What I'll Miss about Wooster, Take Two

Take 2

1. Holida Opera, as Karen says. How could I forget the years of raising the girls on OLO’s 99 and 44/100% pure romance each summer? It’s still special to go to a show even though we don’t usher for them any longer.
2. Script Woo—the Wooster High School version of dotting the Ohio State “i.”
3. Christmas Run park and its great play pavilion and gentle stream and covered bridge.
4. The Pine and Scovel neighborhood with its safe alleys and places for imaginative play, like Bush.
5. Reading Marc Kovac’s columns in the Wooster Daily Record. The tongue in cheek humor with which he seasons the political news out of Columbus is the same as he brought to various church dramas. His Preston, Alita and Emil would have been on the list of missed kids except that they have already moved from Wooster. (I know—there’s always the internet….but it won’t be the same.)
6. Teaching students—at Thanksgiving or at the caroling party or…—to play Set.
7. Being on the route between Cleveland Heights and Logan. We’re going to miss you, Mindy and Mark.
8. Being close enough to Pittsburgh for Chloe to come for Thanksgiving.
9. Living close to a college and so having ready lectures, concerts, plays, recitals, sporting events to attend (in our “spare” time).
10. All City band concerts—during which you can hear everyone from the beginning fifth graders through the top high school band and realize again how much students can improve. We haven’t gone in years, but during the days, that was one of our favorite concerts. The band directors at Wooster High still remember our children by name and with sincere curiosity about what they are doing today.
11. WKSU, one of the very finest public radio stations in the country.
12. Moorefield Pottery. My place of choice for buying wedding presents. Some dear friends at church gave us a gift certificate from there, and so I added a large fruit bowl to my small collection of Moorefield pottery.
13. Quailcrest, an excellent herb farm turned nursery and upscale home store, just north of Wooster. Their lunches during the winter holiday times are um, um, good. I have their cookbook so as to be able to try to duplicate their soups at least.
14. Mannafest, or its current iteration, crossCulture. The opportunity to minister to IVCF students at conferences and my interaction with the Northeast Ohio and other nearby teams of staff.
15. More will be coming as I think of them....

What I'll miss about Wooster, take one

What I’ll miss about Wooster (in no particular order after #1):

1. Students—the reason we have always been here. We are fond of saying that we’re glad to see them come in August and glad to see them go in May, but by the next August we’re always ready for the next batch.
2. Seeing Amish buggies clip-clopping down Beall Ave. or hitched to the post in front of Wal-Mart.
3. The crab apple trees, the azaleas and rhodendendron, and then the roses in the OARDC arboretum.
4. My deck…sitting there to read and/or study, entertaining small and large groups of people there. Enjoying the serenity of the back yard from there. What I will NOT miss is staining it every other year (and for the partial third time this go-around before we leave).
5. Peter, Victor, Judah, Benjamin, Aubrey and Johanna and my weekly Sunday hugs from at least one of them. (The boys are getting our advent log as we do not have a place to use it without a baby grand piano. Being Lutheran at heart, their parents are thrilled.) I’ll miss meeting Aubrey’s new sibling this fall as well as Julie and Jon’s first child (most likely a girl, but even after the “definitive ultra sound, they are only saying “fifty-fifty chance.” ☺).
6. Being able to drive up and have a nice young man (or gal) put my groceries into the car for me at the Buehler’s Milltown conveyor belt. Having Ryan D. put them in the car for me at the downtown Buehler’s.
7. The new public library—spacious, gracious, fantastic. One of our first stops in G.R. is at the library to get cards. Chuck has managed to read three novels this week as well as to pack (but that’s another story).
8. The drive down through Holmes County to my favorite (only) stitchery store. I don’t know yet where I’ll replace that store in G.R.
9. Meeting our pastor and wife for a quick supper and prayer update each Wednesday possible. Making new friends will be our biggest challenge.
10. My garden. However, it has gotten too large, or rather, I have gotten too old, to care for it properly, so I am looking forward to gardening on a smaller scale in G.R.
11. My Monday lunch-bunch of retired COW friends.
12. My book club, recently re-joined. However, many churches in G.R. have book clubs, so I am not worried about finding one. The women in it when I was just a young whippersnapper have been my role models these many years.
13. Occasional lunches after church with dear friends at El Campesino. I always order # 3 and Chuck # 5. We went today with Julie, Jon, Annie and Hannah and missed Mark and Beth—but remembered our times with them as well.
14. Interfaith dialogue, especially with Joan, and others through the Office of InterFaith Campus Ministries. Finding a church that values and supports such interaction is important to us.
15. The sound of bagpipes in the distance.
16. The sound of bagpipes and the rest of the band as they turn back towards the stand for the last part of their half-time show.
17. Wooster-Wittenberg basketball games.
18. Wooster-anyone basketball games.
19. Living in a town that gives dogwood trees to all its first graders and magnolias to all its fifth graders.
20. The kind of easy driving that living in a small town affords.

Home

The good news is that we have reached a verbal agreement to sell our house today (pending inspections, of course). God has been gracious to provide a sale just before we leave. The bad news is that we have to leave. Packing is coming along with some sense of pressure, especially since I entertained about 100 people in our home/on our deck this last week (in cool, threatening-rain weather). This quotation from the Christianity Today that arrived in today's mail sums it up well:

Real estate ads offer houses for sale, not homes. A house is a garment easily put off or on [ed. note--well, not exactly easily], casually bought and sold; a home is skin. Merely change houses and you will be disoriented; change homes and you bleed. When the shell you live in has taken on the savor of your love, when your dwelling has become a taproot, then your house is a home.

Scott Russell Sanders, Staying Put

We're bleeding.

Blest Be the Ties that Bind

This cake says it all. We are in our last frantic week before moving. For several weeks now we have made time to "be fully present" with many people as we say good-bye. Yesterday was the largest of these gatherings--at least four more are planned for this week as we now begin to pack as well. (We'd better--the movers arrive eight days from now, and thus far we only have about a dozen boxes waiting in the garage.) Even though it was only in the 50s and threatening rain, the sun peaked through enough and folks wore jackets and we opened the house as well and said our farewells to our church family with an open house.

My Nemesis, take 2

My Nemesis

Two years ago I made a huge mistake. How I regret it. I loved the way the flower of the cilantro plant reminded me of Queen Anne's Lace, which I have never been able to root in my garden. Therefore, I took the seeds of a couple of spent cilantro and scattered them in my back garden. Other seeds scattered naturally as I pulled the plants out at the end of the season. Little did I know that the plant is viscious. I spent much of last summer rooting out baby cilantro plants and I thought I had won....black garbage bags were full of the green stuff and there was no evidence of cilantro anywhere in any garden bed. Well, this year, the year we have to make buyers think we have a beautiful yard that demands no work (ha!), there it appeared again. This is what it looked like the day I took a hand rake and, on my hands and knees, scratched it out as best I could. Two weeks later it is flourishing almost as much. Yesterday, in a light rain, I went out and scratched it up again with a long rake. Tomorrow I will go out and try again. I bought some weed repressent mulch and will see how far one bag will go. Not far enough, I imagine. Hopefully, the people coming to our open house today will just look through the living room window to the deck (or from the deck) and won't go wandering in the back garden...it looks beautiful today even though the tulips and daffodils are spent. The lilac, the crab apples, the azaelea, the lily of the valley, all should bedazzle and confuse and prevent the reality of weeding from intruding on Eden.