The Worst Kind

Although this post was written two years ago during our road trip out West to visit my father, I never published it. It's still true though. She's the best kind of girl.

July 2013

"I don't know how I got her" I often stay to friends and family about my girlie-girl daughter. Me, the self-forced tomboy, college feminist, outspoken woman, one time hater of the color pink. I gave birth to this female child who loves pink and purple, almost exclusively wears skirts & dresses, plays Barbies, and wants to be a mommy when she grows up. I find myself scorning her delicate choices and trying to push for non-stereotype options. 

But this same little girlie-girl is the bravest 6 year old I know, crying only twice during an elbow break, with surgery and recovery. Calming herself on the way to the ER by closing her eyes and thinking of what she'd be doing in school instead. She plays in the sand--which I won't touch. She tries new things and keeps up with her brothers. 

And on this camping trip, she has proven me to be the worst kind of woman.

In "When Harry Met Sally," Billy Crystal's character explains to Meg Ryan's character that there are only two kinds of women--"high maintenance and low maintenance." 

"What kind am I?" She inquires. 

"You're the worst kind." He responds. "High maintenance who thinks she's low maintenance." 

Yes, that's me. I'm often all talk but no action. 

Audrey gladly, even eagerly, uses the outhouse at campgrounds, treks around in tall grasses in jeans & DEET, sleeps on the cold, hard ground with no complaints. (This amazes me since as a baby she earned the nickname "Princess & the pea" because she refused to sleep anywhere but in our bed until we discovered a way to make her crib mattress softer.) She hikes up bluffs in pretty skirts and takes her baby dolls into the sand pits to play. She is sensitive to another's pain and brave enough to approach with comfort. 

Truly, she is the real woman I desire to be--one who embraces both her delicate feminine traits and her tough explorer interests. Soft and brave.

Badlands Musings

The following entries were written as my family and I drove west to visit my father and grandfather this summer. While our ultimate destination was mountainous Idaho, these musings are on what turned out to be my favorite terrain of the trip--the Badlands of North Dakota.



7-1-2013North Dakota rolls by revealing the surprise of hills and fields, blue skies and green grass.I didn't expect this. As a child and teenager, I despised the landscape of most prairie states, even the farming states closer to home, like Southern Illinois. Perhaps it is changed, I thought. Or perhaps it is me who has changed, not the landscape.

This consideration is confirmed in the complaints voiced by my own children--"nothing to look at, nothing to do" even while I try to memorize every mile that flies by. every rock pile dotted soybean field. every roaming heard of cattle. every duck delights as do the gulls and geese. cranes, and yes, even pelicans. The yellow, white and red grasses merge into bright green reeds in marshy waysides. Reservoirs overwhelm fence posts. And as you search the distant horizon, your chest expands to inhale this wide world. Here I can breathe. I can think. I can watch and examine. Well, as much as one can while speeding by at 75 mph.

7-2-2013

Just when I think I can't absorb anymore beauty, we pass another dream of scenery. North Dakota wild horses, wild hills, glorious wildflowers, white-clouded studded blue skies. I expand, the cavity in my soul filling up. I am full. I cry in amazement. And I rest as we enter Montana. I am full, I think. No more gasping in awe today. Then halfway through the state, after forests suddenly appeared on the sage hills, the mountains blaze across the horizon. Peaks and snow. shadows and light. The clouds around them seem separate from the skies above us, still in the plains. And tears well up again. I am overflowing. all this. all this is His doing. His. He is too great for me. It is a splendid overwhelming.

Every time you feel in God's creatures something pleasing and attractive, do not let your attention be arrested by them alone, but, passing them by, transfer your thoughts to God and say: O my God, if Thy creations are so full of beauty, delight and joy, how infinitely more full of beauty, delight and joy are Thou Thyself, creator of all! --Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain