February fragments

Last week I was sick. This week I feel better, but I’m still blowing my nose a lot. We’re out of tissues and I’ve switched to napkins (which, oddly, I prefer). I’ve gone running just twice — barely enough to keep limber. With sickness comes sadness, and sadness weakens my resolve to trudge through snow.

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At IUSB I tutored a professor. (He was from China; he needed help writing in English.) He was submitting an article for publication. The draft had been typeset with LaTeX, which made me nostalgic for graduate school.

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I’m conflicted about Libre Baskerville. On the one hand, well, it’s a Baskerville (or a Baskerville clone), and it has boldface and italics, and it’s free. I printed out a sample and it looked OK. I liked the tall x-height. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure the font was designed for webpages, not for print, and I don’t wish to be caught printing out the wrong kind of font.

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With Kenny I’ve been achieving domestic bliss: we’ve just finished watching Season 2 of Downton Abbey. But this weekend he’s in Nicaragua. With whom shall I watch TV? With Sabby, that’s whom. Five hours of Pride and Prejudice.

With David, two weeks ago, I watched Two English Girls. All we knew of it was its Hulu Plus synopsis: “A romantic triangle develops between two English girls and a Frenchman.” That seemed very promising to us. The movie fulfilled that promise.

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On the bus, an old lady asked to listen to my music, and so I lent her an earbud. She listened to “Cups” from Beaucoup Fish. She said it was the bomb.

Thanks Madame

A Valentine’s Day story by my high school French teacher.

Violet

Today I traveled with Mary & Martin to Woodburn, Indiana, for the funeral of Violet, our great-aunt. This blog entry was read during the service.

An excerpt:

In The Great Divorce C.S. Lewis talks about the kind of woman who becomes the “mother” of all who enter her door. Violet was this sort of mother, for whom “every young man or boy that met her became her son. … Every girl that met her was her daughter.” In the book, Heaven celebrates her with a great, golden fanfare. Because the quiet, sacrificial service of a mother has enormous spiritual influence: “like when you throw a stone into a pool, and the concentric waves spread out further and further. Who knows where it will end?”

When I was very little, Aunt Violet visited Ecuador. We played together every day. Though I forgot that friendship, that mutual enjoyment, she did not. For each of my birthdays, she sent me a card; at every family reunion, she greeted me warmly.

As I grew older, I returned less and less warmth to her until finally, for no good reason, I was as cold as ice to her. Her service to me became truly sacrificial.

(These days I have been repenting of many things. But enough about me.)

And so every participant said what a wonderful mother (grandmother; foster mother; spiritual mother) Violet had been. And when the last witness left the podium, Violet herself was given the final word. Her voice was played over the loudspeaker. It was a bit like a movie flashback, a bit like a voice from beyond the grave. In the recording, Violet was giving an interview to her granddaughter, Jill, about Jill’s daughter, Violet — about how well she loved that little girl.

Though I had barely taken the trouble to know Aunt Violet, her voice sounded so familiar, so joyful, it was as if she had never really gone. It was as if being with her again would feel like the most natural thing in the world.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Midwinter, pt. 3

My Kenyan friend has agreed to reduce her generosity to just two meals each week.

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Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were warm days. At first everything was foggy: steam was rising up from the leftover snow. I exercised in shorts. Later it rained. Walking home from work, I saw that the river had flooded over parts of the East Bank Trail.

Since Thursday it’s been cold, cold.

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At IUSB the custom is to avoid proclaiming one’s religion. And so my department’s secretary — a jolly, John Goodmanesque, ex-naval man; a motorcyclist with all the paraphernalia — keeps his faith low-key.

One day when I must’ve looked lousy, he said, “I’ll be sending positive vibes your way.” I thanked him. Lately he’s grown bolder. When I’ve come into the office and flipped the switch, he’s said, “Let there be light.”

Like many other Christians, he’s offered to drive me home. (He shudders at the weather.) Once, during a downpour, I accepted; but I hated to, despite his kindness.

I like to ride with those whom I particularly enjoy — for the sake of being near to them, not for the sake of free-riding, of doing what’s easy. What I’m discovering in South Bend is that the burden of friendship falls unequally because I never drive. (In Ithaca this wasn’t an issue, for I seldom rode with friends.) I never will defeat this culture. I never will convince the world to walk. The result of my stubbornness is that I’m a bad friend.

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Kenny drives me when I can stand to ask him to do that. On the other hand, Kenny and I just finished watching Peep Show, and lately we’ve been watching Downton Abbey, and I pay for the Netflix subscription.