a little watching the webcast as all the bachelors of arts stood up. It was so grand, so triumphant, so joyful! After all the tears of this week and the humble, grateful beauty of the Folk Choir senior concert last night, it made me happy to see the joy. Also, I had to shave twice today because I got chills like crazy throughout the entire time. Haha. No seriously.

Okay, sleepytime, because in 3.25 hours, it's TOUR time! Oh man TOUR. Yay.

The higher gifts

To congratulate myself on my not bad, not bad at all 3.8 this semester, on "scoring" a solo on the celebration choir recording on the same ridiculous song that I messed up so bad at a concert last month that I got taken off the verse of "Lead, Kindly Light" I was supposed to sing for Ordinations, and on finally moving a good amount of the way too much I own to storage, I bought Folk Choir's "Seven Signs" album off iTunes this morning. Needless to say, that did nothing to ameliorate the situation of "Coventry Litany of Reconciliation" being stuck in my head for about three weeks now. Not even the whole song either, just the delicate little "Be kind to one another" soprano solo. Over and over again. In my head. Three weeks.

Senior week is neato, gang, even though I'm very little caffeinated and as a result about two-thirds awake and only about three-fifths as funny as usual. Honestly, I'm sort of at a loss to explain my feelings about Senior Week just yet. I think "unsettling" is the word. Not in a way that a little Pepto would clear right up, and not just because nobody likes goodbyes, and not just because I'll never forget what it was like to look into the teary, somehow pleading and utterly and sincerely loving eyes of the Folk Choir seniors as we sang "Jesus the Lord" and "Lead, Kindly Light" at Senior Last Visit to the Grotto. Like I said, I'm still not sure. But I feel unsettled. I love that we all just hang out all the time though. I'm a little nervous that once I've gone Senior Week, I'll never go back. School really gets in the way of kickin' it with everybody and staying up until all hours of the night talking and laughing and learning the High School Musical Dance and going to the mall expressly to eat at Panda Express and watching The Original Kings of Comedy for the first time, or the eighth if you count how many times Blair and Tony P have, at one point or another, recited the entire movie. I love being a part of this. I love, I love, I love this.

In the midst of all this Senior Week goodbye madness, I've been trying to figure out what it was exactly that made this past year so transformative for me. Friendships, Folk Choir, faith and understanding and the glory glory hallelujahs of my beloved theology major... it's all of that, but it's more. I realized last night, as my eyes blurred with tears during the part at the beginning of "Jesus the Lord" when the cello crescendos for the first time, as I contemplated the reality that I won't be returning to the ol' loft until I get back from Chile in January, and how in the world the seniors must be feeling at that moment, and how completely impossible it was to not cry, and wondering why that was, as I looked from face to smiling, singing, sobbing face, trying to somehow memorize the familiar panorama and take it with me, keep it with me to constantly wipe away the dust and readjust it on the desktop of my mind like the one precious family photo you keep with you in a worn frame during your exploits in a far off lands... I realized that I've never felt more human that I did at that moment. I've never felt more a part of something larger than myself than I have this year, and somehow, in becoming a little piece, a little member, a little flower, I feel like I'm finally becoming a whole person, the kind of person who might someday understand what it means to be made in the image of a God who is love. I feel real. Our culture tells us that independence is the name of the game; that in this life, it's every man for himself. But I think Fr. Poorman put it best when, during his speech after being honored as Senior Class Fellow, he said, "Choose a community here: academics, sports, your dorm, the band,

the folk choir.

All of these communities have shown us the way we are to live, and that way is together."

And that way is together. And that way is together.

Goodnight, everybody. I love you a lot.

Behold, behold...

I walked around campus last night after the storm, looking at all the splintered trees and the empty concrete perch where the fourth of four Basilica spires used to stand, ducking under caution tape, my sloshy steps marked by an ever-increasing combination of fascination, curiosity and profound sadness. The sadness surprised me - not that I expected to be happy at the sight of destruction or anything. But I guess I never realized how much I felt that this place, and especially the Basilica and the trees (...damn hippie), somehow belonged to me. And not actually to me. To us, you know. To everybody. I can never not smile at that beautiful, almost giddy feeling of being a part of everybody in the way we're meant to be, in that Body-Of-Christ, that-all-may-be-one sort of way. A tiny piece of a beautiful whole, a piece so small that it's impossible to conceive that the whole would be any different if you weren't there, but still believing that somehow it would, and knowing that you would be different and maybe nothing if not for it. And realizing that life loses its purpose when lived solitarily, it hits you in the strangest moment, after a maybe-tornado perhaps, that we're all meant to be a part of something larger than ourselves, and that, truly, this is the thing you're meant to be a part of. The moments I've shared in that choir loft have come to define not only my college experience but my life. And even those moments belong to everyone, folk choir and congregation and university and anyone else who comes to be annointed with a song of the Lord. I wince as I gaze up at the shrouded damage to the Basilica, a quick shot of pain running through my heart like a shiver, even though it's relatively minimal and probably less than it could have been, and even though it will probably be repaired in a matter of weeks. And then it hits me, as I walk and stare, that this is the sort of thing Christ meant when he talked about destroying the temple and rebuilding it in three days. No damage can be done to a Church who celebrates every day as Resurrection Day, who builds its life in God who makes all things new and all things one. Resurrection. Oh man.

So anyway I'm walking around again tonight and it occurs to me how amazing it is that this great and mighty wind, which in its swirling fury downed power lines and cracked the trunks of gigantic, hundred-year-old trees right in half and sent a piece of the Basilica crashing to the sidewalk below, also left most of the millions of leaves, hardly connected to anything at all to begin with, perfectly unharmed on their branches. Maybe it's science or something, the pole-pavement/trunk-soil/concrete-brick bonds and the twig-leaf bonds, and the wind currents, maybe some tectonic plate movements, and things of that nature. Probably. But in an everybody-now, Body-Of-Christ, all-may-be-one little way, it makes me smile a little bit that the leaves hang on to the branches even after the entire tree has blown to the ground.

Or maybe I've just been watched a little too much "High School Musical."

Nah.

i couldn't think of anything to write about

...and then this happened:



coming soon: visitors center-eqsue walking-backwards guided tour of jessica and susan's desktop claymation notre dame! i have to go to bed now though, so my voice will be nice and rested up for "sunnnn ressts lowwww beenee-eeth the skyyyyyyy" and mouses toiling long to make their nests and lily wearing her bright array and other such recording fun tomorrow.


i love you.

you can't love whom you don't know

(it's in the bible.)

when i was just a wee little lass of two days older than however many months babies are when they start walking, i was taking a stroll around the ol' house when i misjudged my newfound walking abilities, got going a little too fast, and tripped and fell. on the way down, i cut my forehead open on the knifelike corner of a webster's unabridged dictionary. two hours, two thousand tears, and five stitches later, doctors gave my parents the tragic news: not only was their oldest daughter the least coordinated young woman on the planet, she was also the nerdiest.

they wept for days.

you can see the scar if you want to. it's a little like harry potter. i would describe it more like a comma than a lightening bolt though. and instead of surviving the forces of evil, it was pretty much just a dictionary.

that's also how i got my indian name, dances with wolves. oh no wait, that was a different time. that story will come later, after we've gotten to know each other a bit better. for now, let's leave it at this: my name is susan. my middle name is danger. and my confirmation name is mary. my mom named me susan because of a survey she read in "good housekeeping" showing that "susan" was the most common name among female doctors in america. i'm a soon-to-be junior notre dame theology major and, needless to say, a major disappointment to my family. it's okay. all the great ones are.

this morning, i couldn't decide between lucky charms and smart start, so i had a bowl of each.

deciding to boycot studying for finals for the day, i then made two pans of chocolate chip cookies for my friends who judged that there were probably better ways to fight the man than just saying no to cracking the books. i felt it was my duty as a friend and, gosh darn it, as a catholic, to be in solidarity with those suffering in my midst. and there is no solidarity quite like warm, oven-baked, chocolate-chipped solidarity dunked in a tall, cool glass of milk.

that's in the bible too, i think. in one-a them books them catholics added, prob'ly.


the word "blog" makes me giggle. welcome to lots of that.