kapachino

Author: Kathleen

  • The Breaking Of The Fellowship

    I can hardly believe that tonight I will spend the last night in the apartment we lovingly call The Deuce. A year and a half ago, three excited, happy, somewhat messed-up, ordinary girls moved in, glad to be escaping their former place of residence with its rude management, broken air conditioner, and slow maintenance staff. We were great roommates, and better friends.

    Seven months later, Megan was sleeping in the bed across the room from mine, and Carmen and I converged downstairs as we both had to leave for school or work. We went to the door to leave, and there was a letter waiting for us. “Dear Carmen & Kat,” it began. Carmen gave it one glance and said to me, “I can’t read this right now or I’ll cry. You take it.” It was the morning of Megan’s wedding, and after she was married she would be moving across the country to New Jersey. We were both already feeling her absence acutely.

    When Megan moved out I took over the room. I had to fill it up and get excited about making it my own or else it would be too sad. But the excitement and comfort of my own space didn’t keep me from having a breakdown a week later, partly having to do with a romantic relationship that was falling apart, but a lot to do with a best friend that I had come to rely on who was now gone. I don’t deal with change very well.

    Carmen and I adjusted to our new situation and we became closer than ever. We were sometimes each other’s only real friend in this city. But a month ago she moved her things into a storage space in Austin, which included most of our furniture, and moved herself away as well. The apartment became empty in more ways than one. Thankfully this time around I have a romantic relationship that is not falling apart to keep me occupied, but I have spent less time at home than ever before.

    A week ago I moved the remainder of the living room furniture into my parents’ house for them to keep. I will have new roommates soon, and my $50 garage sale couch won’t be needed anymore. I quit grocery shopping about a month ago to force myself to eat what I have and clean out the pantry. I started packing up my books and other belongings a week ago, although I’m not finished yet. When I come in the door now I head straight to my room, the one place that retains a semblance of homeyness, where I can close the door and imagine that the apartment looks just like it always has outside, with Carmen just down the hall, her clothes hanging to dry on the banister.

    The fellowship of those three ordinary girls has broken apart. Each of us has moved on to a new phase of life: Megan to marriage and seminary, Carmen to graduate school, and me to new roommates and an apartment with granite countertops in an area of town in which my boyfriend won’t beg me not to walk outside alone. I know I have a lot to look forward to in my life, but a part of me knows that what the three of us had–not just our comfort in being roommates or our friendship in this unique phase of life, but the feeling of family–was special beyond words and now we can’t ever get it back in the same way.

    So I will do what I have to do and I will make the best of it with my new roommates, who actually are good friends of mine. We will paint the walls of our new apartment and hang pictures and make it look oh so cute. We will forge our new pattern of life and fall into our routines and learn each other’s schedules. We will become closer friends, and maybe there will be tension sometimes but we will work it out. I will love it because I am easily pleased. But in the back of my mind I will picture Carmen’s messy room across the hall and the perpetual sound of Gilmore Girls playing on the TV downstairs whenever Megan was around…and I will want it all back.

  • Man Plans, God Laughs

    It’s something I’ve been very proud of that I have seen all of the plays and performances that my youngest brother Barry has been in at Texas Tech, where he is in the theater department. Lubbock is a full 9-hour drive away, so that’s not exactly an easy task. This summer he’s involved in a play that is being performed at Tech for a week and then traveling to New Mexico to perform there for awhile. There’s no way I can make it to New Mexico to see him, and when I found out the dates of his performances in Lubbock I was saddened because it didn’t look like I could make it to any of them. I either had exams, or clinicals, or prior obligations that I couldn’t skip. But Barry has been going through a rough time lately, so last week I had a talk with my parents and they decided, “Damn the cost! We’ll fly you to Lubbock!” Barry and I were pumped way, way up.

    The plan was for me to fly up this afternoon at 3 p.m., arriving at 5:20 p.m. My mom and other brother David (who drove up on Sunday) would pick me up at the airport and then we would all drive home together on Tuesday. The one-way ticket on Southwest wasn’t too expensive.

    We only bought the ticket last week, and I wrote it down on my planner and everything (see below), but for some reason I kept forgetting that I was going. I told my boss that I would work on Tuesday, but then had to recant later when I remembered that I would be driving home that day. Then yesterday I told Boyfriend David that I could hang out with him tonight, only to have to rescind my promise. I was glad I had written the Lubbock plans down, or else I might have forgotten to go.

    But I didn’t forget, I remembered. And I was extremely excited. After class today I drove myself to the airport and parked, with much time to spare. When I looked at the departure board, I saw that the flight was delayed 50 minutes. OK, no problem, I can still make it in time. But as the weather worsened and the minutes slipped by, I became doubtful, then anxious, then depressed. The flight was delayed to 4:30 p.m., then to 4:45 p.m., and finally to 5:07 p.m. There was no way I could make the play anymore even if I got on that flight. All of those times that I forgot I was going to Lubbock? Just foreshadowing.

    So I canceled, and my parents got full credit on their account, but tonight I am sitting at home alone with the prospect of schoolwork and packing ahead of me instead of supporting and spending time with my brother, one of my favorite people in the world.

  • Spring Reading Wrap-Up

    Today the Spring Reading Challenge comes to an end. About a month into it I realized that I was definitely not going to get through all my books. What with last semester being so stressful, and joining another book club, I just didn’t have the time. I only read 3 1/2 of the books on my list, which is kind of sad. I did read a few that weren’t on my list, though:

    Promise Me by Harlan Coben
    The Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
    The Color of Water by James McBride
    Can You Keep A Secret? by Sophie Kinsella

    I guess 7 1/2 books in three months isn’t so bad, considering that I had lots of school and work going on there as well.

    What was the best book you read this spring?
    That’s a tough one. They were all pretty good. The Stranger Beside Me affected me the most, though.

    What book could you have done without?
    The Little Chinese Seamstress. The end left me flat.

    If there were books you didn’t finish, tell us why.
    I think I already told you. But I do want to mention that I am halfway through Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and I like it a lot. But it is 846 large pages long, so it is taking awhile.

    What did you learn–about anything–through this challenge?
    -To be suspicious and extra cautious (Stranger Beside Me)
    -Chick lit can be enjoyable sometimes (Can You Keep A Secret?)
    -I don’t read as much as I thought I did
    -Reading Christian books when I’m not in the mood isn’t very helpful

  • Jack and the Beanstalk

    The other night I went with my boyfriend David to meet his best friend Barry and his wife Andrea. They have two children, a 5 year-old girl and a 1 1/2 year-old boy. The girl, Gwen, is a bundle of energy and gets so excited every time David comes over.

    When it was time for Gwen to go to bed, she asked if David would tell her a bedtime story. She requested Jack and the Beanstalk. David whispered to me, “I don’t know if I remember that one, do you?”

    “I think so,” I whispered back.

    “You’d better make it silly!” Gwen warned.

    I started speaking, hoping to inspire David into taking over the story, because his versions are always much more interesting. “Once upon a time,” I began, “There was a little boy named Jack who lived with his mother.”

    “He lived with his mother because he never finished college,” David interrupted. “And one day he found some seeds in his garage, but he didn’t know what they were and he was afraid he might get arrested for them. So he buried them in the backyard, and then a giant beanstalk grew up above the clouds. Do you know what happens when you get above the clouds, Gwen? You’re in heaven. And that’s where Jack found a college degree.”

    About this time Andrea walks in the room, and Gwen bounces up to her and says, “Mommy, mommy, Jack was going to arrest the seeds in his garage because he didn’t know what they were!”

    And oh yes, all of this happened AFTER Gwen requested the re-telling of the story David had told me downstairs about a homeless Vietnam vet he had worked with who had done a lot of recon. Gwen was especially interested in the part where his leg turns black from gangrene.

    I never expected bedtime stories to go quite like that, but I must say that it was entertaining.

  • Preacher For A Day

    Our church is between pastors at the moment, so what we have been doing is calling on the members of the church to give the sermons. A different person each week speaks. Even though it will be nice to have a pastor again, this is a very special time for us as a church because we get to hear from so many different people. I was asked to give the message yesterday, Father’s Day. Even though I sort of dreaded it in the weeks leading up to it and was pretty nervous, it turned out to be a very rewarding experience.

    A portion:

    To really feel the amazement of what happens when you accept God as your father and thus pass from death to life, you have to see it not just as a transition from condemnation into acceptance, but as a transition out of bondage and destitution into the safety, certainty, and enjoyment of the family of God. This is what Paul was trying to express to his readers in Galations 4:1-7 when he says, “you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir.” I believe that this is what all humans desire at the core of their being. It’s why so many myths, fairy tales, and stories resonate so deeply, because they illustrate our heart’s true longing. Take Cinderella, probably the most famous and loved fairy tale of all. It’s about a girl who is being held basically as a slave to her evil stepmother and stepsisters, forced to do the most menial, humiliating, and laborious tasks. But then she is transformed and by the end of the story she has become the wife of the prince. Or there’s the story of the little orphan Annie. Annie is stuck all alone in a miserable orphanage run by the tyrannical Miss Hannigan, but she ends up being adopted by the powerful, rich, and caring Mr. Warbucks. Countless variations of these stories have been written or made into movies. We love them because that’s what we want to happen to us. But the good news is that it has! The story of God and his children is the greatest fairy tale there is, except that it’s true.

    Here is the complete manuscript if you’re interested, and I will post the video on that page soon.