Fall Frenzy Writing Contest: Apple Joy

 

Photo Credit: Igal Ness for Unsplash

We wait under the trees.

Grandma slides her hand in mine.

Rustle…swish…

It’s time!

Aunts, uncles, and cousins look upward.

Sparkling rubies and emeralds fall from the sky.

Apples!

The work begins!

My baby brother’s small hands lift the first apple.

Plop!

In the bucket it goes.

Plop, plop, plop! 

The bucket overflows.

It’s my turn!

My hands lift the bucket

then pass it along.

Hand to hand 

the bucket goes,

until Grandpa’s big hands swing it upward.

Chop! Crunch!

Down the chute they go.

Bits of apple rain down.

Squeeeeze!

Gleaming liquid flows.

Grandma pours it into cups

and I taste the first sweet drops.

Mmmmm!

Back to work!

More apples await.

Bucket after bucket

Hand over hand

until….

the last apple becomes juice.

When we’ve cleaned every

bucket, cloth, 

and sticky hand…

It’s time for the best part of all.

We visit every neighbor,

hands outstretched 

to share our sweet gift.

The trees grew the apples

and we grew too.

Now our family has apple juice

just for you!

Taste the joy of the harvest

Taste the love we share

passed from hand to hand

year after year.

Sweeter than honey–

we have more than 

enough to share.

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Spring Fling Writing Contest: The Early Bird

Just a fun little entry for Ciara O'Neal's Spring Fling Writing Contest!

The Early Bird

(135 words)

I'm uuuuupppp!

The early bird gets the worm, and I am one eeeaaarly bird!

Wait. What’s going on here?!

This place is full of early birds up before me….

That's fine. Maybe I'm not the earliest, but I'll get the biggest, juiciest worm. 

Nope, Joe's worm is bigger. So is Sasha’s.

It's hopeless.

No worries, I can sing the most glorious morning tune!

Nope. Tony's song is sweeter and Maya’s has more trills.

Tweeeeeet boo whoo

I'm not the best at…

anything!

–Who said you had to be the best?

Me I guess. –

–Well, why don't you just be you?

Tweet ta-taa-whee! 

Okay, that doesn’t sound so bad.

You know, I like my song.

And I like my juicy treat.

I don't have to be the earliest bird

To get the perfect worm

for me.

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The Best Decision I Ever Made

So here I am! Six months down, and on to eternity.

One of the best moments of the last six months was when I told Sean, "I really love being married to you!" He responded with, "I knew you would! That's why I was trying to get you to do it for so long!"

Getting married wasn't an easy decision for me. I was on a roll in my life. When I started dating my husband I was enrolled in my dream master's program at Harvard and had a lot of momentum going in my life.

Dating up to that point had felt like just a lot of grief--both the kind that grief that aches at your soul and the kind that makes you say, "good grief, how did I possibly get involved in this?!"

And of course, being a maximizer (er...recovering maximizer), I wanted to make the VERY best decision, consider ALL my options, and...you get the picture.

And although I was feeling awesome about life and very emotionally independent, I was a bit terrified of marriage. What if it didn't meet expectations? What if the person I chose didn't end up to be who I thought they were? And the scariest question...what if I'm not able to live up to my potential by choosing this person?

This is the thing though.

I made that decision. I made it. I chose Sean.

And it's been the absolute best decision of my life.

Because of that decision I'm learning so much. I'm learning what it means to put two separate lives together and what it means to become one. I'm learning that putting your feet in the same direction and walking toward a destination together is much better than the moving back and forth and all around that comes from dating. I'm learning there is power in unity. Not the kind of unity that comes from sameness, but power in a unity that supports two individual people with their own ideas and personalities--coming together and working together. I'm learning that I, as a woman, have a lot of differences in the way I see things and experience things than my husband, a man. I'm learning that those differences are there to refine both of us into something much better than we could be on our own. I'm learning that life with him is better than any life I could have had on my own.

I am SO glad I chose this. I would choose it again and again.

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A Lens for Privilege

September 2015

Privilege.

It is autumn again. The leaves are scraping against the ground as the wind moves them along and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the students are entering into their full rhythm.

Just a year ago that was me--
trying to take it all in.

Except you can never take it all in, not here.
There is too much to take it all in.

I can't help thinking about the privilege it is to be here.

Privilege.
A heavy and problematic subject.

Today though I don't write about the privilege that allows you to enter or the privileges you may have as you leave a prestigious institution like Harvard.

My thoughts are about the privilege of being here--not the before, not the after--though those are important issues to discuss. They are about how that privilege allows you to see the world differently. And how that can enable you to enable others.

Last year I took part in a class in which I was able to hear bits and pieces of life stories of Harvard students from the Kennedy School of Government, the School of Education, the School of Public Health, the School of Design, as well as MIT.

This is what I wrote after that experience:

"I am not here with 'privileged' people in the way that you may think of them. My group of students includes a student of low socioeconomic background who left his trailer home to struggle as a first generation college student, a woman who was stopped multiple times at a ballot box in the United States because she was suspected not a citizen by racial profiling, a black man who had watched his father beat his mother after which he and his mother fled in the middle of the night, and a woman from Palestine who had seen men dragged through the streets of Gaza with blood running off of their bodies. This is not privilege. Yet, their decisions have led them to this 'privileged' institution. And I find it a privilege to be surrounded by these people."

I remember looking around the room at the people who had just shared their experiences. I shared what an honor it was to be with them.  

The decisions they had made that led them to be able to make changes in the world.

The privilege of Harvard is being surrounded by a diverse group of people who have come against challenges and found ways to overcome them. The privilege is in learning their stories and allowing their stories to change your story.

I wish sometimes we could change the way we see privilege. Instead of seeing it as an imbalanced scale, could we rather look at it as a water source that can not only strengthen our growth, but also others' as well.

We talk about avoiding "deficit thinking" when considering the abilities and situations of various groups of people, but don't we have somewhat of a deficit thinking when it comes to privilege? That there is a limited amount to go around, and we've got to make sure everyone has the same amount?

Why do we only look at privilege in terms of something that helps us, instead of recognizing the potential privilege provides to not only help ourselves, but help others?

Instead of trying to even out the playing cards, can we use our playing cards to help others in the game?

What if you, and I, and all of us, looked at the privileges we have as a responsibility? A responsibility to lift others and expand their understanding through our own experiences, as my classmates did to me? A responsibility to help others obtain the advantages that we so greatly have benefited from?

Until we see privilege in this way, there will never be enough to go around.

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10 Fingers for Gratitude

My roommate describes people who are having a hard time as being on "the struggle bus."

I really, really don't want to be on the struggle bus. Because it's not so much about having a hard time, it's about your attitude toward that hard time. And although I may be on difficult terrain, and it may seem that climbing on the struggle bus would be a ride instead of having to walk...once you get on the struggle bus, it's not at all pleasant and you get pretty seat sore from the ride. I don't want to voluntarily climb on the struggle bus and take it wherever it wants to go. The struggle bus is not where you want to be when you're facing challenges.

Lately I've really been fighting being on the struggle bus. Fighting it. Trying so hard not to get on.

A few weeks ago, I climbed into bed and realized that I was succumbing to the struggle bus. I had just finished my less-than-grateful prayer to God and didn't feel very good about the fact that all I could see were the hard things when I was sure that God was giving me good things along the way.

And I just wasn't going to go to bed like that. So I decided I was going to find 10 things to be grateful for and list them off before I went to bed.

I put my 10 fingers out so that I wouldn't forget one or fall asleep in the process. With each thing I was grateful for, I put down a finger until all ten were down.



And the next night, I did the same thing.
And the next.
And the next.

It is really a beautiful thing to be able to realize that, at the end of the day, there is so much to be grateful for. Small things, big things. Simple things that you recognize when you take a moment.

The struggle bus? Unnecessary when you realize that you can name 10 good things about your life each day. Although some nights it takes me a little more time to put all my fingers down, I haven't failed yet.

There really is so much to be grateful for.

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Harvard: I Came, I Ran Around Like Crazy, and (Almost) Conquered

A huge point of this blog was to share about my amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experience as a graduate student at Harvard.

Big fail there.

But maybe now that I am done, searching for employment, and unable to take an expensive vacation...

I will write.

I know, I said that before. But now I've got time! Freedom! Time! Did I mention time!?

This whirlwind graduate program filled just about every minute of every day as I tried to take it all in. And now, like a rollercoaster coming to a dead stop, I feel a little disoriented from the ride.

The funniest thing about it all is this:

See that beautiful Harvard crimson gold-sealed envelope?

The one I got as I walked across the stage, the one I was holding as I shook hands with the dean, and the one that was supposed to have my diploma in it?

Yeah....about that...

I opened it up a couple days after the ceremony and realized...

No diploma.
Everyone else had their diploma though.
I had a mini panic attack. Had I opened it up that day and lost my diploma?
Had someone else taken it and planned to take my identity? (brief thought that actually crossed my mind)

Then I looked again and noticed a paper in the envelope that explained it all.

I kind of forgot to do one leeetle thing.
Some sort of loan exit counseling. I mean, I totally remembered to do it. For one of my loans. Thought I was covered for both of them. And then didn't realize there were actually...two.

Whoops.

So no official diploma yet.

I was kinda bugged. I mean, I remembered to do a hundred billion things leading up to graduation, including all those student experience surveys, class review surveys, arts interests surveys...they just kept going. And finished all my papers, assignments, internship wrap-up assignments, all of it.

But that one thing.

So. I have yet to *officially* have a diploma from Harvard.

It's kind of hilarious--and just sums up my year to a tee. I tried to do everything possible to soak in every experience, to take every opportunity, to jump over every hurdle. And I missed that one thing I was supposed to do.

And you know what? It's okay. Sometimes you miss things. Sometimes you don't a hundred percent conquer every mountain. Sometimes you get to laugh hard at yourself.

And those are the best times of all!

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To Run

I had the chance to watch and cheer

the runners today.

As we walked up to the marathon,

The last mile of the race,

The tears started to well up.

I didn’t expect to have such an immediate emotional reaction.

But it came.

The sound of crowds cheering and the sight of runners running

brings me back to a race I ran

where crowds cheered me on

A physical marathon I ran

at a time when I was also running an emotional marathon

I didn’t know I could or would finish.

Seeing those runners reminded me of that moment

and reminded me that we are all in a race.

Life is a marathon we are all running.

Something we prepared for

and now find ourselves in the middle of.

And there I was watching this race—entranced by their putting one step in front of the other

and another and another.

I loved them. I loved them for running. I loved them for training and being there and showing up and just running.

I was reminded that no one’s race is the same.

I watched a man throw his arms up to illicit the cheers of others.

Such confidence and energy.

I watched a shivering woman who, in the last mile, was walking, unable to run anymore.

But though she was shaking, there she was, wrapped in an emergency blanket, with a woman in an army uniform, arm around her, walking with her in this last leg of the race.

And it was just beautiful.

Because, as tired and cold and shaking as she was—she was not alone.

None of the runners were alone. They ran next to others and they were cheered on by others.

Every runner passed through hundreds of people

who were cheering them on.

And I thought about life and how

Often we don’t see those people who are cheering us on.

But I felt and was reminded

that there are those who cheer us on—sometimes seen, but more often unseen.

And our role—

is to run.

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