A Bold Bandana

On May 3, 2016May 3, 2016 By VanessaIn Lancaster, Reflections, Snapshots2 Comments

I was driving home from Indiana last weekend with my boyfriend’s mom when suddenly, two vehicles ahead, a car veered a sharp right and zoomed off the road.

It plowed down the ditch, up the ditch and across a plain of grass until it smashed into a tree.

In just seconds, the car had reached its final destination, vastly different than where it had set out to go that morning. Though the car was stopped, the wheels were still spinning.

A young woman, a middle-aged man–they jumped out of their vehicles and sprinted through the ditch and across the grass. They tried to yank open the car door, but it was locked. They pounded on the windows, again and again, fists hitting glass hopelessly.

No one answered, but the tires kept circling, around and around and around.

It’s late on a rainy Monday night, and I should be going to bed.

Instead, my mind is living in that fantastical (and absolutely crazy) third-eye place, where it narrates my thoughts as though I were writing them. My thinking is floating text in my head, begging to hit paper.

This happens when I write all day. When all day I think in terms of writing.

This happens when I have a lot of things to figure out.

meadow lark in song

I had the chance to meet and grab coffee with two supporters of the theatre where I work the day after I got back from my weekend trip. He was an outspoken man, a bulldog with a big heart who apologized upfront for his biting humor. She was spirited, albeit gentle. She sat across from me modeling a bold bandana, a sweet smile and an honest opinion–given only if you asked.

30 minutes in, she told me that she had cancer.

Like a switch going off, I abruptly noticed him. I noticed him watching her. I noticed how he listened–really listened. How he never interrupted. How he smiled when she smiled. I noticed the shimmer in his eyes when I said, “I’ll be thinking of you.”

And the way he–not her–replied to me, so simply, softly, “Thank you.”

Have sincerer words ever been spoken?

I am a 20-something living a very different life than my parents, my grandparents or their parents before them. I am thousands of miles from my ancestral roots, my family’s homestead, my prairie upbringing. Presumably many of you can relate.

The world keeps getting bigger, the more I see of it, yet despite knowing firsthand that there are thousand of paths to choose from–all that end the same–I find I’m still terrified at the multitude of mistakes that await me. Of the pain down the path.

I see the stopped car and those wheels spinning, spinning, spinning–so tragically, so pointlessly. I see the illness behind the bandana and the raw heartache of just one smile and just one ‘thank you’.

I see this all, and I want to freeze the clock, here, on this rainy, rather unremarkable (and completely safe) Monday night.

Life is fragile. I imagine that if I can be taught this firsthand twice in 24 hours, each of us will learn this and relearn this thousands and millions of times in our lives, God willing.

When I grow up, whenever that dreaded day might arrive, I hope I can face the reality of life’s precariousness with bravery. I hope I can look at the future, its big unknowns, its unavoidable pitfalls and inevitable heartbreaks, and rise to meet it, regardless.

Tonight, though, spring rain falls, and my mind like wheels spins.

Tonight, I give myself a little grace. It’s Monday, after all. l’ll let myself soak in these memories and try to make sense of these moments.

I’ll stand still in this one spot, as though standing in a rain puddle during a thunderstorm, watching the thousands of droplets around me, fall.

I’ll stand here and now and wait to see if tomorrow I choose otherwise.

The tomato slicer

On March 13, 2016March 16, 2016 By VanessaIn Lancaster, Reflections, South Dakota3 Comments

I was reminded tonight of one of my first ‘real’ jobs in high school.

I was one of, I don’t recall exactly, perhaps ten or so locals who were selected to be sandwich artists at the very first Subway to arrive to my hometown.

We were interviewed and selected amidst plywood, power tools and tarp, as the building, tacked onto the end of the town shopping center along Highway 81, was not yet finished.

On the first day of training, I cut my finger on the tomato slicer. Not wanting to embarrass myself in front of the Subway elite (they’d come up from Nebraska to train us), I tried to hide the injury. I kept my eyes glued on the presenter teaching us 101 kitchen safety and meanwhile pushed paper towels against my finger to try to stop the flow of blood.

My friend Lori, who was also in training, had a better angle on the stack of paper towels. She casually slipped me sheet after sheet, as a I discretely slipped the bloodied ones into the trashcan beside me that was holding the tomato discards.

I remember it took a long time for that cut to go away.

Homesickness is a funny thing. When I first left for school, I anticipated it. Now, going on eight years later, I don’t see it coming before it arrives.

Homesickness slips its way through the seams into those cracks of anxious anticipation, quick change or slight hesitation. It drips and it drools, and I don’t really know what to do with the mess.

Mostly, it frustrates me. It feels like an Achilles heel, for lack of a more original comparison, and I become irritable, feisty even, about this reoccurring weak spot.

I’ve learned so much about you, Pennsylvania, and now and then I want to shove it back your direction. I want to tell you a thing or two about South Dakota, because you don’t know.

In South Dakota, when you see a line of cars coming down the highway you know that a ball game just finished. And when Dad has to wait for a car to turn off our gravel road onto Highway 81, he grumbles, because waiting for traffic is not normal.

In South Dakota, you don’t call your aunt an ant, because that would be an odd reference to her size.

In South Dakota, appetizers are only for holidays and dessert, 9 times out of 10, contains flour.

In South Dakota, the beach is at the river, keeping your gold-level rating at Starbucks is impossible since the nearest is an hour away, and hugs are just for family and close friends that you haven’t seen in a long time–and Grandma, always.

In South Dakota, spring is dictated by the weather, the moistness of the ground and district basketball games.

Daylight savings changes when you eat supper, because it effects how late the farmers can stay outside working.

Geese signal the turn of the season clearer than billboards.

Sunrises remain as beautiful as ever, but the air–uninterrupted by noise or building– carries a palatable freshness your lungs have been craving.

And you step into that beauty and breathe deep, knowing soon, new life will spring in the fields that surround you. Soon, the days will grow longer, and you will fill each fuller to accommodate.

I hate that my childhood home is somewhere that is not near anyplace anyone is going.

Yet, if it were any closer, I fear it would lose its desolate charm.

Oh, how strangely amusing and absolutely enchanting it is to have unintentionally frozen this soft, sweet place in my mind as though it were a golden twilight never to be had again.

11080405_10206344745120482_2714885831949997976_o — photo: Marnette Hofer

Here is a horrible comparison:

Sometimes homesickness feels like a cut from a tomato slicer.

It’s just the most ridiculous thing to miss something so imperfect, and yet, I keep holding the paper towel to it, trying to pretend it’s not there,

secretly terrified it will never stop bleeding.

Shoe scuffs

On February 13, 2016March 16, 2016 By VanessaIn Goshen, Reflections, South Dakota, TravelLeave a comment

I travelled nearly halfway across the country last week to sit on the end of a wooden bench in a shoe-scuffed middle school gym alongside a dozen middle school girls basketball players.

Am I crazy?

I should start by being honest; while I loved the sport, I was never that good of a player. My high school teammates can attest to that.

I fouled a lot.

For those of you who don’t watch basketball, this essentially means I hit people.

I think it was because I was angry. Probably less so at the person I was tackling and more so at myself. Why was making my body do what I saw so clearly in my brain that difficult?

scramble — The long and short of my high school basketball experience, in one picture.

BB sisters — HS basketball with one of my younger sisters.

My younger sister was and is the better athlete, with multiple knee surgeries that I believe earn her the title permanently.

She’s a certified coach and the coach that extended an invitation for me to join the elite ranks of middle school coaches last winter.

My certifications?

For starters, my team pep talks in high school were a thing of legends. Certainly they must discuss them still today.

More notably, the team voted me “most inspirational” all 4 years of high school. That includes the year I quit the season early to be in a musical.

“Most inspirational” coming into the game with my best friend and my sister.

I’d like to think that these very noteworthy achievements are the reason my sister felt I deserved to join her team.

Though I kid, I did give a lot of pep talks last winter during my inaugural season as assistant coach.

There’s nothing like funneling more emotion into an already emotionally-charged middle school sporting event.

After rejoining the bench this last week, I quickly fell back into my old role, my pep talk spirit still perfectly intact, seemingly untamed by my newfound East Coast sensibilities.

“That isn’t an injury,” I proclaimed to the player who had limped off the court with a painful-looking floor burn that covered half her lower leg. “That’s a battle scar!”

“And what do you do when someone gives you a battle scar?!” I barreled on. She looked up at me with wide watery eyes, sniffling, gasping, tears streaming.

“You score on them!!” I roared.

Unexpected experiences are the most delightful thing, aren’t they though?

If I had my way, I’d never sign up for them. Yet, these experiences come charging at me.

Thank God, too, because I can’t imagine how dull my life would be otherwise.

Coaching is Exhibit A. While on paper or in the summary version I’ll give folks in Lancaster, it may seem obscure to travel so far for something so trivial, I beg to differ.

This was an experience I value, then and now, because it was an experience I didn’t know I could have. It was an experience offered graciously by someone else and shared with a mighty fine group of ladies.

The ‘A’ team welcoming me back last week.

I recently took a personality test that told me that my personality type, when at its healthiest, is self-creative, “able to transform all their experiences into something valuable.”

I like to think that, at least sometimes, this is true. Today’s post is a good example. Here’s an unlikely experience I found value in. Enough value, in part, to travel 500 miles westward in hopes to hold onto it, to relive it again.

Today, though, I also acknowledge a new challenge. This is one I have to keep pushing myself on–and maybe you do, too.

The challenge of letting go of the past is something my personality type isn’t so keen at, so say the results.

I’m severely sentimental, what can I say.

However, It’s time to let other experiences come at me and to embrace them.

I guess a starting point will be my new job. For those of you trying to keep tabs on me, you may have noticed I joined the staff at PRiMA. I’m passionate about this company because they have ‘skin in the game’ (sorry, couldn’t help myself) trying to ‘cultivate culture’–to use theatre as a way to create lasting experiences that enrich the community and, simply, inspire.

They’re (we’re) looking forward, which I think is pretty neat and, actually, super ambitious.

So hey, if you get the chance to coach a middle school sports team, I triple dare you to do it. Go out there and yell your lungs out, and come back and realize that this little thing was the best thing.

…and that now it’s time to move forward.

A farewell candy-themed note from last year’s MS bball team.

The Top 12

On January 4, 2016January 4, 2016 By VanessaIn Chicago, Christmas Letter, Goshen, Lancaster, South Dakota3 Comments

How do you begin to process a year of life?

By looking through thousands of low-resolution cell phone photos, apparently.

I leave 2015 with an odd feeling in my stomach and a lot to think about. It wasn’t as though it was all perfect. But amidst so much hardship in our world, I feel uncomfortably grateful.

Here’s my meager attempt to make sense of how I’ve gotten from point A to B, and to celebrate, just a little, last year’s milestones.

12 tops moments from 12 months

IMG_9826 (1) — **(1) I taught K-5 music in the Goshen Public School System** beginning in January 2015. On weekends, I commuted to Chicago to continue work in the theatre scene.

Processed with VSCOcam with t1 preset — In Goshen, I **(2)** **reconnected with some of the most significant people in my life** and learned, again, that I am absolutely a horrible skier.

Processed with VSCOcam with f2 preset — I had the crazy opportunity to **(3) assistant coach MS girls’ basketball** with my sister. This involved driving a minibus.

A new season signaled new adventures. **(4) Spring trips** took me to WV, PA, OH, IL and even to the top of a creaky wind tower in SD.

bazu-6194342 — **(5) I ran a half-marathon in Chicago.** My first race of any kind, ever (and it sort of kicked my butt).

55a9223118f43.image — I spent some time in SD over the summer, during which **(6)** **I organized a theatre camp in my hometown**, with gracious help & support from many.

**(7) I officially became my own** **business, VM Writing Services, LLC.** I feel fancier now, yes.

**(8)** **I moved to Lancaster, PA**, over the summer and **(8.5)** **discovered a new theatre** scene I’m jazzed to continue exploring.

Processed with VSCOcam with b5 preset — **(9) Autumn on the East Coast** included first-time trips to NYC, the Chesapeake Bay, Phili and the Atlantic Ocean.

I loved going back to Goshen to **(10) see my sisters, visit dear friends in ChiTown** and **(10.5) ride in a two-person plane for the 1st time**, flown by Niles, in which I got to see my alma mater from above.

(11) **A trip to Peru** with Hans & Niles was one that I will never forget, during which I surprised a dear college friend, Brook…

(12) …**saw spectacular views,** explored the jungle, struggled with Spanish, tried new food, thought I might die on multiple occasions, and met new people I look forward to seeing again soon.

Family Christmas pics — And finally, a bonus, because you don’t do any of this fun stuff without **the guidance, love, mentorship and support from many.** Any moment with family and friends is a moment to be cherished…especially when dealing with this crazy crew. 😉

The adventure certainly continues.

A humble and heartfelt Happy New Year from me to you!

Los especialistas

On November 23, 2015November 24, 2015 By VanessaIn Travel8 Comments

There were so many shadows, it was as if the moon was shining down on trees.

This time, though, the countless lines and shapes on the dirt–spilling one on top of the other, indistinguishable–were not from the jungle, but from unfinished building beams, windows without glass, plastic chairs and bricks and a red sofa with a sinking middle cushion.

The shadows were from the cat, the dog, a pig carcass roasting over a smoldering fire–and from people. Us.

A dozen farmers–women, children, men–sitting around us in a circle and a half.

Though jungle was on all sides, the closest trees were meters away from our group, and the brightest light not the moon–not yet–but a sole lamppost covering us and all of the clearing in an unnatural orange.

“They want us to talk about the importance of sustainable farming practices,” Hans translated to me quietly.

I am transfixed by the color of Hans’ face and skin, an odd mix of its natural hue and the light overhead. The color reminds me of the juice I drank earlier that day. The freshest that I have ever had.

Time segues without me realizing it. It does that here. I catch words, I catch phrases, but I can’t quite catch the timing, and before I realize it, the chatter has tapered and Hans and Niles are cued to speak.

I watch them more than I hear them, piecing together the few words DuoLingo gave me, trying not to let the little Moroccan Arabic that I know filter in.

Thank you, they say, for what you do. It is so important. What you do–how you do it–it is so important.These are farmers with worn hands that have tended orange trees, coffee trees, yucca and mangos. These are farmers with wrinkled faces and shoes that have treaded up and down steep slopes, shoes that have seen lots and lots of dirt.

Dirt that crumbles and falls after rain.

They trigger memories of farmers from my South Dakota home, not so different, yet not so much alike, and I wonder to myself what it must be like to hear these two boys, these two men–especialistas–as they were introduced, thank them not just for their work, but really, for who they are.

This is traveling:

Going someplace entirely foreign, being wowed by its beauty and mystery, overanalyzing the smallest things that people say and do, and trying–without trying–to connect this collage of things to the life you perceived, until a plane ride ago, as normal.

Processed with VSCOcam with c1 preset

After the Americans finish, he stands up. He, the gatherer, the business owner, the native.

He, who grew up here and knows every backroad and every cowpath, where to cross the river and when, who to talk to and why and what the perfect coffee plant looks like.

He stands and he welcomes the co-op.

He then gives his battlecry–a long-winded rally speech, from the sounds of it. By the end, we’re impatient, farmer and gringo alike, wiggling in our chairs–or stools, or cement blocks or what have you.

He asks, but there are no questions afterwards. We migrate indoors as a pack, crowd a single table and feast on all-parts pig.The next day I am sitting in the back of a pickup, watching trees and palm branches and rocks and boulders and birds–yellow-tailed birds with strange songs–fly by me at an inhuman speed.

Thrilling speed.

As the wind plays with my hair and the bumpy road tips and pushes and pulls me in every single direction, I try to imagine if these people–the famers I ate with yesterday–and the people I grew up with–the farmers I have known my whole life–were to meet.

I wonder what my life would be if my dad farmed on a jungle mountain instead of on an endless prairie.

I wonder what my day, this day here and now, would be like if only I spoke the language a little better.

I wonder where the road ahead is taking us, where exactly we are going, and if this road is really a road at all.

I tighten my grip around the edges of the pickup, and I take a deep breath of all the air I can possibly breathe in.

And I exhale.

I exhale gratitude and joy and yes, a little fear, for this is new terrain, adventure and experience unlike any yesterdays before.

Because I know that, before long, it will all be over. And it is. Now a dream, a blur.

An image preserved only in my mind of a dozen farmers in a circle, lit by a single orange light, and a faint but lingering feeling of jungle wind in my hair.

Sign me up for your webinar.

On September 2, 2015September 2, 2015 By VanessaIn Uncategorized1 Comment

I’m living in Lancaster, PA, now. It’s no secret that I have a moving disorder that requires I pack my things and transport them someplace else every 6 months. So please don’t feel bad if you’re behind. Just come visit me.

I work at a theatre where I share a cozy office with the director of my department. The view from our window is brick door brick, brick window brick. More brick. I can go all day without seeing a tree–except that I can’t–so I leave my office for dinner.

Usually, I walk home. I live in the smack dab center of this little, not-so-little Pennsylvania city. There’s always something happening, something to hear–construction around the block, traffic, people yelling. Twice, an excellent brass band. On Sunday afternoons, the apartment below blasts loud music with heavy bass for approximately two hours. It rattles my things, I try to ignore it, I get annoyed, it stops.

Having gone to school with a number of folks from Lancaster County, I feel less like I’m somewhere new and more like I’m just late on the scene.

I have discovered, though, that if you want to throw yourself into a new environment, working in community engagement is a pretty sure option. “I’m just here to engage in the community” has become my no. 1 line at all networking functions and whenever I’m in awkward conversation with strangers, which is often.

I attended an event for a community business during my first week at work. I went with a couple of coworkers. It should be noted that they used that same pick-up line to convince me to come. “You’re in community engagement, you need to engage with…”

When we arrived, we did the proper thing to do and avoided all people to stake out the food. While waiting in line for what we think was Doritos with hummus, we casually bumped into someone. My coworkers started chatting with her.

From my tag-along vantage point, I could easily watch as the casual chatter slowly died out, crept in my direction, and then, perfectly on cue, “Oh yes, you should meet Vanessa, she’s new in community engagement.”

“Ah,” the woman said, smiling, “we’ll likely be working with one another from time to time.”

“Really?” I asked, trying to seem sweet and also like a kick-ass business woman who stands up for herself and is older than 24. “That’s super,” I said. “And, sorry, you work at?”

Then there was this really long pause. Like something written in a play–but no, really. She cocked her head slightly to the side, lifted an eyebrow, and said through a plastic smile, “This,” she gestured to the band, the bar, the people, the sparkly hipster-shabby-chic hanging lights, “is mine.”

I apologized. I sort of half-laughed. She didn’t. I complimented her on a really super nice party. And that was the end of that awesome conversation.

So ‘engaging in the community’ has its road bumps and will clearly require a little more time until mastery.

Though there are aspects of Lancaster life that I’ve found take very little time at all. I’ve discovered access to new knowledge and a corresponding thirst for learning that, honestly, I haven’t felt since burning out a bit in undergrad.

There is so much to learn about education and Arts education and the way we learn and why we learn how we learn–and then just nonprofits in general, the business–and then just regional theatre–and oh, my brain is on a continuous buzz. I’m reading new books and constantly signing up for blogs that use hooks like ‘young professional’ and ‘cutting edge’ and ‘Arts education matters’ and I am attending live webinars, and all of this is such a delightful, delightful thing.

With everything happening in Lancaster–a growing Arts scene, a growing yuppie scene, etc.,–I feel like the city is just rooting me on. Check out this! Learn about this! Come to our event!

And along the way, I’m feel I’m (slowly) picking up the little stuff that makes living here living here. I can now tell you which stands at Central Market are worth your dollar (and which accept credit card) and how to pass an Amish buggy on the road. I can tell you a thing or two about tea, incidentally, and give you a great tour of an excellent (haunted?) theatre.

You’re invited to visit, or heck, just move here already. Test my knowledge (or please, please don’t). If you’re already here, we should say hi to each other. Why not? Let’s engage in this community! Just don’t interrupt my webinar.

A brush full of paint

On August 5, 2015January 4, 2016 By VanessaIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Sweaty mornings full of paint.

A special summer visitor.

Mom.

Goodbye, kitty!

I walked into Menard’s today and I wanted to die. Have you been there recently? These places are huge. With all that space they should at least grow something. Raise some livestock. Start an indoor herb garden. But just to sell things when farmland is at such a premium? What sort of strategic planning is that.

Clearly my brain is still in Farm World. I’ve left home, but heart and mind appear to be traveling a little slower. They are likely putzing down I-80 right now, distracted by a corn field somewhere between here and God-forsaken Iowa City.

My time at home was a time of family. It was a time of realizing that I’m growing up, and that means everyone else is, too. It was a time of sunny day after sunny day after sunny day and paint. I painted a shed for my dad, and hence, I also painted my hair, my arms, somehow my stomach. Paint everywhere.

Now the brushstrokes change color and direction. Now the world around me swirls all sorts of new shades, shades that quickly drip and bleed together as I zoom pass unfamiliar hill and mountain, tree and field, house after house after house. As I drive East.

East to a new job, a new apartment, a new part of the country that is somehow so much smaller and yet so much fuller.

East with a new haircut and a new shower mat and a new comforter for my new bed and a new (but not-so-new) pledge that this time, this time I will stay a little longer than last time.

Wherever last time was. Whenever last time was. I guess just take your pick.

I’m not convinced moving ever gets easier, and yet, here I am, halfway between home and a new home, typing this mini post with all the optimism and confidence of a fresh-from-college grad. Even though I don’t really fit that mold anymore.

Here’s to new adventures; at every stage, at every age. Again, and again, and again. Whether you are on the farm in South Dakota or somewhere between there and the Atlantic Ocean. Stay tuned!