Correlation.

I just finished writing about going to the dentist. I had been looking forward to writing this chapter because there a complete story there -- an area of exposition, rising action, a climax, and final resolution. I miss that. Sometimes I struggle with this whole writing-a-book thing because the plot line is so stretched out it gets hard for me to see where I am at on it. But this chapter, oh, this one has a plot. And I just couldn't wait to get it written down.

And then, when it comes time to write it, I stall out. No gas. Nada, zilch, nothing.

Why? Why does that happen?!

Well, tonight I figured out why, at least for this particular chapter.

I have discovered that the mode I am in with writing, the emotion I put into it, the feelings I feel as I do it, ALL OF THIS, directly correlates with the emotions I am writing about. Which is why, for instance, when I wrote the story about my cars I typed away quickly, excitedly, with a huge smile on my face and tears in my eyes. I was writing about joy, so I was experiencing joy. Or when I was writing earlier in this project about bumming around on a lazy Saturday afternoon I wrote slowly and calmly, as if I had no care in the world.

This chapter, being about going to the dentist with 31 children, fighting them as they needed to have teeth extracted, dealing with parents who could care less that their child was in need of them to comfort them in a time of pain and anxiety, well... this chapter was about a day of incredibly high stress. As I sat there, typing the words that recounted these events, that stress came back. My speed increased and so did my errors. My heart rate jumped up as well. Those feelings that were long forgotten with this tale -- because we all know when I tell the story out loud it is one of humor and bravery -- returned along the words on the page.

But I finished it. Finally. And now I am off to enjoy a hot shower to de-stress.

Go.

Working on this project has been a blessing, a struggle, an all consuming endeavor. It has opened my eyes to the fact that, yes, despite what I thought, I grew a lot while in Ebeye. (Maybe it just wasn't as obvious as in Palau.) Some days I sit here writing and think, Gee, I am so happy in my life today. I am so grateful to have a job that reaches people while I have the comforts of home. But other days I read the words on the computer screen in front of me and I think, When can this be my reality again? Or even more, Will this ever get to be my reality again? And sometimes, to be honest, I question, Do I want this to be my reality again?

I want to GO. I don't know where, could be Brazil or Latvia or San Jose, CA. But I want to go where God gives me the opportunity. I don't want to let my deep appreciation for creature-comforts or fear of the unknown prevent me from having the life He has put the desire in me to have. I also don't want the opposite to be true -- to feel that I need to "out there" to be where I can struggle, stretch, thrive and grow. Let me repeat, I want to go where God gives me the opportunity. Today, He says, "Right here, Tiffany." And so, right here it will be. I will cherish this place and this time.

But a piece of me hopes that someday He says, "Pack up your stuff and get ready to buy some plane tickets, because I have other plans for you..."

Belong.

(photo curtesy weheartit.com)

Writing is my time machine, takes me to the precise time and
place I belong. ~Jeb Dickerson

Inspiration: Valuum, a Bloody Tooth, and a Mommy Tattoo on My Forehead

"I was talking to one of my friends online a couple of weeks ago, saying how all these little kids are always holding onto my hands or my skirt, and as I was saying that a random little guy crawled into my lap and just stared at me. And my friend and I agreed, I must have MOMMY tattooed on my forehead. No joke, these little kids run to me like I am a lolly pop or something. But I feel like Mommy even more to my students. When you are in the islands (and I am sure with many other places) you are not just the teacher. You are the one to fix ripped clothes or sew on buttons or whatever. But let me tell you, teaching Ebeye makes me even more of a mom to my kids than other places would. Things that parents would do in other places, well, the responsibility falls on me. Like going to the dentist...

I have spent the last two days taking 31 kids to see the mission dentists that came here. Any of you who are parents, you think you have gone through your share of calming down kids in your time, but I think I have you beat. I had 31 checkups yesterday, 24 of which needed either fillings or extractions, about half of which I needed to be present to hold hands and hold heads in place as kids struggled to get free of the impending doom upon them. After 3 hours at the dentist yesterday, I got the list of kids who needed to come back today, and well, let's just say I have spent the greater part of my day keeping my kids calm and holding crying kids, getting prescriptions for Valuum (yes...), and I had a bloody tooth fly at my face... Watching the kids you love scream and fight, but having to hold them down, oh, I don't like it very much. But knowing that I can be there to hold their hands when they are in pain, and that they want ME to hold their hands, well, I can't say no to that. It is hard, but it is a job I am willing to take on :)"

Written exactly four years ago from today. Sometimes I can't help but stop and think about how incredibly different life can be for the same person, on the same calendar day, if you just add a few years in between. At times I am grateful for the fact that I am sitting on a cushy couch with a laptop on my lap, but other times, I find myself missing the challenges of life there, bloody teeth and all.

Rain.

A few months ago my friend Melanee asked me to do a rainy day photoshoot with her. We waited until the perfect rainy weekend and then made plans.


But we woke up to sunshine! Where did all the rain go?



Oh well, we had fun taking pictures anyway. It was already scheduled in, so why not? :)






This is definitely the top of the top for me. All of these pictures --> A+ !!!

Halfway.

I just completed my 14th chapter, out of 28 I have outlined. That means I am halfway there.

Oh yeah!!!

Original.

Here, for your reading pleasure, is the original story I submitted to Guideposts. It is a tad bit different, but the message is the same. (I did not actually write it to be published, I wrote it originally to be shared with my family and closest friends, so you will see the format/voice is quite different than normal.)

Yeah, that’s right. That hot new metallic grey car in the garage is mine. Mine and Paulo’s. Spoiler and all.

“You sure are trading up!” the sales rep exclaimed. “This beats the Yaris any day.”

“Don’t knock the Yaris,” I told him. “I loved that car. I am sad to see it go.” And it was true. With its Barcelona Red color and an interest rate through the roof, that little 4-door sedan had treated me well. It didn’t matter that it had no real power behind it, it had all I needed. Four durable wheels, a reliable engine, and a stereo system. And it was mine. Two summers ago, I proudly walked into that Toyota dealership with nothing but almost non-existent credit and walked out with a pink slip in my hand and a big debt to pay. But I didn’t care. I was the first person in my family to buy a brand new car -- the first.

“Oh,” she said as soon as she got in my car and saw the push button locks and the hand crank to roll up the window, “so really it is an old car that looks like a new car!” Teenagers these days, they have no understanding of reality. Sheesh.

“No Amaris, it really is a new car. It just doesn’t have power locks or windows, but not all cars have those.” She just nodded her head, but I could see she wasn’t sure if she really believed me or not. Whatever. Like I said, it was my car, my new-right-off-the lot car. “Actually,” I continued proudly, “it was the showroom car. And besides, this may not seem like a lot to you, but compared to my last car...”

Ah, my last car. A ‘96 Chevy Corsica. I bought Blue Steel three years before the Yaris, and it was a thing of beauty. Who cared that it had nine years on it? With only 56,000 miles the thing was practically brand new. And what a steal! A friend’s dad, figuring his daughter needed something a little more, you know, modern, offered me this car for $1,500. That may not seem like a lot, but when you are college student working part time for any possible extra cash it might as well be fifteen thousand, not fifteen hundred.

And then the phone rang.

“Tiffany, this is the finance office calling about your tuition.” Ugh. This was never on my Top 10 List of Phone Calls I Hoped to Receive. Ok, here it goes... “... and they were saying that we need to give you the money in cash for you to use for travel expenses and things like that.” What? Could you repeat that please?

Sure enough, I had received a special grant for kids like me -- those that were trying to better their lives by obtaining an education instead of following in the path their parents had walked down, the path that lead to bad luck and welfare; kids that were once deemed “a ward of the court” and lived their lives in the foster care system. And, get this, I was receiving $1,500, in cash, to help with “travel expenses”. Their words, not mine.

I drove that Chevy Corsica proudly until the day she died. And then I parked her on the street waiting until I could either come up with the cash to fix her or sell her to somebody who was looking for cheap parts. Hopefully I could get enough money out her to make at least a small down payment on my next car, small. Like, let’s say $800 to $1,000? Yeah, that would be nice. So there she was, living out her last days parked on Bing Street, when I received the other phone call.

“I have bad news,” my roommate told me. “Someone backed into your car, and it is smashed! I can’t even open the door to get in. I have the guy’s insurance information for you. He left it in a note on the windshield...”

Very long and tedious story short, his insurance not only gave me a rental car for a week, but appraised my very dead car at about double what I payed for it, despite the fact we found out the odometer had been rolled back 30,000 miles some years before. When I went to the auto body shop to grab my things out of the trunk and say goodbye to Blue Steel one last time, the mechanic glanced over at my car, now 12-years-old and with an actual 126,000 miles on it.

“Oh man, I bet you are glad to see that thing go.”

Looking up at him, I slowly shook my head. “No. This car was a huge step up from my last car.” But honestly, anything would have been a huge step up from an ‘88Dodge Colt Hatchback. In fact, I don’t know if you could take a step-down from it. But still, that Colt, in all of its rusty-top-and-cracked-vinyl-seating glory, took me places -- 30,000 miles worth. Somebody had dropped it off at the drug-rehab home for women and children where my mother was first a patient, later a worker. For only $500, paid in cash to the manager of the rehabilitation home, after a summer of hard work as a camp counselor when I was still a young thing of 19, that car was not only my car, it was my first car. And with the kind of love you can have for only a first car, I drove thing around town with pride.

Well, not at first. First I needed to learn to drive it. Stick-shift, you know. They didn’t give me any practice with that in Driver’s Ed.

My mom and I went out to an alley way near her house one afternoon and she gracefully showed the art of driving a manual. And then it was my turn, which was neither graceful nor art. Mom, still chipper, hopped back in the driver’s seat and showed me, slowly and clearly, once more. Clutch, gas, let-off-clutch, go. Giving a smile and a nod that I had it, we once again switched spots Clutch, gas, let-off-clutch, stall. In only took a few more tries before she threw her hands up in the air and said, “Here’s what we’ll do. You’ll take my car back to college and I will keep Petey the Put-Put Mobile.”

And that’s what we did. For a few months, until my mother was completely sure I was not going to stall out on the freeway and kill myself, we swapped cars. Finally, when I think she could handle life without air-conditioning no longer, she drove herself up and we gave the cars back to their rightful owners. Later that day, when I stalled out at a red light and couldn’t get the darn thing to go, I called my mom in tears, begging her to help me. “Honey, you are 200 miles away. What do you expect me to do? You’ll figure something out.” That was it. Sink or swim. It took some struggle, and a few more tears, but swim -- er, drive -- I did. In my car, my very own car.

Now we have a new car down there -- our very own new car. With all its shininess and nifty little exterior doo-hickeys, it looks like a million bucks. And unlike the Yaris, this one does not come with an interest rate that would make you drop dead if I told you. No, this time we were “well-qualified buyers”. What a difference that makes! This time we didn’t have to beg for a loan and take the simplest car on the lot. No, this time around we had options. As Paulo and I have said at least 100 times since we signed the paper yesterday, “Praise God!”

Yes, praise Him for our new car!

And praise Him for the red Yaris!

And praise Him for the ‘96 Corsica.

And praise Him for the ‘88 Dodge Colt Hatchback and for its red Hawaiian print
seat covers!

Praise Him! For through these cars He has shown me that He does have plans for me.

Plans for me to have what I need, when I need it.

Plans for me to move up from where I have been in life.

Plans for me to be able to say, “Yes, I know He cares for me. If you don’t believe me, let me tell you about my cars...”