Full

While I was sitting in the waiting room at the student health center I heard someone sneeze. Since I was the only one there, I yelled out awkwardly into the empty distance, “Bless you!” to which there was an immediate reply from somewhere down the hall, “Thanks!” It was a janitor, I later discovered as he turned the corner. We smiled at each other knowingly and he continued on his way.

I confess I am always a bit afraid of touching things in waiting rooms at doctor’s offices, hospitals, health centers. Any day is going to be the day I get staph infection in the crack of my elbow skin, I just know it. This September marks ten years since my mom has been sick, so I’ve frequented quite a few of these. Wear long pants. Rest the elbows/arms/hands on your lap, not on the arm rest. I’m the only person I know who sits in a waiting room like I’m standing at attention. But everyone is neurotic in some way or another, right? So be it; no MRSA for me. I hear squeaking on the freshly waxed linoleum. A nurse wearing crocs and a set of scrubs with baby ducks all over comes walking into the room with a clipboard in hand.
“Anna?” she calls, looking up at me.
“Yes,” I say.
“The nutritionist is ready for you,” I stand up, grab my purse, and I follow her in.

When I walk into the nutritionist’s office I am greeted by a woman in her late 40s, with long, light brown hair. She stands a mere 5 feet, 4 inches tall and is no bigger than a size 2. She holds out her hand to shake mine, all smiles.
“Hi, Anna. I’m Nancy,” I shake her hand and return the greeting. “What can I do for you?” she asks as we sit in our respective chairs. She pulls out a piece of paper with a pen-in-hand, ready to write my nutritional life out on a chart.
“I don’t know how to eat,” I say. If I’m going to do this, then I’m going to do this. So I began . . .

I started my first diet when I was 12 under my mother’s supervision. I was rounding into puberty, and as my body changed it became clear that, while I wasn’t a chubby kid, if we weren’t careful I was going to be a heavy teenager and likely an even heavier adult. I was around 5’3 already (I was 5’7 by the time I reached 14, and am now 5’8-5’9, depending on the Steak ‘n Shake I’m in), and I weighed around 135lbs. My mother did not have to do this with my older sister because my sister was athletic. I, however, was musical, and when most people doodled I wrote poems. I was the girl in middle school and high school who “had a lot of feelings.” Sports weren’t quite my thing. In the end I lost about ten pounds that summer, and so began the habit which has been maintained with encouragement ever since: chronic dieting.

Most of my male friends comment on how annoying it is when women talk about being on a diet, usually because they’re always on a diet. It bugs men, and rightfully so. But what men don’t realize about me at least, and I suspect many of my female friends, is that this is how I was taught to eat. So to chalk it up to simply “being worried about being fat” is to over-simplify a deeper issue. The issue being: eating has a ‘points system.’ We’re taught to calculate–count calories, fat grams, meals, hours since we’ve eaten, pounds–whatever it is!–and if the number is too high, we’ve “lost the game.” It’s a sensation of failure that I cannot begin to describe, because you only play it with yourself, and you play it every day.

When I was fourteen I went on another diet and lost another five pounds.

My sister, my cousins and me when we were kids. I'm on the far left. My sister is on the middle-right.

When I was 17 I got my first boyfriend–and lost twenty pounds in the two months we dated (we’re great friends now, so if he reads this he may be shocked to learn this. Sorry, dear). By my 18th birthday I’d gained ten of those twenty pounds back anyway.

My freshman year of college things began to escalate. If you have read any of my previous posts you would know I’ve struggled with anxiety attacks for multiple reasons, and this was another. I began having spells where I would absolutely panic when I got dressed in the morning. I would begin pulling everything from my closet, put on one outfit, take it off, put on another–over and over until I’d exhausted everything in my wardrobe. Sometimes the anxiety would make me cry. I was failing and couldn’t handle it. Eventually I would settle on something frumpy and comfortable because if I didn’t I would be late to wherever I was going, and then I would leave and feel upset all day. For the entirety of my four years of college I remained within the same ten pounds, going up and down and up and down and up and down. All in all, I can divide the seasons of my life in pounds. Call out any year between the ages of 12 and today (I turn 23 on Wednesday), and I can tell you exactly how much I weighed.

In addition to all of this, when I was 13 my mother developed Diabetes, which is a food-related disease. Since then she’s also developed high cholesterol, high blood pressure, undergone several amputations, and in 2009 she had a heart attack. And in late 2010 my father had a heart attack of his own, and we almost lost him. There are heavy people on both sides of my family, including my mother’s aunt who passed away at over 300 pounds, and an uncle on my father’s side who was around 400 pounds when he passed away. My fear of gaining weight and eating incorrectly was about more than just weight-control. Illness seemed like this inevitable end looming over me that I could not escape.

Finally, toward the end of my senior year of college I realized that I’d gained about four or five pounds, and was the heaviest I’d ever been. I started going to the gym several days of the week, and “watching what I ate” (whatever that really means–well, it means more chronic dieting), but found that nothing was working. After two months of consistently working out and “being good,” I weighed the same. Suddenly, eating became stressful. Well, that is an understatement. Eating was an overwhelming feat. And I began to hate it, because every time I ate it I felt like I was only going to gain more weight, and no matter what I ate or how well I portioned, I had the feeling that I was “wrong.” I was “losing” at something that should be so simple, and I couldn’t figure out how to win.

No longer was the natural, necessary process of eating natural, and because it was necessary I resented it. I couldn’t do it right, and I dreaded feeling hungry because it meant facing my own fears and my feelings of failure at a normal human activity.

So, just a few weeks after I turned 22, I stopped eating. I did not stop eating because I thought it would make me thin or help me lose weight. Everyone knows you have to eat to lose weight. I stopped eating because I couldn’t do it anymore. I hated eating, I didn’t enjoy food anymore, and I couldn’t face feeling like a failure all the time. Not even the very closest people in my life knew, but it didn’t take very long for my mother to intervene and sign me up for WeightWatchers. She said it would help me eat and lose any weight I wanted in the process. I enjoyed it at first, though every time I would walk into the meetings, the crowd of overweight women in their 40s and 50s would always greet me with a smile and slight suspicion. But since the scales and graphs from WeightWatchers also insisted that I was overweight, I felt I belonged there. However, as the summer continued I realized how starving I really was, and soon gave up and went back to eating regularly, with chronic dieting here and there, but the anxiety factor mostly under control.

When I moved here to Durham, NC for my Masters program this last July, I established routine–did well for the first several months.

Two weeks before I stopped eating (on the right).

I felt good, I looked good, and I ate regularly and well. But in October I went to the “lady doctor” for an annual check-up, and when the doctor walked in the room, she looked at the chart, looked at me, and with a stern expression said:
“You need to lose ten pounds. Do you exercise? You need to lose ten pounds.”
Throughout the examination, she kept insisting on it. She asked me what I ate, how often I exercised, etc., and at the end of the exam, she said it again, “Okay, I will see you next year, and without those ten pounds, right?”

Thanks a lot. In the process of trying to lose those ten pounds I have gained four. When the panic sessions started again while I got dressed and the chronic dieting got out of control I finally decided I’d had enough.

“. . . I measure portions by the portions of the people around me. I don’t know when it’s okay to be hungry and when it’s not, or how long after a meal I should eat again. I don’t feel like I’m allowed to be full. So I made an appointment with you because according to the lady doctor my BMI is 26 and it needs to be between 18 and 24 but I’ve gained four pounds trying to lose ten and I can’t seem to fix this in a healthy way and I hate eating and I don’t know how to eat and I don’t know how to overcome this and I’m miserable . . . and I’m so . . . tired.” Exhale.

By that point Nancy had stopped writing and was just looking at me.
And then she won my heart:
“Well, first of all, you should know that people make a big deal about everyone’s BMI being between 18 and 24, but we’re also finding that those with a BMI between 25 and 29 live longer. So your lady doctor is wrong. And in case you were wondering, you’re not fat. Secondly, how many points a day did WeightWatchers give you?”
“Twenty-five.”
Scribbling some math calculations on her pad, “Well, no wonder you were starving! That’s not nearly enough calories for a day. Here’s what we’re going to do . . .” We went through everything I eat in a day, all the things I like to eat–and want to eat–and how to get me off a chronic dieting way of life. “The goal is to teach you how to eat,” she said. “You will probably lose weight, but we’re going to stop caring about that. Deal?”
“Deal.”

The week my doctor insisted I lose ten pounds (on the left).

She showed me charts, talked to me about what food tips I’d heard that were nonsense and what ones were worthwhile. She told me that walking is exercise, whether the internet believes it or not, and that I should stop feeling guilty about not making it to the gym. Instead, I am to take study breaks and walk across campus to the gym, and then turn around walk back (I like her sense of humor). She never told me that I was “wrong.” I didn’t feel pressured. Nancy is meatloaf and mashed potatoes–comforting and familiar. We then scheduled an appointment for the following week, and decided that until then I would just work on breakfast and walking.

It came easy, believe it or not, and I enjoyed the walks. After a few days breakfast became enjoyable, and actually relieving and freeing. The goal is not to change what I eat, but learn how to eat what I’m already eating, only properly, and to incorporate more foods, not fewer. I also tried to follow some of the other advice about other meals into lunch and dinner. I was trying not to treat this like another diet. Yet five days after the appointment I was writing a final paper at a friend’s house and a few of us decided to make a run to Whole Foods for dinner. There it was, the buffet (which costs an arm and a leg) filled with dinner choices. As I stood with my tray trying to decide what to grab, my heart started racing and my breathing quickened. I looked at my friend Laura, who was with us, and she saw the panic on my face. Then I smiled and said, “Thou shalt not make eating difficult. Thou shalt not make eating difficult,” though my hand was shaking, and I made my selections and got into a check-out line.

I went for my one-week check-up yesterday, and Nancy and I went over what worked, what didn’t, and where to go from here. I won’t be able to see her again until August because of my internship in Nashville this summer, so she gave me her email address and a pep-talk.
“This,” she said enthusiastically, “is going to be such an awesome summer for you. You’re beautiful. You’re young. You’re going to go to Nashville, and you’re going to have a good time, meet cool people, walk around the city, and you’re going to eat great food, and you’re going to enjoy it! Right?”
“Right.”
“Uh, uh. It’s gonna be awesome, right?!”
“It’s gonna be amazing!”
“Good!”

So here I am. Munching on whole grain crackers with cheese instead of Ritz. I just answered a text message saying “yes” to an invitation for frozen yogurt, and I don’t feel bad about it. I have a bit of a stretch ahead of me, and unlike most of my blogs I cannot tie this one up with a pretty bow at the end. But that’s okay because life doesn’t always have neat resolutions to the stories we write.

And this is the story of how, at the age of 23, I am learning to feed myself.

- Anna -

*Credit for this blog post is owed to two people: Anne Lamott, whose chapter “Hunger” in her book _Traveling Mercies_ gave me the courage to write this post. And my friend Stephanie, who showed me the chapter, and then made me the best grilled cheese sandwich and garlic green beans I’ve ever had.

If the World

(a draft)

     If the world were on a string
I would pluck it
     and let it ring out and dance
upon the expanse of my being
until its note was the only note I knew.

     I would write symphonies
in its its key and
     violin cacophonies.
‘Strings for a string’ I would call it
and audiences would laugh at my cleverness.

     I would take that string and make
sure no one used it like any ol’ string.
     For they might lose it–or it might lose
its sound for them and they would play it wrong
or, worse, not play it at all.

     ’Cause any world that’s on a string
is meant to ring in the key she rings
     and we’re to pluck and
play along and let it
     tie us up and
          spin us ’round and
                         hold tight on to it
     until our movement
          ends.

But do not clap yet; she is not finished.

-Anna

A Conversation Worth Noting

During my visit with Br. Matt at St. Vincent Archabbey over Spring Break, a conversation took place that I feel is worth sharing.

We were sitting on the porch of Leander Hall, the visitors’ quarter where my room was, watching the snow fall while we rocked on the rocking chairs.
“So I heard from a friend that apparently the Pittsburgh Steelers do their summer training here!” I said at some point. “Is that true?” St. Vincent’s College is attached to the monastery, and there is a relatively sizable football stadium on the grounds. Matt had just given me an unofficial walking tour of the college campus. When I saw the stadium I was reminded of what my friend said and I had to ask.
“Yep. That’s true,” he said. “They come here every year, actually. And have for a long time.”
“That’s so crazy!” I exclaimed. “Do you ever get to see them?”
“I’ve seen them from a distance. It’s pretty cool.”
I paused and thought about how much my mom would flip if she knew. She is a big Steelers fan. “Ha, you know what just occurred to me?” I looked at Matt with a playful grin.
“What?”
“Every year when they come here you all probably stand around saying to each other, ‘Dude! I totally just saw one of the Steelers!’ Meanwhile they come here every year, and while they’re standing around at practice they’re saying to each other, ‘Dude! I totally just saw a monk!’”

World Without End

My sophomore year of college was arguably the most difficult year I spent at Florida State University. Having spent most of my middle school and high school years in an evangelical setting, I found upon becoming a Religion major that many of the things that were circulated in the evangelical circles about Religion departments weren’t true. The most common one being, of course, the ever doom-filled warning, “Be careful. They’ll make you lose your faith.”

I always found that statement to be strange. It was as though my faith could be “lost” or “misplaced” in the same way that one loses a set of keys or a pair of glasses. However there I was, Fall semester sophomore year, and little by little, without any idea as to when it had begun, I was losing it. Each morning when I woke up I felt like I had less of it than I did the day before, and I could not figure out for the life of me how to recover it or where I may have placed it in order to retrieve it. But what caused most of what ended up being almost a two-year struggle to “find my faith again” was not difficult theological questions, or the long history of scribal errors in our holy writ, or antagonistic professors (a stereotype which I never saw fulfilled by my wonderful professors at FSU), or even the messes that are our long history of anti-semitism, the oppression of women, and the holy wars. No. None of that was it.

I was “losing my faith” because I realized that the faith upon which I had built my entire life looked nothing like what I found in my text books. Martyrs, creeds, saints, desert fathers, theological crises, liturgy, eschatology, women mystics, ancient traditions, sacraments–entire empires of people!–what was all of this?! who were they? This looked nothing like the white walls, “rockband worship band,” bright lights and sound boards, individual devotions Christianity I had always known.
I did not recognize my own religion.

Now, before I continue, I want to make very clear that this is not a post that is meant to bash the tradition I grew up in or the people in that community. As I write many faces come to mind of people who loved me dearly and whom I loved in return. Nor do I want to paint the caricature that there was never mention of the above topics. But it was not like what was suddenly in front of me. And though I have been gone for years, I do think it is fair to say that when I was there, there was very little emphasis on such things. [I am currently calling to mind a conversation I had not long ago with a rather prominent individual in the community who looked at me completely puzzled when I mentioned the Nicene Creed; they had never heard of it. And another conversation when I was asked by someone else if Anglicanism is a cult, which I found hurtful since I had just been confirmed; but this person had never heard of that, either.]

Nonetheless there I was: a Christian, studying a Christianity I had never heard of. I was hurt, I was confused . . . I was so, so angry. And my troubles began much at my own hand. Immediately out of my anger I began to violently and wrongfully sever ties with everyone I could whom I saw as connected to my evangelical life. They are liars, I thought, pastors and leaders especially. They cannot be trusted. They have lied to me and what they haven’t knowingly hidden from me has been kept from me because my church has thrown it away. Friend by friend I cut myself from away. Those I did not suspect of malice I reduced to ignorance, and left them to their fate of being led blindly for the rest of their days.

By the time I rounded around to Spring semester sophomore year I was without community, without a church, or hardly anyone associated with my religion whom I trusted, and I had yet to find anything that “looked like” that Christianity I felt had been denied me. Worse still, this other Christianity was so foreign to me that I had no idea if self-identifying as Christian was something I wanted. I knew nothing about this religion, how could I possibly say I subscribe to it?

Soon the stress of it all came to a head–and I started having anxiety attacks. Mostly I had them right after I got up in the morning. It was always the same thought. It was not that I did not believe in God anymore or did not want to believe in God. Rather it was that I felt like God had left. Disappeared to who-knows-where, and I did not know how or where to find God again. Maybe I misplaced God with my faith and my keys. And with the disappearance of God everything I had built my life upon–my hopes for the future, my career goals, my ‘day-to-day’–that was all gone in an instant. And that is when I would begin to have an anxiety attack, because for the first time in my life it was just me, sitting at the edge of the bed and no one else was with me.

Then I met Matt.

It was the Thursday of the first week of classes that Spring. I had three classes back-to-back on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Matt was in the first and third classes with me, and on that first Thursday he made the connection and approached me. We began talking, which then turned into walking and talking. Thus began a tradition which we maintained for every subsequent Tuesday and Thursday for the next 16 weeks: he walked me to class.

Matt was Catholic, and while I said I was Christian, he had no idea what was happening in and around me. In fact, I made sure not to tell him. I was afraid that if I told him it would ruin the friendship, and I could not let that happen. He was the only stable connection I had to Christianity, and I wasn’t ready to let go just yet.

For the most part we talked about general things going on in our lives, but often we talked about faith. Well, really he talked about faith and I listened. I hung onto what he said like it was water; I was in a dry and weary land. He never preached. He mostly just thought out loud. But when he spoke I heard martyrs; I heard ancient tradition; I heard genuine questioning and struggle that was unafraid; I heard assurance. What intrigued me most about the pair we made was that I am a raging extrovert (which usually leaves me embarrassed), and Matt is a raging introvert (which usually leaves him miserably lonely). Yet most days it was most helpful for him to speak and for me to be silent. And I was never embarrassed, and he was never lonely. Matt was not “un-cool” or “socially awkward,” but whenever I try to describe him to someone, the best I can come up with to say is that it’s as though he was perfectly fit for a place I cannot articulate. It’s as if he’s been abstracted from elsewhere. He could get along just fine in our world and in life, but I always felt like he had an adventure waiting for him somewhere far off.

I looked forward to every Tuesday and Thursday that Spring. On the days when class was cancelled or schedules were somehow changed, we met anyway. That un-official fifteen minutes was holy, set apart. Soon my anxiety attacks stopped, and my heart and spirit began to heal. Somewhere about halfway into the semester, Matt, who was an English major and graduating that semester, finally answered the one question he had skirted around each time I asked it.

“So,” I said playfully, knowing he wouldn’t answer, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”
…and finally one day he said, “A monk.”
“Oh,” I looked at him a little shocked. But then I smiled. “Okay, then!”

Once he made his big confession everything just got that much better. He talked openly about his desire for the monastic life, and I begged to hear. Though spring time in Tallahassee is known for being the city’s rainy season, Whenever I think about that semester, every memory I recall is sunny.

After he graduated we wrote e-mails back and forth to keep in touch. Finally, the July before my senior year he wrote me one final e-mail telling me he had been invited into a Benedictine monastery in Pennsylvania. He had to leave right away, and would not be allowed to use the internet for the next year. But, if I was willing, we could write letters.

So for the next twelve months we wrote our friendship out by hand. I have dozens of letters in a folder in my room: letters about his first year as a monk, about my job as a youth minister, about how I was soon to be confirmed Anglican, about his discernment at the monastery, an entire letter in which he tried to convince me of transubstantiation (he gave a valiant effort, ha), and about how I missed Uganda so much it hurt.

Finally, after three years of communicating through e-mails and letters (and then e-mails once again), I was able to visit him last month. It was over Spring break, and I drove the 8 hours to St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, PA. When I arrived I called his room to tell him I would meet him in front of the basilica. And as I stood on the steps taking in the mountain view, I heard someone say my name. I looked over, and saw Matt rounding the corner in his habit. There it was: the adventure I knew he was meant for. It was so right. It was good. From Friday afternoon to Monday morning I joined with him in the monks’ life at St. Vincent’s. Prayer three times a day, and walking and talking all day in between (an activity with which we were perfectly content). He showed me where he liked to pray, liked to study, and where he worked. We joked about the monastery cat and the Pittsburgh Steelers. It was wonderful. It was ‘sunny.’

On Saturday night at dinner I was telling him about school and he asked me about Field Placement (the required internship for my graduate program) and what kind of placement I requested for the summer.

“I told them that I want to walk people to class for the summer.”

He looked a little confused and asked me to explain. So over the next 10 minutes I began to tell him all about what he had meant to me that semester. I told him about my struggles, and my pain and loneliness, and how to this day some of my attempts to repair those broken relationships have not been successful because of just how angrily and violently I went on my rampage. I told him that his friendship was the reason I had remained stable, and that he taught me more about ministry than anyone I had ever known. And I told the Field Placement office about him because I want to spend my summer doing for others what he did for me.

“Wow. Really? Wow. I had absolutely no idea,” he said, blushing, and I laughed.

I spent four glorious days at St. Vincent’s. During my last Morning Prayer there, I sat in the pew next to Matt and chanted the psalm along with him and the other monks, thinking about how I was proud of him for being courageous enough to do what he has done with his life. I thought about all he had done for me, and the amazing friend I was not expecting when I needed him most. I thought about how God had not disappeared. Matt is my proof.

As we rounded the end of the chant and stood in unison for the Gloria Patri, I, like an idiot, broke into a huge grin.

And together we bowed, and sang,

“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son:
and to the Holy Spirit;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be:
world without end.

Amen.”

-Anna

The Dilemma of Religious Studies

Scenario 1
Situation: In the line at the grocery store, paying for my groceries.
Occurred: January 27, 2011

Cashier: “Hi, how are you?”
Me: “I’m well, thanks. How are you?”
Cashier: “I’m good thanks.”
*awkward pause; he continues to ring-up my groceries*
Cashier: “So are you a student over at Duke?”
Me: “I am, actually. I’m a Master’s student.”
Cashier: “Oh, cool. What are you studying?”
Me: “Divinity, actually.”
Cashier: “Oh, like Christianity and stuff?”
Me: “Well, yes, though my main focus has always been Judaism.”
Cashier: “So are you like a Christian who studies Jews?”
Me: “Uh, yeah. I’m a Christian.”
*pause*
Cashier: [lowering his voice] “So, is it just me, or does anyone else think that the crusades were totally justified?”
Me: *blank stare*
Cashier: “I mean, what’s the big deal about defending yourself when they’re taking over your holy land?”
Me: *blank stare*
Cashier: “I mean, you gotta admit: it wasn’t as big a deal as everyone acts.”
Me: *blank stare*
*pause*
Me: [taking my receipt] “Uh, thanks.”
Cashier: “Have a great night!”

Scenario 2
Situation: Sitting at the bar of a restaurant with my sister, having appetizers and drinks for a ‘Sister Night’
Occurred: December 29, 2010

Creepy man on my left: “So do you live around here?”
Me: “No, actually I’m just in town visiting my family. I live in North Carolina.”
Creep: “Oh, you work up there?”
Me: “Uh, no I’m in school.”
Creep: “Yeah? What are you studying?”
Me: “I’m getting a Master’s right now in Divinity.”
Creep: “Seriously? But what are you gonna do with that kind of degree??”
Me: “Well, you can do lots of things. I mean, I could work in non-profit, or study genocide or something.”
Creep: “Genocide? Man, I’ll tell you all about that. Here’s how it works–’cause I majored in political science over at the community college. Let’s take Africa, for instance . . .”
Me: *blank stare*
Creep: “You got the ‘Oogey-Boogey’ tribe over here, and the ‘Jaboogey-Boogey’ tribe over there. And they’re running around all naked and primitive, and don’t know the difference between nothing.”
Me: *blank stare*
Creep: “And one of the guys steals a coconut from someone in the other tribe, and they start fighting. Then the whole tribe gets in on it, and one tribes slaughters everybody in the other tribe and Americans have to go in there and just sort out that nonsense.”
Me: “Really? Is that right? Wow, it’s amazing how simple that was. So have you, like, been to Africa and stuff then?”
Creep: “Aw, nah, darlin’. Nobody actually goes there.”
Me: “Really? . . . Well, I’ve been to Africa . . . and you’re an idiot.”
Creep: *blank stare*

Later that evening . . .

Creep 2: “Hey, girl. Can I sit next to you?”
Me: “Uh, sure.”
Creep 2: “So you live around here?”
Me: “No, I’m just in town visiting from North Carolina.”
Creep 2: “Oh yeah? You in school or working up there?”
Me: “I’m a Master’s student at Duke, actually.”
Creep 2: “Yeah?! That’s awesome! What are you studying?”
Me: “Divinity.”
Creep 2: “Divinity?? So you wanna be a nun?!”
Me: *blank stare*

Even later that evening…

Creep 3: “So what’s up with you?”
Me: “Uh, nothing.”
Creep 3: “You just hanging out?”
Me: “Uh, yeah. Just in town visiting my family, having a girls’ night with my sister.”
Creep 3: “Oh yeah? Where are you from?”
Me: “Here, originally. But I live in North Carolina now.”
Creep 3: “That’s cool. You in school up there or something?”
Me: “Yeah, I’m a Master’s student at Duke.”
Creep 3: “Oh cool. What are you studying?”
Me: “Divinity.”
Creep 3: “Huh? Divinity? Like, you’re studying to be a nun?”
Me: *blank stare*
Creep 3: *blank stare*
Me: “Yes. Yes, I’m studying to be a nun. You’ll have to excuse me, I need to go practice my vow of silence.”

[Note: This was not the first time I've been asked if I am going to be a nun. This was just the first time I was asked more than once in the same evening. The total number of times I've been asked this question is somewhere around 10.]

Other unsuccessful conversations
Creep: “Religion? Oh, well, I don’t believe in God.”
—–
Creep: “Philosophy? No way! ‘Cause I got my own personal philosophy about the world being on like all these different planes of reality and stuff. . .”
—–
Creep: “Divinity? So you’re like, a priest?”

Theoretical Situation
Scenario: What I will say next time someone asks what I study (courtesy of my friend Russell)

Theoretical Creep: “So what do you study?”
Me: [slowly locking eye-contact] “Taxidermy.”
Theoretical Creep: “Uh, really?”
Me: “Yes. I just really love the aesthetics of a stuffed dead animal. Don’t you?”

-Anna-

Yes, Grandma. I’m Coming.

“It was sad,” my mother reflected a few years ago. “They all just withered away.”

A few minutes earlier she’d been telling me stories about her parents, their friends, her aunts and uncles, and many other adults who had been in her life when she was young. There was distance on her face in that moment; she could see them simultaneously in her mind: in their younger years and in their older, fragile states all at once.

For several months now my mother has been telling me about the onset and fast-paced memory loss which has been taking over my grandmother (my father’s mother). Confusion about how to use the phone properly; panicking over small misunderstandings; falling down often while trying to walk her dogs. She’s confused just enough to know that she’s confused, and it upsets her.

When I went home for Christmas a few weeks ago I got to experience it firsthand. “Be prepared,” my mother said. “And you know, honey, she’s not going to get better.”

“I know,” I said.

We went to her house on Christmas day for gift exchange and to bring a plate of food from the Christmas Eve dinner she hadn’t felt well enough to attend the night previous. She greeted us at the door like she always has: her two dogs barking enthusiastically at her feet while she opens the screen-door as we climb up the front steps. What once would have been arms thrown open and exclamations of excitement in her Jersey accent is now just a large smile and a shaky, “Hello!” while she tries not to lose her balance from the dogs. Over the next hour we sat at her kitchen table while she ate from the plate we’d brought for her. We explained one of the Christmas gifts we gave her–a small back scratcher, which she mistakenly thought was a pendulum to go with the clock we’d also given her. I hung the clock for her and took down her grocery list. At some point during the conversation we discovered that a local carpet-cleaning company had taken advantage of her, charging her $250 for what should have cost around $90. Next time ask us for help, Grandma, just in case, we told her. Before we left, I re-taught her how to use the TV remote, and she told me how the people at the TV repair store she calls for help get angry with her. I told her not to fret; she can call me instead if she needs help.

I made several visits to her house while I was home, and the week I returned to Durham she had appointments with a neurologist at her doctor’s request. Her memory-loss is developing quickly, and they want to check her overall neurological and mental health so that a more proper assessment about ‘the next steps’ to take in terms of care can be made. When we told her about the tests she needs done, she panicked.

“Oh, Cathy!” she bellowed to my mother with eyes wide and breath quick. “I don’t want to be moved into some room somewhere! I’m so worried!”

“Well, we don’t think that’s going to happen, Jan. Don’t panic. Let’s just get the check-ups first.” My mother said, putting her hand on my grandmother’s arm. We continued to reassure her that she was going to be fine.

This is not the first time my mother had experienced such a reality. The last memory I have of her father, my grandfather, was when I was 12. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s when I was young, and spent the final few years of his life in a nursing home. The last time I walked into his room there was on a visit I made with my mother. My grandfather had been a navy pilot in WWII. After the war he flew a plane as a storm chaser, and then finally settled in his career as an eye-doctor, fitting most of my hometown of Vero Beach with their first pair of glasses for the next few decades. He and my grandmother were kind people, using their money to put braces on the teeth of my mom’s high school sweetheart, and pay for him and several other young men to go to college who could not have otherwise afforded it. He then retired, and spent the remaining years he had with my grandmother as madly in love with her on the day she died as he had been when he met her at a friend’s wedding in their 20s. (“You see that girl?” he said to his friend the first time he saw her. “I’m going to marry her.” She thought he had a lot of nerve.) He spent his years as a widower picking up me and my sister from elementary school and spending the afternoon with us while my parents were at work. I remember watching baseball with him in the den of his house. He taught me how to color inside the lines. We used to eat Milano cookies with milk.

And there he was, sitting in a chair with a portable table pulled up in front of him. His eyes were unfocused, and he was drooling.

“Hi, Daddy,” my mom said as she leaned in and gave him a kiss. He looked at her with a far-away expression and said nothing. “Do you know who I am, Daddy?” He did not reply. She motioned to me, standing a few feet off in silence. “Daddy, do you know who this is? Do you know who that is, Daddy?”

He slowly looked up from the table and set his eyes on mine. “Anna,” he said.

“Yes, Daddy. That’s Anna,” my mother said. That was the last thing either of us ever heard him say. He died not long after.

And as I stood in my grandmother’s kitchen unloading her groceries I took a good look around. I thought about how the employees at the TV repair store get frustrated with her phone calls and questions. I harbor no anger–they don’t understand. To them she’s just a confused old woman who cannot work her remote control. Holding a box of oatmeal I turn slowly, looking at our gifts from years past which decorate her shelves and walls. I spent so much time here growing up; this is where my sister and I spent weekends every few weeks, and had Christmas brunches every year. I was standing in the kitchen where she would wave us over to sneak tastes of Thanksgiving dinner while Mom and Dad weren’t looking. You always have to pick the food, she’d say with a mischievous grin while we dug our fingers into the dish. She is the woman who married young, and as a divorcée in the 50s raised two young boys. She is the woman who once interviewed Albert Einstein for her high school newspaper; who was uniformly drunk after one glass of white wine. She never went to college. She never remarried. She was always the life of the party. She never complained.

“Granny, why are you always smiling?” I once asked her while we were in the car on the way to her house for the weekend.

“Because I’m always happy!” she exclaimed, grinning even larger and looking at me while I sat in the passenger seat.

I put the oatmeal I was holding in her pantry and finished unloading the groceries. The TV was roaring loudly in the living room so she could hear it. I heard her talking to my two nieces who were in the room with her, playing. As I looked in from the kitchen she put her shaky arm out to my oldest niece, Marcella, who is two years old and looks remarkably like me.

“Come here, darling. Come sit with Great-Grandma. Come here, Anna,” she beckoned her, confusing Marcella with a young me.

Yes, Grandma. I’m coming.

- Anna -

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” -James 1:27

Bed and Breakfast

The best breakfast I have ever had was in the Namirembe Girls’ Hostel in Kampala, Uganda. We had arrived the night before around 10:00 at the Entebbe International Airport, and with the exception of a bump or two regarding our luggage, we headed to our hotel without delay. We were escorted by the man who would be our guide for the remainder of our trip, Reverend Asa, and our driver, Casey. About 30 minutes later–tired, jet-lagged, but altogether cheerful–we found ourselves sitting in the lobby of our hotel in a strange country on another continent being told that there was a mistake, ‘they had no rooms reserved for us’ like we had been told before we left America.

Well, this was a problem.

However we very calmly and coolly collected our things as Rev. Asa piled the six of us back into the van, and said, “I know somewhere we might go.” So we went: across the city (or at least it felt that way, since I had no concept of our location) until we arrived at a gate with an armed guard out front. A few moments later we were waved in. I saw a sign in the dim light as we passed that said, “Namirembe Girls’ Hostel”, and soon after that we were standing outside the van, being waved up by Rev. Asa, who had gone up ahead of us to speak with those inside. As I looked around I saw very few outside lights, and no lights coming from any of the windows on that side of the building. We climbed the stairs to the second floor balcony, and were suddenly greeted by a Ugandan man in his pajamas and a bathrobe. This was Patrick.

Later, when people asked what I would have done if I had been somehow separated from my team in the middle of Uganda, I told them, “I kept a $20 American bill on me at all times,” ($1 = 2200 Ugandan Shillings). “I would have waved it at a taxi driver and said, ‘Take me to Namirembe Girls’ Hostel in Kampala.’ I would have found Patrick.”

Tall, lanky, and wearing two sleepy eyes and a large, tired smile, within thirty minutes this man had given us rooms with our own beds, bottled waters, and shown us where the bathrooms and showers were located. Shocked and overwhelmed by the kindness this stranger was extending, we thanked him profusely and made way to our rooms. After a few minutes of chattering, unpacking, and listening to wolves howl in the distant night, we settled into our pajamas and climbed under the mosquito nets into bed.

Early morning fog hanging over the courtyard at Namirembe, just before going down for breakfast.

The next morning we all showered and went downstairs to have breakfast with Patrick, his wife, and the several other adults who lived at the hostel. The table looked set for a king, in my eyes. There was a box of the Ugandan version of cornflakes, room temperature milk, small sweet bananas, sliced-bread and a greasy spread that tried very hard to be butter, boiled eggs, instant coffee mix, and Ugandan tea. As we ate together we listened to Patrick tell us about the hostel. He ran it on behalf of the Church, housing for girls in Kampala while they got an education. His voice was slow and melodic, smoothly carrying across the room. We’d apparently stumbled onto his doorstep during a week break from school, leaving the hostel and all of its rooms empty and available. Our stay, costing us significantly less money than our hotel would have charged us, was money Namirembe greatly needed.

As I sat there taking in everything I could from our first morning in Uganda, I remember thinking, I don’t think I will ever forget this meal. After we finished eating the team all went upstairs to pack our things while Fr. John went with Patrick to pay and thank him for his unparalleled hospitality. Lindsey, Angela and I leaned on the balcony outside our rooms overlooking Namirembe’s center courtyard covered in the morning mist.

“It’s amazing,” I reflected aloud. “I don’t even feel like we’ve gone very far from home.”

“Really?!” they both exclaimed. “No,” Lindsey continued, “I feel very, very far away from home right now,” and we continued to lean over the balcony and take-in our surroundings. By mid-morning we’d said good-bye and gave our final thanks, piled into the car, and began the eight-hour ride to Kasese.

Believe it or not, I told you that story so I could tell you another one. (I promise, it will be shorter than the first.)

The doorway out of Lindsey and Angela's room to the balcony at Namirembe. Photo Cred: Lindsey Thompson

Last week was “Finals Week” here at Duke University. While many of the first-year Master’s students in my department had finished by Wednesday, those of us who had decided to take either Greek or Hebrew were the last to finish, rounding off our finals week with a language exam on Friday. On Thursday evening five of us hijacked an empty classroom in the Divinity School; we translated Greek sentences, memorized vocabulary, recited grammatical rules and the like. I was standing at the chalkboard reproducing verb paradigms as my friend Katherine called them out to me. We began chatting about Christmas while we worked.

“I always feel such a sensation of relief at Christmas time,” I said. “It’s as if every year I get to Christmas, and I suddenly exhale, you know? It’s not because classes are over and I have time off of school–though that’s nice. But this season always reminds me that in the middle of history everything started over. I don’t have to worry about it any more. ‘It is finished.’”

“Yeah,” Katherine replied, “I know what you mean.”

“It’s amazing how much I forget it though,” I was thinking out loud at this point. “It’s strange, I think. That very news which prompted me to become a Christian is the same news I forget most often.” Then a light bulb went on in my head, “I think that’s why I like Eucharist so much,” I continued, standing in front of the chalkboard with a half-completed Greek verb paradigm scribbled in front of me, waving a piece of chalk around as I tried to articulate what I was thinking. “Every week I get to go to a table I have no right to be at and share a meal, reminding me that I’ve been invited in. It’s over. I don’t have to worry.”

We all paused for a moment, and then I embarrassingly said, “Anyway,” and continued writing the paradigm on the board.

I keep thinking about it, though. Every week we get up and go to a table that we are only able to approach because of the unparalleled hospitality of a God who invited us. We are outsiders: foreigners who found ourselves in an awful predicament, and instead of being left out in the dark of the night we were given rest and nourishment–a bed, and breakfast.

Often I joke with my classmates that at the eschaton I am going to hunt down people like Simon Weil and Ignatius of Antioch and ‘high-five ‘em!’ and I certainly do intend on it. But if I never make it back to Uganda in this life time, then upon my death and arrival to the other side, I am going to wave my hands in the air, and flag down the first person I see.

“Take me to Patrick,” I’ll say. I want to have breakfast with him. And I hope the menu has not changed.

-Anna

When my thirst got great enough to ask,
  a clear stream welled up inside,
      some jade wave buoyed me forward,

and I found myself upright
  in the instant, with a garden
     inside my own ribs aflourish.

There, the arbor leafs.
   The vines push out plump grapes.
       You are loved, someone said. Take that

       and eat it.

excerpt, Mary Karr, “Disgraceland”