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Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri

Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary

Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net

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Recent Posts

• Try
• Becoming Brenda Starr
• Off Beat
• Scattered
• That’s It
• So I’ve Finally Signed With An Agent. Now What?
• The Spoon
• Sciatica
• Sweetheart
• A Woman’s Train of Thought Has No Caboose
• However much we own, we are all still living on borrowed time
• After all, when restaurants shrink portions, they don’t shrink prices.
• As with everything in life, balance is key.
• Slow down, you move too fast…
• Yeah, I know. I have issues.

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E me at katy @ ngenius.com

Where Are They Now? (#455)

Sister Ursula Marie was a trip in 1968, tottering on the brink of senility, if she hadn't stumbled off the edge altogether. She made life at the all girls' academy for young Christian women worth waking up for.

When I was a freshman in high school, my schedule was mercifully the same every day. I traveled from one classroom to the next, in the same order Monday through Friday. There was no need to carry a printed schedule to verify what "day" you were on. A girl could manage it in her sleep if she had to.

But that was before modular scheduling was introduced to our fair campus, and just before the nightmares kicked in.

In my horrible dreams, which recur to this day, I am perpetually lost. My schedule has disappeared, and there is no time to stand in line in the school office to request another. I am late for class, floundering around campus, scanning the crowd for bodies that look familiar, ones who seem to be slouching toward whatever class my subconscious has me down for at 2 pm on Wednesday.

"What do you have now?" I call out to a fellow student. If she calls back, "English!", and I know she's in my English class, I'll follow her anywhere.

Most nights, this works out OK. Most nights, Sister Ursula arrives to class later than I do, visibly scattered and much more confused. Most nights, I breathe a snore of relief.

Last night was different.

Last night, Ursula appeared to me in a fifties-style sundress, hose and heels, her hair fresh from pincurls, and Cherry Blossom lipstick. She'd lost her stutter, and had a small daughter in tow. It was Take Your Daughter to Work Day.

Dream by dream, Sister Ursula Marie gets younger and whippier, more eloquent and stylish. And I become more insecure in the presence of one who used to make me feel, by default, like all that.

If I could have stopped this dream cycle after one or two episodes, believe me, I would have. But now it's gone on for thirty-five long years, and evidently come full circle.

Sister Ursula's in the splashy sundress, and I've got one more bad habit.

---

Church Hopping (#456)

I just purchased Memoir of a Misfit: Finding My Place in the Family of God, by Marcia Ford.

On the way home from Barnes and Noble, Doug asked what it's about.

"It's about a woman's struggle to hang on to God, even though she's never quite felt she fits in anywhere."

"What do you mean, she doesn't fit in?" Doug is not thrilled with this topic, I know, since he fits in well wherever he finds himself, blooms where he's planted, and well...you get the idea.

Is it my fault he chose to marry a misfit?

"She was raised a Baptist, became a Charismatic, and now attends a liturgical church."

He bristled slightly at the word "liturgical," and since I enjoy it when he bristles, I went on.

"Liturgical's not against the rules, you know," I teased. "Liturgical's OK..."

"Oh, liturgical's OK," he agreed smoothly, his voice losing all its apprehension. "Just not lethargical."

I'd follow him anywhere.

---

Obstacle (#457)

Doug is designing a website for my lovely author friend, who's published eight or nine books, and has several more in the pipeline. I only envy her a little, really.

"I should have books, shouldn't I?" I wistfully ask him, as I watch him work in Photoshop.

"Mm-hmmm..." he says, as supportive as ever.

"Instead, I have a big butt."

No wonder he's speechless.

---

You Are Where You Shop (#458)

"I love your skirt," said the lady in line next to me at Starbucks. "Where did you get it?"

You've got to know that "my" Starbucks is mere minutes away from the ritziest shopping district in Johnson County, Kansas.

"Walmart," I answered, with a friendly smile.

"Oh....well....I tried on one just like it at Talbot's, but it didn't fit right...."

"Mine fits right," I said.

"Ummm...I kind of like Target," she said, backing away.

Was it something I said?

---

In Hot Water (#459)

Ever since we finally got a satellite dish a couple of weeks ago, I've been glued to the Fox News Network, which I philosophically prefer for its "fair and balanced reporting." You know the saying: "We report; you decide."

Sure, we do.

For hours each day, it's nothing but "Baath Party" this and "Baath Party" that.

The only thing we've decided is to put in a hot tub.

---

First Light (#460)

"Did you sleep at all?"

"I took a pill," she said. "But I've been awake a long time."

I cried with her very late last night, and again too early this morning. In between, we each lay awake in different cities, in our own beds, with our own husbands, staring at ceilings with eyes wide open, counting the fan blades as they spun darkness into day.

"It must be a hideous mistake," she said.

Her dear friend's son has killed himself.

"All night, as I lay there, I checked their eyes," I said. "I must have examined the eyes of everyone I know--my kids, my husband, my family, even you--looking for, you know..."

"I know."

Looking for the Light.

---

Warm and Warmer (#461)

I'm in the middle (I can only presume) of a headache from hell. This is Day Five, I think, but who knows, really? All the days and nights become one big light-sensitive, vision-impaired, pain-down-to-my-teeth blur.

Last fall, I found out through a spinal tap that I test borderline for a bizarre condition called "pseudotumor cerebri." I test borderline for lots of bizarre stuff, so that information by itself wouldn't alarm me.

But the headaches do.

For two days, I've been freezing, and can't get warm no matter what I try. I don't have a fever. It's more like I'm recoiling from the extreme pain by shriveling up into a golfball-sized hailstone.

I finally gave up my usually high spirits around one in the afternoon, and told Doug I was going to put on my softest cotton knit pajamas and call it a very long day.

I was already inwardly berating myself for getting so little done, for writing almost nothing at all, for letting this thing get the best of me.

Why did I imagine he was doing the same?

"Not yet," he said, taking the pajamas from my hands.

The next thing I knew, he had popped my pj's into the dryer.

"Let me get them nice and warmed up for you."

All the days and nights become a blur, but the gentle kindness of a good man restores clarity to my heart.

---

Smells Fishy to Me (#462)

God asked Jonah to do a very simple thing, really.

Just deliver a word of the Lord to Jonah's enemy, the great city of Nineveh. Tell them they'll be destroyed unless they repent. The destruction part Jonah was cool with. But the deal was, God couldn't be trusted. He was the Type who just might pour out his unfailing compassion on a whole nation, even if it made Jonah look like a fool.

What a Guy.

Four short chapters and three whole days in a whale later, if he had learned anything at all, Jonah would have had more compassion for the people God had mercy on than for the crummy little tree that withered up and died.

When his source of shade disappeared, so did his new-found heart of praise.

No wonder some people spend their entire lives lifting praises in the midst of fish guts.

---

Change (#463)

The year draws to a dreary end. It's late November by the day's look and feel. At any moment, the bitter rain will give way to an early snow, and the harvest moon to a cold winter's sun.

We speed down the road, you and I, and lose sight of where we are and when we live. We move through time without a pendulum, barely catching the flickering whispers whirring by through the glass, darkly.

It is Autumn, isn't it?

Before our eyes, gowns of gossamer green are pulled over outstretched brown limbs, covering their spindly nakedness. The undressed seem more embarassed by it than they were even yesterday, and furtively scan the ground for spare fig leaves.

A few old rusted leaves mourn in the afternoon gray, ashamed to have overstayed their visit until Spring, but too set in their ways to fall gracefully now.

It is not Autumn, though our very bones are chilled. It is Spring.

The past still hangs heavy in the air, and yet what's to come is already upon us.

---

Unemployment Line Grows (#464)

Poor Peter Arnett.

All ties have been severed between him, NBC, MSNBC and National Geographic, the news agencies he reported to from Baghdad. He is suddenly, perhaps irretrievably, unemployed. Even the Iraqi state news agency to which he granted an interview has failed to offer him a position.

He himself said in a conversation with Matt Lauer this morning that an uninhabited island might be just the place for him.

Don't be so hard on yourself, Peter. Something will turn up. Have you thought about managing the Dixie Chicks?

---

Until Then (#465)

I hear the news as I'm driving down an oak-lined avenue in town. A Kansas City soldier, husband and father of three, is among the latest POWs.

My eyes scan the historic homes and the elegant trees overhanging the streets, and I wonder when the yellow ribbons will appear.

And then I spot the most majestic oak, encircled at its base with a wreath of newly sprung daffodils.

And I have to ask: Were they there yesterday?

---

Bull’s Eye (#466)

"Is Dad OK?" Carrie asked, concerned.

She had just treated us to a homemade batch of her own Red Lobster-style cheesy garlic biscuits. Our mouths were still watering when she told us she planned to bake them again for her college choir, which consists of large numbers of marriageable men.

Doug had turned pensive, and had expressed privately to me that vast numbers of unscreened carb-lovers might soon be vying for her hand.

"What do you mean?" I asked her, though I was pretty sure I knew the answer. "What did Dad say?"

"He said I need to target my biscuits."

All right, then.

---

Sound Bite (#467)

"They weren't very accurate," reports a U.S. soldier, whose division had just come under attack by enemy forces. "But they were really close."

I never know what's going to give me the chills.

---

Just Breathe (#468)

I'm sitting in a velvet chair at Starbucks, reading The Call by Os Guinness, one apt phrase at a time, slowly.

For the first time in several days, I begin to relax, just a little at first, then almost completely. My shoulders drop from their recent highs to what might be near their all-time lows. I hear myself say, "Oh…" a couple of times in response to something I read, and then all falls silent.

I stop registering the background music, cease picking up on the animated chatter of the other patrons.

One short phrase, a rest, then another phrase, and another rest. Soon, more resting than phrases. Time passes, and perhaps a bit of eternity with it.

Then I jolt at the sight of my own chest rising and falling with mortal, rhythmic, even breaths, as if I hadn't, for a flickering second, been somewhere else, where oxygen is overrated.

Every once in a great while, a temporal moment becomes so much like an eternal one, mere breath seems unnecessary, even impossible.

Still, I gasp and fill my lungs with it, certain it must be the breath of heaven.

---

The Crumb (#469)

OK, here's the deal.

My husband's idea of a perfect snack is toast. Of course, he also eats toast for breakfast. And lunch and dinner are not without their toasted components, either.

His is a toast-intensive regime and, more often than not, it is I, who eat no toast, who clean up all the crumbs.

I'm not ready to demand a regime change. But I am emboldened enough to declare that this man should be stopped from committing his flagrant crumbs against humanity.

---

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