Ramona

“She was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting, she had to find out what happened next.”
~Beverly Cleary



How much to I love Beverly Cleary? A lot. Because I think she gave me a best friend.

Fifteen years ago I was lying upside-down on a tattered second-hand couch, toes tapping the wall, my hair falling straight to the ground. My reading position. Not only was I in Ramona's world. I was Ramona.

The Ramona books were my first chapter books. "I can read chapter books!" I remember telling Mom over and over. "And next I'm going to read Henry Higgins."

Kearsen who preferred The Boxcar Children and The Babysitter's Club at age 8-12 may have been my inspiration. She read quickly, flipping pages so fast I pretended to keep up with her. Sometimes I would sit opposite her on the couch with one of Dad's western novels--books that were too advanced for me--in my hands, pretending that I loved reading for long periods of time without looking at pictures.

But then I discovered the only other person in all the world who was exactly like me. Ramona Quimby.

The predicaments! I once slept too long one morning, and upon realizing I would be late, I returned to school with the exact same shirt.

"Is that the same shirt you were wearing yesterday?" Whitney asked In my world, Whitney was Susan, hair so curly all a girl like Ramona and I could do was to yank it.

"No!I just have two shirts that are exactly the same. And I love them. A lot. And sometimes I wear them two days in a row, because that's how much I like them," I retaliated.

"Gee whiz, just asking," and Whitney whipped her blond curly hair back around.

And the beautiful Beezus. I mean Kearsen. So confident and sure but worried about her social life. Her hair was shampooed AND conditioned. Mine was short, chopped, and tangled almost in every strand. And she had boyfriends. Many of them. Not at the same time, though, but she did once kiss the TV screen when Casper turned into Devon Sawa. And there were moments of little-sister-mortifies-older-sister-in-front-of-cute-boy.

Like this one:
The doorbell rang, and I had just changed into my pajamas--an oversized T-shirt, one that Dad had bought at a Flying-J restaurant while on the road. It read "Give me all your chocolate, and nobody gets hurt" and a picture of a gun was pointed at whoever read it.

"Somebody get that!" I yelled. The doorbell rang agian. "Fine!" I said, my bare legs flying down the hall. I flung the door open.

It was some tall boy. "Is Kearsen here?" His name was either Nick or Dan, I was never sure. I was struggling to yank down my oversized T-shirt while hiding the lower half of my body behind the door. He glanced at my skinny bear legs and my hands tugging and stretching my shirt.

"Kearsen! It's a boy!"

When Kearsen came to the front door and saw the backside of my pajamas, she ran for the door, closing it half-way and waving at me with her other arm to go away.

Ramona and I truly thought that some things were too important to overlook. Like having friends over.

"Can Megan come over?"

Megan's mom was on the other line. "Is your mother there?"

She wasn't. She was working at the Flying-J and wouldn't be home until 4. "Ummmmm. Yes."

Megan's mother thought for a minute. "May I speak with her?"

"She's taking a nap." Megan's mother continued to ask me when Mom would be awake and other such questions until she said, "Okay. I'll bring Megan over now. I'll talk to your mother when we get there."

Oh no! I thought. Megan and her mother would show up and Mom would be nowhere in sight, and they would know I was a liar!

When they arrived I had thought of a whole story. "Mom is gone, but just for a minute. She went to pick up some milk and eggs and ice cream. The milk and eggs were for dinner, and the ice cream was for Megan, because I told mom how much Megan likes ice cream."

Megan's mother nodded. "Okay, well then have your mother call me as soon as she comes home."
When Mom came home, she called Megan's mom and proceeded to apologize for my overactive imagination and my "unacceptable behavior."
But it was important! I had tried explaining to her. Brandy couldn't play and neither could Carly, and I was all alone.

And Howie was Ryan. Ryan was my first love, but first and foremost a best friend. We walked home together every day, kicking leaves or rocks as we went. "You can come over and we can jump on our trampoline," I told him every day after school.

We used to build woodchip piles and forage for worms.

And I was curious.

I biked to the library and checked out books and shuddered at the creepy downstairs where they placed all the children's books. One time I checked out a book where a little girl and a little boy were best friends. The little girl aways wore a scarf around her neck, and the boy wondered why, but never asked her. Then one day she said, "I'll show you why I wear this scarf," and the little girl untied the scarf and her head fell off! I threw down the book, and ran up the stairs, tripping as I hurried. "Have a nice..." the librarian said after me, but I didn't stop. I pedaled so fast I could hardly contain my breath.
That halloween the third grade class was having a costume party. I tied one simple scarf around my neck, and when asked what it was for, I would not say, but secretly I knew that if I untied it then my head would fall off.

And I was an innovator. "Why are you writing 5's instead of capital Z's?" My teacher asked me.

"Because we replaced Q's with 2's! When lowercase letters turn into uppercase cursive letters, some of them turn into numbers."

I am Ramona. Let that be known.

Thank you, Beverly Clearly giving me a friend who was just like me.

The Beautiful Writing I Read

I've traded hours of filing through used bookstores to the evening hours (that sweep away so quickly)it takes to read my students' papers and general assignments.

But all my mannerisms are the same. I file through, looking at their names, though I probably shouldn't because of the bias that's already in my mind. It's no different, really, than judging a book by its cover, and I believe it is our duty as readers to "judge" that book or that student paper in a positive light. We are doing our research and gathering information on the story/paper, and we are exploring the reasons why the words written are developed as they are. As readers, we not only want the story, we want the context. And as a teacher, I must know my writers.

And most of the time I do not desire a grade be placed. They see themselves on a spectrum with other students, like I'm just hanging them on a clothesline in order of dulls to brights. "You're a C+, Son. You're like a soft greeen. In the middle you go."

So I read these papers and I want to enjoy them, appreciate them, give them the full attention of a good audience, and I can never say enough words to express how I understand brilliance within them that I know is just waiting to burst open.

Instead of throwing out a B, I ought to say, "Your paper right now is the supporting actress of the show. [insert relevant critique to the student's paper]. Make it the lead. Placce our attention on your words, not only on the ideas you present."

I can teacher talk for hours, so I'll stop me here.

What I really wanted to talk about was how God seems to replace all our time spent on one activit with time on another activity. For instance, I used to spend my time at coffee shops and with my nose in a book. Now it's a stack of papers on one side and a pile of text books on the other (for planning).

Or maybe what I really wanted to talk about was how I love reading e-mails from friends and family.

The goings-on of everyday life.

Or maybe it's the Facebook posts. All the little messages sent and wall posts and moments in pictures hanging in the air....

Or maybe it's the Psalm I quickly chose before class began. And as I'm reading, I think, "I've never seen that before," and all I want is for them to care and for us all to stop ourselves in our tracks and humble ourselves for the Lord.

Or maybe it's the Ning where my composition students post their thoughts and ideas in blog-like posts, and as a class we comment and interact with their writing. The poems, unedited, the prose, the raw style.

Altogether, maybe it's the fact that I cannot get away from reading and from paying attention to the world around me. The written word is so beautiful, and I have the utmost respect for it. And maybe I love it so much because with it, God inspired the Word into Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Get to.

"You're fine."

"Oh, Laurissa, you'll be alright."

"Can't you see the Lord's hand here?"


Right. People have said these phrases over and over and over, and they are beginning to fine a way into my heart.

When we say we are not ok, are we just complaining? Well for me, yes. Most of the time. Those little tasks I don't want to do, like vacuum or grade an entire stack of papers.

But, how about I look at it this way: I get to. I get to vacuum a floor that I pay rent for, and I get to grade a stack of papers from 27 unique freshmen.

That's it. That's all I have.

Why don't we start saying, "I get to" rather than, "I have to"?

Riddle me that.

Grandma Ham

"Your gradma's name is Fannie Ham!" the entire seventh grade GEMS group stirred with excitement.

In a way I always thought it was funny, that Grandma Ham's name was so silly, not too common, though she tries to be the most normal and common woman that ever was out in society.

Take her closet for example. It was the summer of 2007 and I was working as a nurse's aid in Churchill, MT. Grandma Ham was so proud that she had the luxury of service from her very own great-grand daughter. Surely I would allow her to live peacefully and comfortably, away from the mumbo jumbo abnormalities from other residents she apparently witnesses every day. In her Spring and Fall wardrobe she owns precisely seven slacks, organized in color from white to peach to blue to navy and finally to black. "Seven?" she would ask as I neatly clipped the cuffs to the hanger. "Yes, Grandma, seven."

"Goot." Oh, and Grandma Ham speaks with this articulate, need-to-make-sure-they-know-I'm-Dutch way. The foreign 'r' in "Surrre" or the hacking 'h': "Hhhave a candy." I believe she is third generation Dutch, so her grandmother and mother spoke it.

The bedding must be neat, no wrinkles, no uneven draping. If it lay askew, the loss is hers. She must sit and stare at it all day. As she crochets or reads or reads in her diagonal corner chair, a spot where her bed is so visible, she must remain in the presence of a kitty-wampus bedspread. And while nurses and cleaning ladies and nurse's aides and visitors come and don't do a thing about the bedspread, she must give herself up to an abnormality, to a potential discovery that Fannie Ham may not be as put-together as she desires.

Grandma Ham was originally Fannie Droge. The eldest of seven children, she also assumed the responsibility to clean after her siblings and to help her mother prepare meals. She cleaned while her siblings aided their father on the potato farm.

"So it is true that our family line has been here for over a hundred years,Grandma?" As she explained her history we folded "scrubbie" netting together, she showed the way to fold, how many times to fold the netting, where to pin it, and where to cut.

"Why, yes, hunny. I don't suppose Grandma has thought of that. Our family has been here for over a hundret years." I thought of how people now don't stay in one place anymore. They move, and lineages tied to places are broken often. Bigger dreams, newer places.

"So how did you meet Grandpa Overweg?"

"I wasn't too old, probably your age when I traveled to Warshington to clean for a family. One day I was out for a stroll with a friend when I met him. He offered to buy me ice cream, and I accepted." As we passed pins to one another, she continued folding and securing the netting--a practice she knows well--and she continued. "He didn't have a family. He was orphaned as a young boy and since had lived with brothers or sisters and always grew up very poor. When it came time for me to go back home, I asked my father if he would hire another man. Dirk came to Montana, but Daddy would not allow us to live in the same house, so Dirk had to live in Bozeman. Twenty miles was much further back then, and I rarely got to see him. Daddy bought him working gloves and boots from an old JC Penny that used to exist in Manhattan."

Grandma Ham held the netting while I continued to cut on our marked lines. "So then what?"

"Although it was nice to know he was in Montana, I still rarely saw him. But soon he had earned enough money from Daddy to afford another place to live." And soon Grandma became an Overweg. It was a goot, solid Dutch name.

They had a daughter named Genevieve Ann, and five years later another daughter Delores. They grew up and began their families. Gen's oldest Mike is my father, and here I am. And there I was with Grandma Ham, connecting the generational gap between us.

Grandpa Dirk died young, when my dad was about six or seven, and so Grandma Ham with all her health problems moved into the independent side of the retirement home when she was in her fifties and about ten years later she met and married Grandpa Ham, her name thus being Fannie Ham. Grandpa Ham died when I was six or seven.

She is 93 this year, and each time we see her she says, "This could be the last time..." as thought she is saying, "Well, it's been good to know ya. I'm off."

For all the ways Grandma Ham desires normalcy and expects normalcy from other people, she herself has taken detours and has explored new territories. And although she believes that a bed spread should never be crooket or that there should never be no more or no less slacks than seven in her Spring attire, her name suggests otherwise. Her name says that she has taken chances and has lived.



***Grandma called me the other day to say that Grandma Ham had a dream. She told the dream to Aunt Nell, her sister, sure that the dream was true.

"You must call Laurissa," she said in such a worry.

"Is she okay?" Aunt Nell said to her in confusion, "Fannie, Laurissa is just fine. She is in DeMotte teaching."

"No! She got fired!" Grandma Ham said, "Yes, they fired her because she could not teach in Dutch. But that is okay, because she moved back to Sioux Falls and she is going to marry one of Josh's brothers." Josh is my brother-in-law and he has three younger brothers. I'm friends with all of them. And Grandma Ham desires that I should find a man to marry before she dies, so that she can rest in peace. (Because a single woman off and on her own at 23 is surely an abomination.)

Aunt Nell assured her that no, I was not fired and that no, I was not going to marry one of Josh's brothers and that yes, I was doing just fine and I still had my teaching job.


***Grandma Ham called Aunt Nell in a panic one morning. "They're going to arrest us!"

"what?"

"You and I, we wrote fraudulent checks, and now they are going to arrest us!"

Suddenly, Grandma Ham has difficulty distinguishing reality from her dreams. For a woman so tied to normalcy, her dreams certainly suggest a crazier, more complicated, more exciting, more imaginitive Laurissa-like mind. I believe I am Fannie Ham's great-grandaughter after all.

Fear God for nothing?

This morning, I need to be doing my last minute things--printing handouts, making those final annotations for a Sophomore discussion of Jubilee, planning English 9 after three days of writing (where to go. where to go.), and of course, figure out just what I'm going to do with American Lit.

On Monday, the semi-standing walls I built around the Am. Lit. structure fell apart. Students were overloaded, not sure where to go, wanted less homework, wanted less of everything (but that case didn't last long). Yesterday went okay. Today, things may fall apart, and that's not okay. But maybe it has to happen.

This morning I read in Job. Yes, where else do we go when our most reliable resources in life fall down and shatter around us?

And I was struck by what was said: "Does Job fear God for nothing?" Those words spoken, of course, by Satan. And I wonder the same. Do I fear God for nothing, and so my faith comes easy? When I get the stink-eye from a couple guys wondering if I'll really follow through with what I say, I realize that I fear God for the fact that when my biggest stabilities (a working, breathing, growing classroom) is stripped from under me, He is still the rock.

God is comfort, but he's not a teddy bear; God is love, but he's not a boyfriend; God is peace, patience, kindness, but he's not an Oprah talk show.

This week and beyond, when all my walls and foundations are tumbling down, I need to learn to fear God. As a country and as a people on earth, we must learn to quit looking at God and talking to God and talking about God as though he is the little pleasure-filled things built only around our happiness.

Lord, take those stupid foundations, tear them down, rip them right out from under me, and replenish emptiness with Christ.

Fear the Lord for the fact that he is God.

Are dreams real?

In a dream I cried. I hate crying.

I was crying that it felt lonely on my own, that the rocks I thought were boulders were only sand, which developed the epiphany that I would run away. I began to pack my blue suitcase. I was so good at this--packing I mean. Toothbrush, contact solution, jeans, T-shirts, socks, a few pictures, my Bible. I had done this many times before. My parents moved from one rented home to another, from one state to another, and after high school I moved from Montana to Iowa to Alaska to South Dakota to New Mexico and now to Indiana.

All this so far is true.

My dream continued.

"Why do you suppose that is?" My gradmother faded into the background.

"Why what is?" I was still throwing clothes and books into my suitcase.

She stepped forward. "Why do you think you need to run?"

I stopped.

"I enjoy being by myself." And then, "I'm better off that way."

Then, like only Grandma could, she said bluntly, "You think that running away is your only way to gain independence? You think that being on your own qualifies you for adulthood? You think that stepping away from the pressure of the here and now will make it go away? You think that when you have a job to do and you feel insufficient that Christ can't be sufficient for you?"

I stopped packing.

"What's in your heart, Laurissa? You claim to be independent. You claim adulthood. But you are scared, and you're supplementing whatever you believe is missing with glorified dreams of running away."



Bam.

That Life-Changing Thing

This weekend I did something that could steer my life into one of two directions: #1 Everything would change; #2 Everything could stay just the same.
And here's a mini-lesson on the word "thing."

By inserting words that say "thing" three times into the beginning paragraph of this blog, I create not only the most ambiquous claim, but I avert confessing what I actually did.

When I hate the word "thing":
When students use it for lack of a better person, place, and you guessed it, thing.

When I love the word "thing":
When I get to post a blog that marks the biggest potential event of my life, and when I can't keep it in any longer and need to say "something"


I pray your potential life-changing things actually do happen.