The Unwritten South: Parts 3 and 4

3. Intermission
I always appreciated the orchestraic Intermission in Gone with the Wind. Generally, I skip over the intermission and flip over the disc, but when I’m feeling relaxed and unrushed, I love listening to the soothing-turned dramatic melancholy of the music.
I also love study intermission when my contacts stick to my drooping eyes, my legs are stiff from folding, and my bladder sloshes in my slumped stomach. I meander through the maze of rows, past a big number 5 by the elevator, and grope for the bathroom door. As I wash my hands, I think how strange and unrecognizable this floor looks; then again, I’m one of those students who uses the library once a semester, maybe once a year.
I’m careful not to scrub away the newly-inked writings on my palm,
A Diary from Dixie, Fields of Fury, Experiment in Rebellion, We Need Men.
As I walk back through, I glance at the different artworks between rows. Most are abstract, but the golden hues remind me of the framed picture of Paris that hangs in my grandmother’s garage; my grandfather sent it to her from France.
I retain my warm seat and glance one last time at the shelf.
Dixie’s Daughters. Yes, I could use that, too.
4.Experiment in Rebellion
and
(Dixie’s) Daddy’s Daughters
My mom was an uh-oh: Mema was nearly forty and Papa was 45 when little Kathy made her debut into the world. Mom was one of the last of the Baby Boomers, and since her brothers were into college and married by the time she started school, she became a regular Ellie Mae Clampett around the farm, befriending kittens and dogs and cows and any other stray critter that crawled into the realm of the lonely farm.
Despite the monotonous domestic chores, Mom felt entrapped inside and needed to be active and outside among nature, her furry friends, and her silent father. She forked hay bales, hitched wagons, steered tractors, mowed the yard, set and pulled tobacco, fed the cows, and ignored her mother’s protests that girls shouldn’t have to do such work. But Papa needed a hand and the boys were in Lexington with families and schools and jobs.
Until high school, Mom never recognized that Papa’s silence and bitterness masked post-traumatic stress and stifled psychological issues. His lack of communication hid an anxiety that rooted beneath his soil-tending hands and field-lingering feet.
Mom had a heart attack the summer before I started high school. We were in Florida at a softball tournament, and the ride back was miserable. She refused to go to the hospital, and her pain kept her vomiting on the side of the road as we moaned about her mental inability to handle extensive driving.
Soon, we would be in the hospital under the news that this minor heart attack was sparked by an intense anxiety attack.
When she began her anti-anxiety/anti-depression/other medication that kept her from repeating such an episode, my dad, sister, brother and I responded with positive encouragement. My dad told me once, “You know, I can tell a world of difference in your mom. She seems so much calmer now. She’s always had such a worry about endin’ up like your Papa, you know.”
I didn’t know. Until that moment, I didn’t know that Papa went years contemplating the detriments of psychological disorders as his only daughter grew up in disconnect, quitting the dance team and making her own clothes to ease the load from her parents. Mema always said that Mom kept them younger.
“You know, Daddy was quiet, but he loved doing things outside. And he loved baseball. That’s how I got my first busted nose,” Mom said through the phone. I could hear a hesitant smile spreading as she described playing catch with her brother and father by the old barn. “And Papa—he was a switch-hitter, too.”
I immediately saw a surfacing connection. Mom—my binary opposition in all things life—constantly sought paternal approval and had an ambidextrous father. Simple. Silly, perhaps. But it’s a connection that doesn’t include our shared ability to become slap happy after 10 pm or dance around the kitchen, singing into spatulas and swaying our hips.
Mom was never an athlete like me, and that is perhaps what separates us: I trained for years to become a collegiate pitcher, and maybe I never received a busted nose, but I remember the first time I completed a successful catch in the front yard between our two oak trees. I remember the feel of the ball in the pocket and the bright pleasure on my dad’s animated, mustached smile. Catching and playing and pitching and crying all went to my father, and he took it well. We connected, we were battery mates.
All similarities end, I suppose. At my age, my mother was married and working, not finishing school, and my father had been married two years, not scheming plans to hop continents. At my age, my grandmother was raising a child, not birthing a story, and my grandfather had just begun farming, unaware that he would soon meet his future wife—unaware that in six years, he would be soldiering from Africa to Europe, from boats to shores and barns to fields.
My parents call my Peace Corps-ing, mission-immersing plans adventurous and impractical; I call them self-fulfilling and story-worthy.

I Love Beauty and the Beast

I love BELLE. I love the music, I love the characters, I love the conflict, I love the animals, even. The music/lyrics are b-e-a-utiful, I'm still envious of the library, and I love love LOVE how Belle is so independent and smart.
Maybe fairy tales ruin the way girls perceive life and relationships, but I love the dynamics of the music. I cannot help but sing along to all the songs, and I can't help but laugh when Chip makes his cute little lines or when the Beast gets a snowball in the face or when Gaston delivers a simply ridiculous line.
Even the opening chords (when they show nature and the castle,) give me chill bumps!
Sigh.

A Good May

After mentally cursing my family for making me attend a wedding this past weekend, May has, as always, pulled through for me.
-I have successfully completed my college career without pulling an all-nighter
-I have completed all assignments for this week. Wait, no I haven't. I still need to workshop my group members' papers. Shit.
-One class has been canceled.
-Today is my last day of class. (calls for applause)
-I placed 2nd in the Women's Studies Writing Contest and received a plaque yesterday for the Most Outstanding Literature Major. (yay!)
-My collaboration with two class members has helped start the Hope Harbor Creative Writing group that will start on May 26.
-I graduate in 8 days!
-My coffee consumption has tripled...possibly quadrupiled in the last week...that may not be a good thing.
-The sun is out.
-Glee is awesome.
-Lost is sad.
-I leave for Indianapolis in 2-3 weeks (wooohoo!)
-I leave for Belgium in 2-ish months (double woohoo!)
-And, hopefully, I will leave for the Peace Corps in November!
Oh, the wait until then.

Naps: huh?

I am embarking on my last week of class as an undergraduate. Today I turned in a 5-pg paper for review, tomorrow will be a 10 pg paper, Wednesday will be an entire portfolio (10 min oral presentation, 2 nonfiction pieces, some letter, etc etc), and Thursday will be a presentation and another 5-pg paper.
This past weekend was a working fiasco--a yard sale on Friday, a wedding on Saturday, a flood and choir on Sunday, and I am completely exhausted from a lack of sleep.
In the past 2 days, I've taken 2 naps. In the past few days, I've taken 3. I never take naps. EVER. My brain won't shut up long enough TO take naps...it just races as I try to will myself to sleep.
But now, not so. The past 3 1/2 years of my college life, I can count on one hand how many naps I've taken. Sleep is important to me, but I don't live to sleep. I honestly wish I was all Twilight-vampire ish (please forgive me for that terrible allusion) and could stay awake all the time.
Now, I appreciate sleep very much. It's a nice little break between writing papers and researching. Why have I never before discovered this sedative phenomenon?

overcoming the alone

I question myself a lot. Much self-evaluation, motive-checking, etc. I try to get beneath the roots of my emotions to see why I'm experiencing them.
For example: for the millionth time yesterday, I went into work only to be told, "Wait, uhhhh, you're lesson isn't coming today." And for the millionth time, I repressed all the f-words and fiery retorts I've been choking back for several, several months.
I cried my mother in delirious tears as I drove down the road. I'm sure a lot of people passed me with one of those looks. You know those looks you get when you see someone crying while driving.
Well, my focus is on my need to call my mother. I call her about practical things--recipes, updates, and most of all, to vent.
I held it together for 5 minutes after leaving work, then I went crazy. I was listening to Brooke Fraser--I don't even remember which song--and suddenly, I started weeping. Like a mourning-weeping. I needed someone, you know?
Why do I do that? Because it's human nature. Much of the time, I absolutely do not mind being alone. I love people, but I love alone time, too.
But I'm winding up now. I'm (hopefully) winding up my stay in Kentucky, my undergrad career, both my jobs, and probably and sadly some friendships.
I needed my mother because she did not tell me how silly I was being, but she empathized without too much sympathy, and I like that about my mother.
She is practical when I am emotional.

Around 2-3-4-5-9 weeks ago (who even knows anymore?), my friend Lauren and I went to the altar at church--a rough week. I sat angled behind her and tried to pray--we all know where I stand with praying--and I just stared at her back, hoping that I could finally break this impenetrable prayer facade that I face without success. Then I reached out my hand to rest on her back--a maneuver many Christians do while praying-- and honestly, I'm not sure if it was for me or her. (I hope that doesn't sound creepy, I don't want it to sound creepy.) The thing is: I wanted her to know that I was praying for her, that I was there. But I reached out because I was unprepared to feel such an overwhelming surge of loneliness. I was in a large church at an altar where many people were praying.
And I felt like one unmoving boulder in the middle of a stream. I was around an environment that I have been around so much--the things of church were moving all around me, just as always--steady, constant--yet I couldn't feel things anymore.
I'm obsessed with numbness because half the time I feel that I cry out of pure habit--it's like my system has an alarm that says, "Attention Jamie--you are three months overdue for a good cry. Crying will start in t-minus two minutes."
But GOD-- I mean surely he uses loneliness, too. Essentially, I'm not alone, and I know this. And I don't have that "Oh my gosh I need a boy" mentality--my life needs fewer complications, not more--but sometimes I have that need for a community, I think.
The problem is that I think I have one, but I know that I"m about to move on. Find another one, I guess.
But even when I'm surrounded by a community, even when I'm supported, I'm still very alone.
Maybe it's a strength. Honestly, I can embrace and manipulate the "alone" of my life to write and be productive in those kinds of avenues.
So is the alone to be overcome? I'm not sure I should try to overcome it. I think maybe it's mostly mental, anyway.

I told you I had a disease

If you haven't read previous post, read now.

I'll just dive in sans-segue.
I will be an intern this summer for SportQuest Ministries and will again travel with them to Belgium from July 19-August 8/9-ish. (Three weeks total).
Yesterday, SQ president Kent called me in absolute, unvarnished excitement.
He wants my fellow intern Laura and I to ALSO go to Kenya with SQ this summer.
*pause, reflect*

AHHHHHHHH!
okay, now I'm retracting back into practical mode, because it's $4000 extra dollars, and let's face it, I've never even had $4000 at once, so that's a lot of money for me, who still feels like a kid, who is graduating in less than a month, and who has no real direction for her life (which is okay.)

The experience was good because I've felt nearly-spiritually-dead for a while, although I've felt somewhat on the uprise. But I've thought about it, prayed about it (in my own way="Hey God, ummmm dude, tell me what to do. I got nothin' but I'm obsessed with Africa and I wannnnnna gooooooooooooo!")
I met with a pastor about it, too, and he is very encouraging about it. I'm single, unattached, and want to take advantage of my spastic, energetic youthfulness. (Which is why I applied to the Peace Corps, remember?)

I know a lot of people don't read this, and I'm not trying to advertise for support. And I don't like asking for prayer that often, either.
But I really want to form some relationships with complete strangers this summer, and I would love to maintain relationships I've already built in Belgium.

If you have any advice or any spare money (because i KNOW we ALL have THAT, right?), please send a little my way. Apparently, I'm not aggressive enough with fund-raising. Well, I'm not. I don't like doing it, I don't like asking for money, and I'd rather supply the money myself. But I'm in love with this organization and the way God uses it. It's all about loving people, not about converting to increase "Saved!" tally marks. This is one of my humanitarian avenues, and I ask you to please--please help me with this--especially since my yard sale this weekend is canceled due to poopy weather. :(

Okaythankyouloveyoubunchesokaybye!

I Have a Disease

I've been suspecting this for a while. It's not a genetic thing, and I'm not sure if it's contagious or not. I mean most serious illnesses aren't really contagious, so probably not.
Maybe it's not a disease, though. Then again, alcoholism is a disease. Drug addiction, too.
I think I am a cultural junkie. I get so excited about ethnicity!
It was Saudi Day on campus, and I ate Saudi Food, got a beautiful Henna tattoo, spoke to girls about Muslim women, wore a hijab, and it was amazing!
Ohhhhh, the world. *sigh.* how I want to see it.