halloween

Halloween is probably one of my least favorite holidays, maybe because I don't really consider it a "holiday." (Apparently, though, the Oswego school district does--they are off today due to it being Halloween.)

Fortunately, I think we are getting off easy this year--no dressing up (that I know of!), which is a relief since Lucas has a lot of really...interesting?...costume ideas. If you ever want some abstract/chuckle-worthy ideas, please contact him. He specializes in couples' costume ideas.

I don't know exactly what it is about Halloween that I don't like...it's possible that it bothers me that I considered Halloween a fun and innocent day for kids to dress up and go trick-or-treating, and the retail industry has made it so much more. Or the fact that high school and college kids (girls in particular) treat it as a day to look trashy on purpose. I used to dress us as harmless things, like a pumpkin, or a crayon, or a bluebird, or a pilgrim (yes, those are all actual costumes that I have worn). Or it could be that I don't like to be scared. I don't like scary movies, or gory movies, or anything that has the word "Saw" in the title.

I also hate haunted houses because I hate not being able to see where I'm going (haunted houses are dark) and I hate the idea of things jumping out at me (that's what they do at haunted houses). I think I've had approximately 2 haunted house experiences, and that was enough to convince me that I don't like them. I don't even like corn mazes. This is just a bad time of year for me.

I blame the people-jumping-out-at-you fear on my dad. When we were kids we would go visit my grandparents several times a year, and my cousins would usually all be there too, so we could usually persuade my dad and uncle to participate in a game of hide and seek with us kids. My dad's favorite thing to do was make little noises--like whistling or saying something like "woo-ooh"--to clue us in to where he was hiding. This was great until you figured out where he was, and someone had to open the door to the room or the closet (he always hid behind a door of some sort)...at which point he would burst out with a roar and scare us all. Every time. Eventually we stopped asking him to play.

So there are a combination of factors at play here. Let's just say that I like the candy part of Halloween...that's about it.

make up your mind

Have you ever entered a situation thinking that you had your mind set on an issue, or a person, or a possibility?

This has happened twice for me lately. One situation I don't think I can write about here, but the other I will share.

So, I now work as a site director for the YMCA's before-and-after-school programming at a school in Aurora. I basically keep the kids in my program, ages K-5, out of trouble and occupied in the morning and the afternoon until their parents can come get them. Most of my kids are tolerable, but I have one who I was warned about before school even started in August.

His name is Torian. He has a condition called Oppositional Defiant Disorder (yes, ODD), which basically means he cannot control his temper. So he goes to a special school for kids with behavior disorders and gets sent to my school in the afternoon.

I immediately did not like Torian. He is angry, and rude, and disrespectful, and a downright bully to the other kids in my program. I made up my mind about him the first week of school and was convinced it would not change.

Torian is in third grade at his school. I have come to the conclusion that third grade at a BD school is not equivalent to third grade in a regular school, because I also have Torian's younger brother Tahj in my program. Tahj is in kindergarten and is one of the cutest little boys I have ever seen. Tahj can write the alphabet, and sentences, and when he asks me to spell words he can sound them out and usually come really close to being right. Last week we sounded out the word absolutely...aside from the silent E in the middle he did all right.

So Tahj is a pretty sharp little guy. Torian, though, brought homework out for the first time last week, and it looked like the homework my kindergarteners work on--writing the letters A and B, and then short sentences using those letters. He can barely write his own name and can't read a lick, and he gets mad at me that I "won't help him" read.

So I'm a pretty big fan of reading, we all know that, and this not only breaks my heart, it infuriates me. That a child could be in third grade and not know how to read is preposterous and outrageous. A good day at his school means he got to play video games and get a soda. There is a serious breakdown in the educational system somewhere.

So after two and a half months of spending time with Torian, I am finding myself changing my mind about him...slowly. He still gets under my skin like no other child I have ever met, especially when he throws chairs and pushes the smaller kids and gets in fights and swears at me. But in the long run, if this path continues, I don't think he even has a chance at life.

And it's hard to see the world give up on someone before he really has a chance to start, no matter how oppositional he is.

I have been wondering for the last few months why I am at this particular job (since I don't particularly enjoy it), and Lucas suggested that maybe I should help Torian learn to read. Maybe there is a point to being at this particular school after all.

I'll let you know if I make up my mind.

FAQ

A question that I have been asked frequently in the last month is if/when Lucas and I plan on having kids. Just to set the record straight, if all goes according to plan, it will be several years. I am not at all anxious to begin that phase of our lives...I am much too selfish to be ready for kids.

That doesn't mean, though, that I don't enjoy hanging out with other people's kids. Today, for instance, we spent an enjoyable afternoon at the pumpkin farm down the road from our house with Luc's family and the Keens. Normally I try not to mention too many people's names on my blog for the sake of keeping favoritism to a minimum, but I figured the photos would give it away anyway. The Keens are some of our favorite people to hang out with, and I find Maggie hilarious, but she is usually in bed when we hang out with them, so we had a blast listening to her almost-2-year-old chatter. Our niece is also almost 2, but talks less and sings songs.

The funny thing about this outing is that if you know Lucas very well you know that he does not want to have a daughter. He grew up with a brother, so he doesn't know any better. But he loves hanging out with Keira (niece). And today it was Maggie and Keira. Two little pumpkins running around the pumpkin farm. It was so cute...and then they went home with their parents and I blogged about it. Ah, the way life is meant to be.


Keira and Uncle Luc (she calls him Uncloo)


Maggie


Keira and Aunt Charissa (my name is Ga-witsa!--
yes, she pronounces it with the exclamation point)

the long goodbye

When I was in first grade a new family moved to Mt. Pleasant, Michigan and decided to start attending the same church my family attended, and to send their kids to the same school that my sister and I attended, where my dad also taught. This family had four kids--their oldest son was in my class, followed by his brother, their younger sister who was the same age as my sister, and the littlest sister, following several years behind, only a baby really when we all first came together.

This was how we met the Koefoeds.

It may come as a surprise that as a child I was slightly competitive--in a subtle way: I was competitive about school. Not to brag, but kindergarten was kind of a breeze for me. And first grade was going fairly well too, until this family moved into town. Suddenly I had competition. Over the course of first, second, and third grades Jonathan Koefoed remained my chief competitor in the race to finish tests the fastest, to get the best grades on our homework, to earn the most extra credit points. It was a friendly competition, of course, and one I would never have admitted to, for those of you who know me well will recognize that I do not claim to be competitive when there is a chance that I could be beaten.

For three years my family and the Koefoeds were close friends. Jonathan and I had our ongoing contest in school, Rebekah and my sister Becky became the best of friends, and whenever Becky and I spent the night at their house, Daniel and Jonathan would both pretend that they didn't want to play with us girls, but inevitably they couldn't resist. We went trick-or-treating together, stayed over at each other's homes, ate meals together, played in the snow together, rode in their station wagon, jumped off cushions in their family room together.

After third grade my family ended up moving to Grand Rapids, about 2 hours from our previous home in Mt. Pleasant--a distance small enough to keep us connected to our old friends. I remember going to visit on weekends and holidays, hanging out with the college kids that Scott and Sally Koefoed ministered to, feeling really cool as a fifth grader.

Over the years my parents have kept in touch with Scott and Sally, although neither Becky nor I have maintained our former friendships with their kids. My mom used to show me the family photo they sent each Christmas after we moved down to Illinois, and though the kids all got taller, they still looked the same, and I think I will forever see them at the ages they were when we last turned their living room into a couch-cushion fortress.

Memory has a way of tricking us into believing things don't change.

Which is why it came as such a shock to find out that Sally Koefoed had cancer.

It feels strange to be so affected by news of someone you haven't seen or communicated with directly in years; someone who at one point was a major player in your life. My parents always talk about trying to drive through Mt. Pleasant on their way up to my mom's house in Canada, and somehow it has never worked out, up until about two weeks ago when my mom finally got through to Scott and arranged to stop and see him and Sally on her last trip up to Canada.

She is so thankful that she did that, especially since I called her today to let her know that Sally died last night.

I couldn't keep the tears out of my eyes as I read the last update posted by Scott letting their family and friends know of Sally's passing. She was an amazing woman of faith--they were an amazing family of faith, really--and her confidence in God, even after the trauma of her cancer, was evident in the peace she felt at going to sit at the feet of Jesus. I have no doubts that Sally is being loved this very moment by the Savior to whom she was so faithful.

I look at myself in light of people like Sally, and think how far I have yet to go. My faith is so shakeable, weak, selfish at times. Hers never was. I believe that the brief period of time I knew her impacted my own development; that knowing her kids played some part in my growing up process; that one person can leave a legacy that will outlive their physical presence. And I believe that the world is different because of Sally Koefoed.

the slow fade

I was hoping to make my triumphant return to the blogging world with an amazing story about how my life has changed in the last few months, but alas, all I have at the moment is that it's been so long since my last post that my computer didn't even remember the link...I had to type in the whole thing by hand.

The last few months have had their fair share of insanity. Since my last post I have started a new job, survived my own wedding and one of my best friends' as well, made it to Hawaii and back with a motion-sickness-prone husband, moved completely out of my old apartment into our home, and begun the settling in process. It may seem that I have been busy, and some days I feel that way. But Lucas and I both said yesterday that it feels like our wedding was much longer than a month ago (our one-month anniversary is this Tuesday).

But what has struck me lately is how life often fades from one day to the next without my notice. My life as Charissa Holland has slowly faded into my life as Charissa Motley--I still am not entirely a Motley, I have yet to change my bank account and credit cards, but my driver's license declares that I have forsaken my former name and claimed another...and cue Motley Crue jokes here.

But it's more than that. Watching the change of seasons has a similar effect; the slow fade of summer into fall, as the leaves change and drop, the combines lay bare the landscape once more, predicating the impending winter; waking up cold, turning the furnace on for the first time and turning it off in the same week as the climate debates its allegiance to fall and summer in a matter of days.

I measure my life in weeks these days, waiting anxiously for weekends when I don't have to wake up at 5:30 a.m., when I can spend more than a few hours with my husband, when I don't come home from work with a headache and a crazy story about my day. Monday through Friday has become nearly intolerable as I attempt to adjust to the new schedule, the sharing of life with another person, and on top of it all feeling like I am constantly waiting for more, like I will feel more productive, whole, complete once I go back to school in January, once I finish my degree two years from now, once I get the house organized, once Lucas and I figure out how to live together instead of just in the same house.

And as I type this now, the day slowly fades into dusk, toward evening, into night, slipping, slipping ever-so-gently into tomorrow, and when I wake in the morning I will watch the night slowly fade into morning, the process so breathtakingly smooth that it passes before I can absorb its grandeur under the ritual of it all.