A Friend

Many a quote has been said about a friend: “A friend is the loving gardener that inspires the soul to blossom,” “Friendship is a blanket that wraps around you on life’s coldest days,” “Friends are a reminder that wishes can come true,” “A friend is someone with whom you can be one-hundred percent yourself.”  And the list goes on and on.

I have one friend in particular who is very special to me.  This friend has been with me through thick and thin, through the good days and the bad, through laughter and tears.  I have had this friend longer than any other.

This friend’s name is Townsend.

He is a cat.

A stuffed animal cat, to be precise.

And he is one of my best friends in the world.

One day when I was 7, my family went on one of our many adventures to Port Townsend.  We strolled through the shops, as we still do to this day.  In one shop, I found a stuffed animal calico cat, and I fell in love.  “Please, can I get it mom and dad?  Please?”

They were more than hesitant.  “You already have so many stuffed animals.”

“But this one is different,” I claimed.  “I will sleep with him every night!  I promise!”

I left the store without the cat. 

Now, I am slightly ashamed of the next part of this story, but the truth must be told.  I was quite upset that I could not get this most precious of stuffed animals, so I proceeded to sulk.  We continued to walk through town, but I would not look at my parents, much less speak to them.  How dare they deprive me like this! 

While it probably shouldn’t have, my sulking and terrible attitude worked.  We returned to the store, and the stuffed animal cat was purchased.  On the way home, I named him Townsend.

We have been best friends ever since, and much to my parents surprise, I kept true to my promise to sleep with Townsend every single night.

We have been through a lot, Townsend and I.  Due to a rather dramatic experience involving a rainy, middle-of-the-night road trip, carsickness, and popcorn thrown out the window, Townsend once endured a trip through the washing machine.  He hasn’t been quite the same ever since.  He has been on many trips to South Dakota and back again, traveling in the Rocket Box above the van.  He has been to Indiana, Iowa, Wyoming, Montana, and California as well.  Quite the world traveler, he is.

Townsend came with me to college and continued to sleep with me every night.  He was there on the night I started dating, and he was there the night I hardly slept a wink after getting engaged.  He was there the night before my wedding.  But sadly, that is where our journey changed.

Townsend and I on the day our friendship began.

Now, I love being married, but I didn’t think Graham would be too pleased to be sharing a bed with Townsend, so Townsend instead was given a prominent position in the closet, where I could still see him every day.  Whenever Graham is gone for a night or two, out comes Townsend to keep me company like he always did.

You may laugh at this silly story, but Townsend has gotten me here today.  His fur may be matted, his whiskers permanently pressed up against his face, but I will love him forever.

My very best friend.      

Farm Girl Wannabe

Kim and I on a tractor.

Yesterday, my friend Kim and I had the privilege of touring the Knutson farm in Centerville, SD.  We wore hats, took pictures in tractors, climbed grain bins, and drove without seatbelts down a gravel road.  All in all, a wonderful – yet brief – glimpse at country living.

For me, this quickly brought back memories of growing up in Lynden, a small town in Northwest Washington full of Romeo-wearing farmers.

When I was younger, my dad owned a dairy farm with three of his brothers – The DeWaard Dairy.  In all honesty, I was never much of a farm girl.  I own a pair of Romeos and Ariat boots, as well as a cowboy hat, not that this counts for much.  But I do have a few farming memories that will always hold a special place in my heart.

Chopping corn

When I was even younger than I can remember, I began riding with my dad in his silage truck while he and my Uncle Terry were chopping grass or corn.  We called this “filling silo,” despite the fact that they were filling up a bunker, not a silo, but the name was passed down from years gone by when they really did fill up a silo. 

L to R: Renae, Allison, Erica,
and Dad in the truck.

His first truck had a long bench seat, so sometimes my sisters and I would all ride at once.  But other times it was just the two of us.  While I do not remember the origins of this tradition, I would always tell my Uncle Terry jokes/riddles over the CB radio, and he would tell me more in return.  Sometimes when we drove up beside his tractor after a trip to the bunker, my Uncle Terry would pretend to be sleeping, to which I would readily respond, “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty!” over the CB.

Many days I would ride for hours upon hours, but on one occasion in particular, this led to a unique situation.  I was riding with my dad after kindergarten one day because my mom was at work.  Being young, I had to go to the bathroom and couldn't hold it for much longer.  While there is a bathroom at the farm, I have never seen it, as I was strictly forbidden: I was a girl, and it was simply too dirty for my innocent eyes to see. 

This created quite the predicament.

My dad came up with the quickest solution he could:  I would simply have to sit on one of the tires outside the bunker and pee while he kept me from falling in.  Sometimes I wish I had somehow blocked this memory out of my mind, but it is still there, prominent as ever.  At least it makes quite the story.

Years later, my dad had to get a new silage truck, but this one only contained a seat for the driver and one passenger.  However, I still got to spend plenty of quality time with my dad, drinking lots of green Gatorade and eating Pringles.

Once or twice I got to ride on a tractor with my dad in early spring when he was discing, but somehow that did not hold quite the same glamour as filling silo: it was a bumpy ride on a very small seat and after several hours, one’s backside began to be in rather a lot of pain.

Two sleds connected, about to go
down.

My husband tends to laugh at me for this next memory, but it is as special as any other.  On the rare occasion when we actually received enough snow to cover all the grass and go sledding, my sisters and I headed to the farm.  We walked behind the barn and beside the woods until we came to the back of the manure pit – the absolute perfect place for sledding!  Now, just so everyone understands, we did not sled into the manure pit; we slid down the outside of the pit and out into the field.  We slid down, walked up, slid down, and walked up until my dad was ready to go home after finishing his farm chores.

This is not our field, but these are
similar to our sprinklers.

My last memory took place for several summers when I was in high school.  It was my dad’s job to move all of the irrigation pipes every morning and evening, and I often went along to help.  I would start at the top of the field and go down the line unhooking all of the pipes.  On my way back up, I would lift up one end of the pipe to drain out the water, thus making it easier to carry.  In the meantime, my dad began at the top of the field carrying the pipes to their new destination a little ways down the line.  We met in the middle, and I began helping him carry the pipes.  We stuck the plug in the end, walked back up the field, and turned the water back on, quickly glancing to make sure all the sprinklers were working properly before moving on to the second field.

Sometimes this moving of pipes resulted in some strange behavior, mostly on my end.  The fields were next to a fairly busy road; and I found great pleasure in lying down on my back in the deep grass, sticking my boot-clad feet high in the air and “waving” at the people driving by.  Don’t knock it until you try it: it is quite a hoot. 

P.S. “Did you know that sunsets look much prettier from upside down?”

I miss being a “farm girl,” at least as much of one as I ever was.  I suppose I never had to do any of the hard and dirty work, which may be why I have such an idealistic picture of the whole thing. 

But I would give anything to wake up at dawn and haul those sopping wet pipes across a field or fill silo with my dad just one more time…

In Mourning

It is funny how attached one can become to fictional characters. Whether they be characters from novels or movies, TV shows or the like, they can attach themselves to our hearts before we even realize what has happened.

I have always been an emotional person, and it is not an unusual sight to see me with my nose deep in a book and tears streaming down my face.

However, this time it was different. This time, I felt a deeper sense of loss than I have ever felt before towards a fictional character.

It all started last winter: I was doing my student teaching near Seattle, and I stayed with a wonderful couple who introduced me to a show called Downton Abbey. It soon became one of my favorite parts of every week, and we never missed an episode. I thrived on the drama and marveled at the details of the time period.

My favorite character quickly became Lady Mary Crawley, despite the fact that some found her cold and insensitive. I loved her strength, her beauty, her wit. I wanted her to find true love despite the odds, and I knew this love was with Matthew the second he walked onto the screen. I watched her fall in love, and I watched him fall in love. But the timing was all off.

I was the one who hoped Lavinia would die – as awful as it sounds – so that Matthew and Mary would have the chance to be together.

And finally in Season 3, my hopes and dreams came true. When Lady Mary walked down the stairs in her wedding dress, the tears in my eyes began to flow once again. I pictured myself as Lady Mary, and remembered walking down the aisle towards my own husband.

After many struggles, Matthew and Mary were finally expecting a baby, and in the season finale, Mary gave birth to a baby boy; I could not help but imagine having my own children some day, and this time, I cried out of joy.

However, minutes after seeing his son for the first time, Matthew was killed in a car accident. My heart was broken. I sat there silently, unable to hold back the tears as my husband told me everything was going to be okay. Even now, days later, my heart aches as I mourn the loss of Matthew Crawley.

I do not know what it is that made me quite so attached: usually a few tears later, I am back to normal, but this time, it is different. Maybe it is because I wanted this relationship for so long, and now, it is over. Maybe it is because I imagined myself as Lady Mary, and now, her husband is gone.

I know I must stop this nonsensical sense of mourning because this is not real life. It can be dangerous to intertwine fictional characters with real-life emotions.

But Matthew, you will be missed and remembered for years to come.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/watch-online/shorts/downton-abbey-matthew-mary/

The Other September 11

Everyone has a 9/11 story. Everyone remembers what they were doing, where they were standing, what they were thinking when those two planes crashed into the Twin Towers. It is nothing new.

I am not trying to downplay the significance of this event and all of the aftermath, but September 11, 2001 is much more than the atrocities caused by terrorists. September 11 is also a day of miracles.

On that same cold September morning all those years ago, a baby girl was left on the orphanage steps in Ruijin, China. She was found by orphanage workers on their way to work and quickly brought inside. Her birth date was estimated to be nine days earlier on September 2. Small as she was, she was too weak to suck on a bottle or cry out for help. If not for those orphanage workers who diligently looked after her, she would not be alive today; they nourished her back to health and placed her in a temporary foster family. The little girl's name was Jin Rui Wen, but her foster mother called her Wen-Wen.

China has a strict one-child policy: one family means one child. Few exceptions apply. While ideals have slowly been changing, many families want to have a son to carry on the family name and to care for them when they become elderly. If a family's first child is a girl, they will often try to have a second child in the hopes of having a son. The desire for sons leaves the daughters with no where to go, and orphanages are filled with the forgotten.

The reason Jin Rui Wen was left at the orphanage gates is unknown. Her birth family will never be discovered. Her life that never was is lost.

But God had a plan for this little girl, as He always does, and on September 11, my family's life was changed. We simply did not know it yet.

In the fall of 2000, my dad felt God telling him he had a daughter in China. My mom initially thought he was crazy, but she soon came to realize that my dad was right: they had a daughter waiting for them halfway across the world. While we had never met her, we knew she was ours, and we knew her name was Anna.

My parents filled out mountainous amounts of paperwork, received visits by social workers, and had their backgrounds checked; and once all of this was done, there was only one thing left to do: wait. We waited until we felt we could hardly wait any longer, but one day in April 2002, we received The Call.

Bethany Christian Services – our adoption agency – called to tell us which little girl we would be adopting. Soon after the call, we received our referral, a document containing details of the child and a picture. Jin Rui Wen was the most beautiful girl we had ever seen. We quickly asserted her picture was taken in the winter: she was bundled up in so many layers that her arms stuck straight out at her sides. She also had fruit between her legs to hide her split pants, as children in China do not often wear diapers. We made copies of her picture, and my sisters and I each took a picture to school to show to our classmates who had been anxiously awaiting this day as well.

My parents were scheduled to fly to China on June 20, and they quickly began packing. They knew it would be hot while they were there, so they packed lightweight clothes, placing everything in air tight bags to maximize their luggage space. Their departure date arrived, and my sisters and I were left in the care of a friend from church.

After some sightseeing and tourist activities, my parents waited in Nanchang for Anna to be placed in their arms on June 24. They heard people coming down the hotel hallway, and they heard a baby crying. Everyone waiting for their child hopes theirs is not the one crying hysterically, but my parents heard a knock. The crying had stopped outside of their door.

They were handed a baby girl whose eyes were flowing with tears. She had traveled all day in a bus during the heat of summer. She was tired and hot and had never seen a white-skinned person in her life. She may have only been 10 months old, but she was terrified.

My parents quickly tried to soothe her with some milk, but the bottle they had brought from home was leaking everywhere. After a quick trip down to the hotel gift shop, the milk was transferred into a Chinese bottle, but what they did not know is that Chinese bottles do not work the same way as American bottles. Rather than lying the baby down and tilting up the bottle, the baby is supposed to sit up: the bottle has a weighted straw that sucks up the milk. However, Anna drank her milk and quickly fell asleep.

When she woke up in the morning and saw my parents looking down at her, Anna immediately began to cry again. “Why are these strange people still here?” she must have been thinking.

However, Anna quickly adjusted. She laughed and giggled and showed off her beautiful toothless grin. She was slightly malnourished, which was evident in her appearance; she should have already had some teeth, her hair was very course, and she had extremely thin arms and legs. However, this did not affect her attitude. She was very well behaved throughout the rest of the trip, being carted between government buildings to fill out the never-ending paperwork. Soon, she was on a flight with my parents back to her new home in America.

On July 3, my two younger sisters and I waited anxiously for the arrival of our new sister. We had already “drawn straws” to see who got to hold her first and who got to sit by her on the ride home; we had not come up with a third special duty, so it was decided that person would get a can of pop. I was chosen to hold her first, Renae got to sit by her on the ride home, and Erica received the consolation prize of a can of pop.

We watched down the escalator, waiting for any sign of our parents. I began to cry, and to this day, I am not entirely sure why. I know I was excited: I had waited so long for my new sister, but I simply could not control all of my emotions. I suddenly spotted my dad's feet, which are not hard to find in size 15 sandals. My parents came into view, and in my dad's arms was Anna.

I held her in my arms and tears rolled down my cheeks. This was the sister I had waited for so long. This was the sister I had loved before I even knew her name. This was Anna Rui Wen DeWaard.

Being the oldest, I was the designated babysitter, and I quickly became a second mother to Anna. I got her dressed, did her hair, and changed many diapers. I grew closer to Anna than I was with either of my other sisters, despite the fact that we were eleven years apart in age. I could tell story after story about watching Anna grow up – stories of laughter when she fell in love with her first meal of mashed potatoes, stories of frustration when I had to put her in timeout, stories of pride when she took her first steps. But there are simply too many stories to tell.

We did not know what talents Anna would have when we received her. Would she be as nonathletic as my sisters and I? Would she be shy? Would she love to read as much as the rest of us? As she grew older, we watched her develop into the 5^th grader she is today. She devours books by the dozen, she remembers every interesting fact she has ever learned, and she is a talented artist.

When I got married this past summer, Anna had a difficult time. After all, she was one of my best friends: I had spent most of her life by her side, and now, I was leaving her and moving far away. Anna bravely stood at the front of the church as one of my bridesmaids, but after the ceremony, we both fell to pieces. I have cherished every moment I have ever spent with her, and each visit home is special. She will always be my little girl too.

September 11 will never be forgotten by anyone, but my reasons for remembering are different than most. Without the events of that morning outside the orphanage, Anna would never have come home.

Because of September 11, Anna is forever sister.  

World Traveler

The stamps in my passport are few and far between – although much closer to few than far between – but this does not mean I am not an experienced traveler.  On the contrary: I have traveled this world and the world of years past.

I read.  And books can take you to worlds you would never otherwise visit.

I have another home on the island of Guernsey (England), complete with dear old friends I have shared the laughter and tears of life with and battled the aftermath of WWII.  They even invited me into their elusive Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – an honor not held by many.

I have been to the east coast many times, chasing after love, or rather, following the love of others with Nicholas Sparks.  I have been to Cape Hatteras lighthouse, and I have watched the swan in the pond with Noah.

I have spent several years in Skary, Indiana, befriending Boo and hoping Ainsley does not actually become the next Martha Stewart.  But thank goodness they caught the two-headed snake, or I would not have been able to sleep a wink.

I have been to Australia with Jay and Allie.  Unfortunately, I was not able to fix their broken-down vehicle in the desert, but an airplane did swing by to help before Allie had to drink water out of a frog after failing to catch a kangaroo.

I have visited the Wild West, and I must admit I fell in love with Brady Stoner, a gravy-loving cowboy.  Sadly, he met a perfume-loving book editor, so I did not stand a chance.

I have been to Africa with the lovely Katie Davis, where she followed God’s command to care for the orphans and widows.  I watched as she took in lost children as her own; I giggled with her little girls and cringed at the hardships they had to endure.

Currently, I have been spending some time in New York with Almanzo Wilder, who will someday meet Laura, whom I spent some time with in the Big Woods.  I have also been sporadically spending time in China with the Arrington family: they moved to China to immerse themselves in another culture, teaching English while learning Chinese.

Who knows where the next book will lead…