When What We Find Surprises Us (Smell the Roses)

Sometimes moments surprise us. Sometimes we are sitting in our apartments, our feet up on the chair across from ours, eating our brown sugar and cinnamon pop tarts, and we realize: God is good.

Sometimes a friend takes us out to Starbucks and looks at us with real comprehension, their eyes locked into ours and a look of love on their face, and we see ourselves as they see us: beautiful.

Sometimes it's late at night and you're curled in your scrubs (the ones you bought at the Salvation Army Store on sale because they are so comfortable) writing in your journal and trying to draw your own hand holding a pen, and it hits you that life, in its mess, in its chaos, in its... unpredictability, is just that: life.

We find ourselves in surprising moments much of the time. I am asking every day as my time in DC winds rapidly to a close, "Why am I here? How did I get here? Where am I going next?" I never know quite how to handle the surprise of these closing weeks. It seems just yesterday that I was finally, FINALLY feeling at home on the bus and amid the fruit stalls and the Asian pears of Eastern Market, able to know where to meet someone if they said 12th and T St, NW, able to walk from 16th and L to 14th and V to meet a friend for dinner at Busboys & Poets, able to breathe DC air and feel at home. It feels like yesterday I was planting myself firmly in the ground of city concrete and city smog and city sunrise.

Now, I am surprised in the moment when a countdown of days can feasibly begin. Now I am surprised in the moment of ticket confirmations, cardboard box purchases, gulping second to last week at internship realization. Now, I am surprised in the moment when the prospect of leaving my Starbucks prayer journaling, my ASL bus rides, my hot pink shoes on the DC sidewalks, creeps into my thoughts.

Going home is heartbreaking, not because I do not miss home, but because I put down roots here. I have rooted myself into the ground of this city, into its air and Metro stops and diners and markets and ministries. And I have rooted myself in people, their faces and laughs and smiles and tears, their joy and their confusion. There is nothing more wonderful than the prospect of seeing my people here feel loved, nothing more confusing than thinking about leaving them.

The only thing I can think of to do in these moments is stop. Smell the roses. It sounds like silly advice, but I am looking at the most beautiful bouquet of yellow-white roses in full bloom and smaller white tea roses... and they surprise me with their beauty and their nonchalance and their blooming. Even in the moments when we are overwhelmed by goodbyes, overwhelmed by the leaving, overwhelmed by our wonderful friends - if we smell the roses, if we breathe them in and stop for a few minutes and let their beauty, in its quiet, consistent way, wash over us - we will allow ourselves to reflect that beauty back.

I leave you all with this poem, one of my very favorites (I seem to have so many of them!):

The Sound of Trees (Robert Frost)

I wonder about the trees.

Why do we wish to bear

Forever the noise of these

More than another noise

So close to our dwelling place?

We suffer them by the day

Till we lose all measure of pace,

And fixity in our joys,

And acquire a listening air.

They are that that talks of going

But never gets away;

And that talks no less for knowing,

As it grows wiser and older,

That now it means to stay.

My feet tug at the floor

And my head sways to my shoulder

Sometimes when I watch trees sway,

From the window or the door.

I shall set forth for somewhere,

I shall make the reckless choice

Some day when they are in voice

And tossing so as to scare

The white clouds over them on.

I shall have less to say,

But I shall be gone.

Love, always. 

Hilary

Je suis une jeune fille américaine, et j'adore la France avec tout mon coeur.

Bonjour tout le monde! Ça fait longtemps que je parle en français... je crois qu'il fait presque trois ans que je suive un cours de français à l'université. Et bien, dernier soir, avec des filles trop gentilles, nous nous sommes toutes les trois mises dans notre salon et nous avons regardé le film, Les Misérables, en français avec des sous-titres en anglais. Et nous avons mangé des crêpes en parlant en français... Et bien, ce matin je suis en train de penser pourquoi je n'ai pas choisi de continuer à étudier le français. 

Phew. That was hard. Here is my rough translation of what I hope my French actually says:

Hello everyone! It's been a long time since I spoke French... I think it's been almost three years since I took a course in French in college. And well, last night with these very nice girls, we were all three of us in our living room and we watched the movie Les Miserables, in French with English subtitles. And we ate crepes while speaking in French... and now this morning I am in the midst of thinking about why I didn't choose to continue studying French.

It's a weird question to ask - because when you go to college you choose to study one thing and forsake others. Everyone has to give up some of what they loved in high school to be successful in college - even more so when we get to grad school. I think at some point in my college career I've asked this same question of every other subject as well. Why did I give up calculus (a rarer question, but nonetheless present)? Why did I give up environmental science? Why did I give up history, literature, theater, voice - why did I let those things slip through my fingers and into the vague memories of high school and the occasional passionate conversation?

French is a little bit different, probably because language is a little bit different from other subjects. In high school French was offered to us, not only as our required language (everyone in my school learned French) but as a real means of expressing ourselves. French was a language for talking about weekend plans, family life, frustrating homework loads... and French was also the place of a new kind of poetry, theater, philosophy, culture, art...

I can't think of the language outside of how I came to express myself in it. In French I am more exuberant than in English. I gesture more with my hands (if that's possible) and I am more inclined to laugh at myself and at the words that come out of my mouth. It's a vigorous language - and I am more excited in it. I think of all of the stories that I can only really tell in French: the raw egg on my crepe at dinner in Angers, the Musee Rodin in Paris, the day all the cheese came tumbling out of loading boxes and onto my head in a Parisian grocery store, the moment with my French mother when I put the phone away and I should have turned off the light... and the stories from Waring of French movies watched in the Polygon with stolen couch cushions, the crazy Core kids of my Immersion Music Dance class and my Beginner I French class on Monday mornings (if any of you, par chance, read this blog, I am so grateful to you), the times when my friends and I would just say, "Bonjour ma petite."

Being in a new city, making home in a new culture and with new people has gotten me thinking about what French was and I hope still can be in my life. I want French to be a language of joy. I want French to be a place I inhabit, a part of me that emerges when English is insufficient or when French is simply more beautiful. Washington, DC has elements of it that are like this - strutting my stuff down Independence Ave where the House Office Buildings are and walking confidently from the Metro home, or practicing sign language on the street, or eating great BBQ or Mexican or Thai or Indian out with friends in the middle of the week.

I did not choose to continue studying French in college, and I did not choose to go to France for a study abroad program. But I hope that now, as I realize that I am still desperately in love with the French language and French culture, that I can keep it in my life. The title of this blog post is, "I am a young American girl, and I love France with my whole heart." How true that is.

Maybe if I read this every few days, and if enough people remind me, and make me practice, I will find myself slowly en train d'apprendre encore cette belle langue, et d'apprendre encore Hilary qui parle français, qui se trouve plus joyeuse, plus passionante, plus... Hilary.

Love,
Hilary

My Name, Fingerspelled H-I-L-A-R-Y: Humbling Lessons from ASL

One of the things about rainy Tuesdays that I love is that they give you time to reflect on everything you want to do. On a rainy day your mind fills with possible crafty things to do - knit, make paper airplanes, draw a masterpiece, write a novel, make up a board game. Rain makes me think of every book I've been meaning to read and haven't gotten to yet, and every piece of classical music yet to be listened to (I promise, Handel, I'll get there!), and every TV show I'm secretly addicted to that I haven't yet watched (where oh where have the Walkers landed on Brothers and Sisters?). Today my rainy Tuesday I was thinking about the project I've taken on this semester: learning American Sign Language.

Now I thought I had a pretty good (or at least fairly impressive grasp) of ASL when I arrived in DC. I could say the following things: Hi, my name is finger spelled H-i-l-a-r-y, my house is red, and I love you. Now there is the real meat of any good conversation, right? What else would someone need to know about me other than Hilary, red house, she loves me? And what would I need to understand beyond those things signed back to me?

Galludet University is located about 15 minutes away by bus (90 or 92 lines) near Rhode Island Ave, NE. When you get on the 90 or the 92 you will run into people signing to each other with a pace and an exuberance that makes you dizzy. They nod and smile and the conversation flies between their hands as fluidly as our words fly from our mouths. It became clear that my three phrases were not the same thing as being able to speak ASL. They would get me nowhere.

And I could have probably given up on sign language after a couple of weeks' enthusiasm. Like rainy days, sudden hobbies are regarded with some skepticism, as people wonder whether they will last through the end of the week or break in a few hours to clear skies and normal life. And I in my own mind thought that my excitement about ASL would fade, and I would come back from this semester with a few new phrases and a high and mighty sense of accomplishment.

I have neither. Sign language caught hold of me this semester. It's my bright blue "Signing Illustrated" book that I read on the bus every morning. It's my good friend Virginia who is fluent in ASL and who never fails to say something to me that I don't fully understand (luckily I know the signs for "again" and "don't know"). It's the joy I get from actually communicating with my body.

And I have been humbled by sign language. I thought I was good at learning languages, my still-decent French enabling me to read L'élégance du hérisson over the summer and even comprehend the occasional French speaker and the occasional (perhaps merely accidental) article in Le Monde or Le Figaro. And as many of you know, I love words and love to lavish them on people, in notes or letters or poems or papers or conversations. And I am not good at learning sign language.

I carry the book with me everywhere and I can't seem to retain 80% of the signs I practice. I finger spell at night before I fall asleep and I still can't make my hands flash in the air with ease or expertise. I still can't really understand what the signs are unless Virginia or someone else is also mouthing the words for me. I am diligent in practicing sign language, but I am not good at it.

And this is perhaps why I am so grateful that I am sticking with it. My high and mighty sense of accomplishment has been put through the wood-chopping machine; my few phrases have expanded, but not nearly as much as I thought they would. Learning sign language is a long, hard, and sometimes frustrating process: and I want to "just be good at it already!" so much of the time.

But it requires so much patience with myself. It requires grace for myself when I just can't remember how to sign "where" or "when". It requires a smile as I ask Virginia to repeat for the 10th time the sign for Christmas and THEN have her finger spell it while waiting in the Heritage Foundation lobby. It requires me to extend to myself the same laughing, gentle mercy that I try to extend to others. Sometimes in our efforts to be merciful people, sometimes in our showing of grace to others, and in our patience towards others, we forget to be merciful, gracious and patient with ourselves. My sorry attempts at sign language, and my hopefulness that I will eventually succeed, however long it takes, have taught me these important things.

So, on your rainy Tuesday, if there is a hobby or a language or a novel or a painting you are waiting to take up, learn, read, write, paint... begin! The work is humbling, and slow, and will require grace - for yourself.

Love,
Hilary