Houseguests and Rabies and Wedding Anniversaries
We’ve had a lot of wedding anniversaries, AdventureMan and I. Some anniversaries we have sacrificed to national security, as AdventureMan would be called to go to the field, or head out on some exercise. There are a few which have been truly memorable. If you’ve been reading this blog for very long, you will know that the ones we remember are probably not those that include roses, or wine and a fine meal and a beautiful gift, although we have had those.
One, we remember because we ate at a very fine restaurant, very snooty, and the waiter made a big deal out of presenting us with chilled forks for our salad course. We could barely keep a straight face, it is so far from anything we would consider a priority.
Another, and we howl with laughter – now – was the wedding anniversary when we had just arrived in Germany from Saudi Arabia, and found a lovely apartment on the top floor of an old mansion in a village I loved. When we got back to the car, AdventureMan said “Did you notice it is not furnished?” and I said we can find what we need at the re-utilization office, which is alway selling off used furniture.
Indeed, two days later there was a huge sale at the re-utilization center and we bought a dining room set, living room chairs, three big cupboards for holding clothes and some lamps, etc – all for $53. We’ve always had great luck that way. I had a lot of fun re-upholstering the chairs, and the landlord threw in a bed for us.
But as we sat in the car, on our anniversary, I said “Now, you probably need to take me to the hospital so we can get my bite looked at.” A few hours before leaving Saudi Arabia, the cat I had been feeding bit me, hard, on the arm. It ws one of those bites where the incisors went deep. I’d have liked to ignore the bite, but rabies is an ugly way to die, and I sure didn’t want to stay in Saudi Arabia to be treated.
So we headed to the hospital, and the next few hours were excruciating. Then we went to a favorite old Mexican restaurant we had known from years before, and that was our anniversary, truly memorable. We still laugh; we remember finding that lovely old apartment, and then having to go to the emergency room.
As an aside, the landlord didn’t tell us he was trying to sell the mansion, and nine months later, we were looking again for an apartment. We became very good friends with the new owners, and are friends with them to this very day.
This wedding anniversary was a non-event, we had houseguests, and their customs and daily lives are so very different that celebrating a wedding anniversary would have been far outside their comfort zone. We had a friend from Saudi Arabia and his 10 year old son.
We received an e-mail from them saying (I will paraphrase a little here) ‘we have reservations to come to Pensacola for 26 days and we want to stay with you.’ There was more, but that was the essence. AdventureMan looked at me and said “I think we need to do this” and I was glad, because I had been thinking the same thing.
I think I have told you about our friends who welcome the stranger, so I think God had been preparing us for this visit, and for us to do it.
How did it go? It was challenging. There were times we just wanted it to be over, and there were times our friends must have found us to be very disappointing. There were continual clashes in expectations, and there was a very large well of good will out of which we continually drew. There were uncomfortable moments regarding meals, and meal times, and getting up times, and where we would go. There were also some fabulous meals and some truly wonderful conversations.
I know they were sorry to go. I know they want to come back again for another visit. We have no regrets; we are glad we did this, and we are also glad to have our very normal American lives back. We like this man very much, and we know this visit was a challenge for him, too.
But as we are hollering back and forth, we are laughing, this is one of those anniversaries we will never forget, the year we had our Saudi house guests.
We are aging, AdventureMan and I. We are no longer truly nomadic, living out of our suitcases. We have everything we own in this one house, except our other house. We no longer have other furniture in storage, and we have trimmed down a lot on the load of things we have collected. Maybe the one thing we truly fear is becoming too settled, and this visit was a wonderful way to shake things up a little bit, to force us out of our comfortable routines, and to force us to see our lives through the eyes of others.
It has given us a lot to think about.
Happy Anniversary, AdventureMan 🙂
Learn to Linger
One of the most painful criticisms I would hear of Americans as I lived overseas was that we were all happy, friendly people, but we didn’t really care about people. We didn’t maintain relationships. While painful, it was also, as I looked deeper, true. Our lives are fast-paced, and we move from place to place, person to person, job to job and rarely develop the deep relationships that come from building a long, deep friendship. Today’s lesson from Rick Warren talks about how we can do better in our relationships:
“All of you should be of one mind. Sympathize with each other. Love each other as brothers and sisters. Be tenderhearted, and keep a humble attitude.” (1 Peter 3:8 NIV)
You’re never going to live in harmony with your wife, your husband, your friends, or anybody else without empathy. You can’t have a team without being aware of what’s happening in each other’s lives. That’s why when people work together in an office, they may do work together, but they’re not a team unless they know what’s going on in each other’s lives.
Empathy is so important because it meets two of our deepest needs: the fundamental need to be understood and a deep need to have our feelings validated.
If you’re going to build a team of friends or at work or in your small group, you have to build empathy into the structure. So how do you become an empathetic person?
Slow down. Because our culture teaches us to move fast, we end up relationally skimming. That means you’re hitting the high points and missing all kinds of details in the lives of people you care about most. James 1:19 says, “Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry” (NLT, second edition).
Ask questions. Proverbs 20:5 says, “A person’s thoughts are like water in a deep well, but someone with insight can draw them out” (GNT). Most people hold their emotions pretty close, and they don’t automatically share how they’re doing. “I’m fine” is the standard answer, but that doesn’t really tell you how they feel. If you ask, “””How are you doing?” and the other person says, “I’m fine,” here’s how you draw out a more telling response: Learn to ask the question twice. That’s how you develop empathy. Pause and say, “No. How are you really doing?” The other thing you do is learn to linger. That means don’t be afraid of silence. Just be in the moment, ask the question, and don’t be afraid to sit there and wait. Don’t immediately go into your agenda. Just listen and learn.
Show emotions. The Bible says in Romans 12:15, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep” (NASB). Empathy is more than saying, “I’m sorry you hurt.” It’s saying, “I hurt with you.” You’re willing to cry with them, and you’re willing to rejoice with them. There’s only one way you’re going to be that empathetic — stay filled up with God. If your tank gets low on God, you’re not going to be empathetic at all. You’ve got to stay filled up with God.
“All of you should be of one mind. Sympathize with each other. Love each other as brothers and sisters. Be tenderhearted, and keep a humble attitude” (1 Peter 3:8 NIV).
“It’s Going to Be Painful!”
A week after the wedding, I am talking with the mother-of-the-groom, my old friend and telling her she has inspired AdventureMan and I. A friend has contacted us, someone we like, but also someone from another culture. We’ve been friends for a while, but we don’t know him well.
He asked if he and his 10 year old son can come stay with us.
AdventureMan and I looked at each other. This is a man we like and admire, but the cultural differences are profound. We agreed that it is the right thing to do, and the thing we want to do.
So I’m telling my friend, whose home has been a revolving door informal hotel as long as I have known her. She knocks herself out helping people. Lives have changed because she and her husband “welcome the stranger.”
“We want to do it,” I told her, “but we know it is going to be painful.”
“It’s going to be painful!” she enthusiastically agreed. We laughed. This is the basis of our friendship, the ability to tell each other the worst things in our lives and to laugh about it. She knows I am an introvert, and love my peaceful quiet.
“It’s also going to be worth it.” She added, and I believe her.
Small Glimpses of North Seattle
“As Sallam wa alaikum!” I smiled at the Sudanese women coming in to their jobs in our hotel.
They stopped still in their tracks.
“You speak Arabic!” they said, astonishment clear on their faces.
“Only a little!” I smiled back.
I had a whole squad of new friends.
Now that financial times are easing, many hotels we have visited over the last few months are renovating and getting new mattresses. This was a real bonus for our Sudanese friends, and all of their friends.
Have you ever tied a mattress on the top of your car and tried to drive? It is a wild and dangerous adventure; the wind lifts and pushes the mattress toward the back as you drive. Unless the mattress if firmly and thoroughly tied down, you are in for a wild ride.
And then again, if you are new in a country, and in need of a mattress, a wild ride is a small price to pay.
On our way back to the hotel, we see protestors in red shirts at every corner. This is not protestors Ferguson style, these are Seattle style protestors, making a big demonstration for fully funding public education, and all the signs are grammatical 🙂
We are so full from lunch that we just want a small dinner. We find a good Ethiopian restaurant listed near our hotel, and head there, but when we arrive, there is plywood over two windows and a sign saying “Sorry, dear customers, but due to car accident our restaurant is closed until it is fixed.”
We end up at Ivar’s Seafood Bar, which is quick food, but not cheap food, and very very good food. We are greeted by an older man as we enter, he says “Welcome to Ivars! I hope you have a great meal.” We thought he might be an official greeter, but no, he was a customer like us. We ended up sitting in a booth next to his, so he stopped on his way out to see what we had ordered (halibut and chips, smoked salmon chowder, Dungeness crab cocktail) and just to chat. It’s an Edmonds kind of thing, neighborliness and civility.
A Quick Trip To Edmonds, WA
I’ve shared many photos through the years of my home town, a little town north of Seattle where ferry boats comes in and go out to the Olympic peninsula; the ferries are part of the highway system. It is a small town with several beaches, homes with great views of Puget Sound and the Olympic mountains, home and headquarters for Rick Steves Europe Through the Back Door, and a great community with a lot of emphasis on civility, community and the arts.
This trip is even better – AdventureMan comes with me. He hasn’t been in Edmonds for a while, and has forgotten how charming and fun it is. We check on our house, discover we love it as much as ever, and then head out around town.
Edmonds has an annual tour of gardens, and there are public gardens everywhere, and hanging baskets on the major streets.
They have invested in a lot of public art, funded greatly by their annual Edmonds Arts Fest, held in June, usually on Father’s Day weekend:
Down near the ferry, Adventureman spotted a bald eagle sitting on a piling:
This is one of those photos I kid myself about. Yes, it’s a cool sign, and the photo also includes that bald eagle, the Olympics, the sound, and the ferry landing. Can I include anything more?
There are all kinds of people gathered on the Edmonds beaches, soaking up the warm sunshine. These young women gave AdventureMan a candy bar; they had a bunch with them and were just giving them out. Anywhere else, you wouldn’t eat it, but in Edmonds . . . you might be safe
Who Is My Neighbor?
We just finished our year in EfM, Education for Ministry, and the overall theme was a multi-cultural world, where we confront our own assumptions and prejudices. It has been a grand journey.
We have friends, friends whose son is our son’s best friend for lo, these many years, and they know how to be good neighbors. They are the soul of hospitality. They take in immigrants, fresh-off-the-boat, and teach them how to survive, help them find furniture, apartments, and a living. They welcome visitors, and care for them and their children. They are helpful. They do all this because it is the right thing to do, and they do it tirelessly. I am in awe of these friends; they are the essence of the Good Samaritan.
This is Vincent Van Gogh’s painting of The Good Samaritan
THURSDAY, May 21 (from Forward Day by Day)
Luke 10:29 And who is my neighbor?
This beloved parable is about more than being kind to our neighbor. It’s about the grace that is shared and the miracle that is manifested each time we help each other, and each time we allow ourselves to be helped. Both of the main characters in this story, the man who is beaten and left for dead and the man who rescues him and has him cared for, had to humble themselves in order to be in relationship.
Mutual distrust and mutual prejudice could have cost the injured man his life, either by the Samaritan refusing to stop, or in the injured man refusing help from such a suspicious source. Jesus asks us to look past the natural lines of religious creed, racial and ethnic identities, socioeconomic status, and all the other words we use to separate “us” from “them,” and to see his face in the man in the ditch. Jesus is asking us to look up and see his face in the man who is saving someone who cannot save himself.
We are invited to see the face of Jesus on each of these men—to realize that when we reach out in love or when we are being helped, Jesus is always present. Are you willing to be humbled in that way? Who or what can you help, today? Who or what can help you?
PRAY for the Diocese of North West Australia (Western Australia, Australia)
Ps 105:1-22 * 105:23-45; Ezekiel 18:1-4, 19-32; Hebrews 7:18-28; Luke 10:25-37
When I think of the Good Samaritan, I think too of a very pregnant friend, pregnant with triplets, a Jewish woman working in Qatar, whose car broke down. In this day of cell phones, she called her husband for help, but in the time she waited for him to arrive with help, many many Qatari men and families stopped to offer assistance, insisted on giving her bottles of cold water, stopped and waited with her until her husband came and she was safe. They saw a stranger in distress, and they didn’t hesitate, they stopped. Good neighbors 🙂
Sparks, NV to Provo, UT, The Worst Day of our Trip (and it wasn’t bad)
AdventureMan is still feeling really bad, so I am going to drive most of the day, until it is time to navigate our way into Provo, UT and he is going to sleep.
About an hour out of Sparks, I feel uneasy, and I ask AdventureMan, who has briefly awakened, to check behind me to see if my purse is there. It isn’t.
I stop, call the hotel, and by the grace of God, the purse was turned in by the breakfast room lady, who found it where I left it.
So on one of the longest driving days, I add two hours driving by forgetting my bag.
It could have been so much worse. The bag could have been not turned in.
I am busy beating myself up and AdventureMan consoles me. I am wondering if this is the beginning of Alzheimer’s, and he laughs and says I had a lot on my plate. He is so kind, just when I need it.
As it turned out, AdventureMan sleeps most of the day, and the drive is quiet, uneventful – and beautiful. There are a lot of hills, and the car eats gas because of all the uphill stretches, and some of those uphills go on for a long time. I think I am doing fine on gas, more than 3/4 of a tank, when we pass Elko, NV, one of the last places to buy gas. It matters because when we get to the salt pans, we are down to 1/2 a tank, and the salt pans go on forever, and there is no gas station. Even past the salt pans, it is a long way to the next gas station, and we are breathing a sigh of relief, even paying outrageous gas prices, when we find the next gas station.
We’re about an hour away from our hotel when AdventureMan takes over the driving, through Salt Lake City, which goes on forever, to Provo and our hotel. As he is driving, we laugh. I have had a gorgeous day for driving, but suddenly, in the midst of the thick traffic, it appears to be starting to snow. Oh aaarrgh!
All AdventureMan wants for dinner is a can of soup from the MarketPlace, and there is an Arby’s next door, so I walk there. It is empty when I enter, and I order, and then, behind me, comes a group of 11 very happy looking people, from teen agers to grandparents.
“We each have $3.49 to spend!” one says breathlessly, “What can we get for $3.49?”
The counter-server is momentarily flummoxed, and one of the eleven says “I’m just going to have a cookie, so you guys can share what is left of mine.”
I couldn’t imagine how this was all going to work out, so I grabbed my order and left. As I walked to the hotel, snow flakes were hitting my head.
The Ahwahnee Dining Room
American diners have steadily avoided formal dining situations, it is a growing trend. I have to admit, unless I am in France, I’m less enchanted by all the formality than I used to be. I still love beautiful china and gleaming silver, snowy white real linen tablecloths and impeccable service, and at the same time, I really have to be in the mood. It really has to be worth the time, time to make the reservation, time to dress, time to enjoy a leisurely meal.
The Ahwahnee has that kind of dining room.
We ate almost every meal during our stay there. We found we liked the lunch menu better than the dinner menu, as we prefer eating our larger meal mid-day and eating lighter at night.
You have to have reservations, even when it is not high season. If you don’t, you may miss one of life’s great experiences. There is a dress code for the Ahwahnee dining room, both for men and for women. It’s a very mild dress code. They prefer coats for men, skirts for women, no T-shirts, shirts with collars only.
We were shown to what became our favorite table at the Ahwahnee, way at the end of the dining room, in a small alcove with five or six other tables, and a stunning view of the entire dining room, as well as mountains and trees. This is table 123, and a view of the 30+ feet high timbered ceiling which gives the dining room its grandeur.
My very first meal there, I saw they had a Shrimp Louis on the menu. Shrimp Louis is very west coast; not something I get in Pensacola. This Shrimp Louis was my dream come true; it was served with real Louis dressing, not Thousand Island dressing. I nearly swooned with delight.
AdventureMan has BBQ pork. He said it was good, but he gets good BBQ in the South 🙂 so he wasn’t swooning.
The next day, he ordered a Reuben, and said it was good. He hasn’t had a lot of Reubens, and he said this one had a LOT of meat, but it was good meat, and that matters to him. He enjoyed it thoroughly.
I had the Trout. I adore trout. This was pretty good.
I didn’t take photos at the dinner meals, and some of our meals we also ate in the Ahwahnee bar, where they had a lighter menu, and we thoroughly enjoyed that, too.
You know me and light fixtures; I really loved all the details that go into making this such a designer’s dream of a hotel:
“You Can’t Talk to Me Like that, Stupid Bitch”
. . . she said, and hung up on me.
I really hate telemarketers, and I hate them most of all when they call around six, when I start making dinner. They intrude. Most of the time, I just ignore the calls, let the machine screen them. This one had a location where one of our banks is, and I answered.
“I would like to speak with (Intlxpatr)” the caller said.
“To whom am I speaking?” I responded.
“Jennifer.” She told me, and went on to tell me that my warrantee on my car was running out and I could renew it now, through her.
“Jennifer, we sold that car two years ago!” I said, at which point she said “You can’t talk to me like that, you stupid bitch!” and hung up on me.
I laughed, which I often do when caught by surprise.
My houseguest, who had heard the whole thing because I was busy with meal prep and had it on speaker-phone, was aghast.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
I had the number. I know who she is with. I knew I could report her.
I didn’t.
Who aspires to be a telemarketer? Who, as a small child, says “I want to grow up to make phone calls to people who don’t want to talk to me and who will treat me rudely?”
I figure Jennifer has talked to a rude person or two or ten. I imagine Jennifer doesn’t have a lot of options, and telemarketing is what she has to do to earn a living. My guess is that Jennifer has some difficulties with judgement and self-discipline. I don’t think I need to add any more to her plate; she sounds like she has had enough.
The Southwest Inn in Sedona
When you look for a hotel in Sedona, there is a confusing profusion.
“Sedona has been discovered,” my best friend from college tells me. She named her daughter Sedona, and she is one of the reasons Sedona is high on my list of places I want to experience. She had described Sedona in glowing terms, some forty years ago.
It took forever to figure out where we wanted to stay. We don’t like bedbug motels, and neither do we like resorts. We don’t like paying for services we don’t want, and we don’t mind paying for services we do want. We like relatively small, and we like our privacy. We are introverts. We want to experience Sedona.
After a lot of research, we chose the Southwest Inn in Sedona, and it worked for us. We had a lovely spacious room with a balcony, very quiet, in a part of town where we were only about five minutes from any where we wanted to go.
As we drove in, we loved it. There were hummingbirds dive-bombing the tree where we parked, and we watched the as we unpacked the car. We had an upper level in a two level building, so we had to haul our goods up stairs, but I had my FitBit and I needed the credit for stairs; we didn’t mind the stairs. We loved the brown adobe finish, and the private balconies with the views of the red rocks.
Breakfast was in this cheery, sunny breakfast room at the top of the entry building. They had home-made breakfast burritos, frozen, and two microwaves in which to heat them up, as well as pastries, cereals, fruits, juices, coffee, tea, water – one step up from continental breakfast, and it is included in your room. Many people take their breakfast back to their room to eat out on the balcony.
The hotel had a hot tub and a nice swimming pool and lounging deck, which we never used our entire time in Sedona. We kept intending to, but there was always too much to see and to do!
Our room was fine, spacious enough, good sized bathroom, but I didn’t take a photo and it wasn’t special enough that I can remember a single detail, other than the lovely balcony and the view, and oh, yes, it had one of those Southwest corner fireplaces, very fun. It was fine; it housed us well, and you can spend a lot more in Sedona and get a lot less. We wanted Sedona style, and we felt this fit the bill; it fit in well with local aesthetics, and it was quiet and modest with little luxuries, but without excessive showiness.
We also liked the management, very laid back, and very thoughtful. The room had nice things in it – bathrobes to wear to the pool, a nice coffee maker, the fireplace for cooler evenings. When I needed more shampoo, the man at the desk gave me a big container and asked if I wanted conditioner, too. They had a large, elegant dispenser of cool lemon water in the lobby, as well as coffee and tea all day long. There was a graciousness to it all that I liked, a generosity of spirit. They were very helpful telling us about things we needed to do (join the crowd at the airport vortex to watch the sun go down, for one) and the roads we needed to take. We followed all their advice, and it paid.
Our hotel was full of European hikers, families and people who, like us, look for a good value for the money.
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