Snap By Snap

Do you have a bedtime routine? Goldie does. Each night at 10:00 pm, usually within 10 minutes give or take, Goldie gets ready for bed.
We keep her blanket stored in a basket, and she leaves it alone all day until 10pm. Then she paws over the basket and keeps at it until she has the entire thing out on the floor. She obsessively paws it, noses it, and sometimes grabs it in her mouth and pulls it until she gets it just right. Just right looks like this, tonight:
"Perfect" generally lasts for about five minutes until more pawing, nosing, and pulling is necessary to get the blanket back in shape. She works it from one side of the room to the other, getting out of breath and so frustrated that she sometimes walks away completely and gives up. But she always comes back. Or she pauses in the midst of her work and snorts out a heavy sigh and looks at us as if to say, "This is hard work!"

When we turn out the lights and go to bed, she finally quits her obsession for the night and goes to her bed.  If we're out of the house for the evening, however, she leaves the blanket in its basket. This is somehow a social project. I wonder if she knows it makes us smile each evening?

I am already hearing the mutterings of discontent from my family as they warily eye me with the new camera. "Stand over there together and smile!" "Hold that pose, don't let Goldie move!"  They never know when I will strike. It is so worth it, though, when it means that I get to keep moments like this one forever.

I'd like you to meet my new camera: The Canon Rebel XS

This is admittedly a very bottom-line digital SLR camera, but it is big step up for me! It came with a wide angle and a telephoto lens.

Nineteen years ago, Mark and I splurged on our first really nice camera, in anticipation of the birth of our beautiful baby girl. It was a 35mm Canon EOS 630. It took amazing pictures, and weighed roughly 30 pounds (well maybe not that much). And as with all film cameras, you took your shot and took your chances. I took hundreds of pictures of that poor baby, and then popped her into her car seat for a drive through the Kodak shack in the grocery store parking lot. I probably threw away a third of every roll, and yet I still have about 400 pictures of Amy's first couple of years. Truly frightening.

I've started playing around with my new camera in preparation for our vacation in a few weeks, and have been absolutely amazed at its capabilities. I mean, I've been using point and shoot digitals for over ten years, but they were all pretty basic.This camera has all the conveniences of being a digital (you can take a million pictures in search of the perfect one, and only print the one perfect shot), but it has the added "oomph" of much better optics in the lenses. The level of light and detail captured by these lenses is something I've really missed with the lower level digitals.

I've been a flower fan for a long time. As a teen I took pictures of my Dad's roses, and every family vacation includes shots of the local flowers. So naturally, as I've been playing with my new camera (and since Amy started scowling at me for practicing on her) I went outside to get some flower power.




I admit that the neighbors may now have a nickname for me like "the crazy lady with the camera in the garden." In the three days since I got my camera, I've stalked around the yard at dusk trying out new features. The begonias above are by my front door. I took a snap of the entire planter and was able to crop it down to this image. I didn't even have to enlarge anything - it's like having a microscope for a camera. I sat here on the couch, editing the pictures, and kept making Amy come over to look at the amazing results. The above level of detail is not even the full size of the image!


This is nice picture of a hydrangea blossom on its way to blossoming . . . nice picture. But then I cropped down the image to this, and was amazed again:


I'm amazed at the camera, and I'm amazed that such beauty exists right under my nose every day. I like my hydrangea (even though I call it the Drama Queen for its demanding nature) but this snap reminded me that the large blossoms are really just fractals, hiding smaller and yet smaller beautiful signatures of the creator.


The pots in the backyard saved a surprise for us this year - the Petunias returned! I thought they were gone for good and would have pulled the sprouts as weeds but Mark believed in them. And here they are! I planted only purple, but sometimes a genetic "sport" shows up, blazing individuality. The far left blossom has white at its center that I believed was a reflection, but looking at the full size image you could see that little bee feet had left trails of pollen on the velvet. How is it that such beauty flies daily under our radar!


Ferns always remind me of quiet spots from the backpacking trips of my youth. The shady undergrowth of mountain forests sometimes hid acres of silent green ferns. Each one full of fractal beauty if you had the time to look closely. I'm afraid if I had created the world, I'd be like a bad con artist and put a good bill on top of a stack of newspaper - I'd make the surface look convincing, but not spend the time where I thought people wouldn't look. But no matter how closely you look, or where you look, the creation's beauty is far, far deeper than what we see. Even with the electron microscopes and the incredible technology of our day, there is still beauty hidden in creation that we may never discover. It is an absolute and true reflection of its creator.

I can NOT wait for vacation. We leave on June 11th, and the blog is waiting for vacation pictures: http://dobbstrek2010.blogspot.com/

On a recent trip to California, Mark and I slipped away for a day at Disneyland, just the two of us.


I think just about everyone likes Disneyland, but Mark really, really likes Disneyland. When I met him, he was working at Disneyland during his freshman year of college, and our first date was at the Happiest Place on Earth. After all, we got in free, and the popcorn was cheap! On that first date we ate at the Stage Door Cafe and sat for a long time just talking and talking. We ate there again on this visit, just for fun, and we still had things to talk about.


Disneyland has changed so much since those days. Mark worked there for seven years in the 80's before finally quitting to complete his doctoral dissertation. The prices have obviously changed. In 1982, one day entrance to the park was $12, popcorn was less than a dollar, and balloons were maybe $1.25 Today, a single ticket to the park for one day will run you $62, and $87 will get you a park-hopper pass. The immense parking lot where Mark and I once lost our car in a rainstorm and ran splashing through puddles searching for it, is now California Adventures and you park in a huge parking garage.


Even though the park has gone through several reincarnations in the intervening 27 years, it is amazing how much remains the same. You can still sit at Coke Corner and listen to the piano player (and I think it's the same guy - is that possible?). The Merry Go Round and the Dumbo ride are still there. Kids still get to try their hand at pulling out the sword in front of the carousel. The Dapper Dans are still singing, and you can still buy a balloon, popcorn, and absurdly large suckers. What could be better?


And I suppose that Mark and I, in the intervening 27 years, have both changed and stayed the same as well. We're older, of course. We don't look substantially different, except for a few extra pounds and wrinkles, and yet we are different. Youthful optimism has been replaced by grateful hope. The passionate faith of our twenties has become the thoughtful, committed faith of our middle age.The butterflies in the stomach love of our courtship has become the deeper, focused love of years and has raised a daughter.  We are still nerds of the first order, only now we know it. We've gone from believing we can do anything to being assured that alone we are powerless. Who we have become is, I suppose, both surprising and predictable. After all, who can imagine how life's losses and trials will change and sculpt them through their 20's, 30's, and 40's? We lost unborn babies, a father, jobs, naivete, and nearly a home. We gained a daughter, resilience, some wisdom, and hope.


Our first date was at Disneyland in 1979 and our honeymoon was at Disneyworld in 1983. Our 20th anniversary was at Disneyworld with our daughter, and our 25th was at Disneyworld, just the two of us. You'd never know, seeing us now, how much it concerned me to marry a man who had a Disney collection. I mean, it just wasn't done! But now I hope that our 50th anniversary will be spent at Disneyland. I hope they have dancing there that day, because in our twenties I wouldn't dance when Mark wanted to. We would stand to the side and watch the elderly couples cutting up the dance floor with their glittery dresses and leisure suits. But you know what?  I'm going to learn how to dance and then we will be the cute old couple on the dance floor . . .  when we are 71 and our years together are 50.

Yes, it's true. I was once a . . . teenager! There was the awkward hair (oh, wait, that continues), the acne issues (oh, wait, that continues, too!), and the self doubt (nice that some things at least diminish). There were crushes, fights with girlfriends, fights with parents, tears, car accidents, breakups, more tears, and somehow I survived it all.

We recently had an assignment at work to write a letter of advice to our younger selves (I know, I have a very weird job), and it sent me once again into waves of nostalgia. What if you could go back in time, and talk to the younger you? What would you say? I think I would have so much to say I'd put my younger self to sleep. But fortunately my work assignment had a topic - "Learning" - so I had a limit to my ramblings. Probably a good thing.

I spent my K-12 years believing that I was not all that smart. I improved to become an average student between the ages of 10-17, thanks to my Mom helping to solve my reading problems, but I was never pegged as a smart kid. If they had AP or college-prep classes at my school, I couldn't have told you a thing about them. I was just glad I wasn't in them. I put very little effort into school. Very. Little.

Once college came around, things began to change and I found I really could achieve academically. I was shocked. In many ways, however, I had only learned to work the system. I'm sorry to say that I got A's on book reports for which all I had done was peruse the table of contents. I memorized for tests by driving to school with the textbook on the steering wheel. It wasn't until much, much later in life that true learning grabbed me. I wish it had been a part of my life so much earlier.

Below, I have copied my letter to share.


Dear Me,


Take time to explore and learn every day. You are smarter than you think you are.

It’s easy to be so busy with school, friends, work, and church that you don’t take time to learn something new: Something you don’t need to know for school; something that’s out of your usual rut. Listen to different styles of music. Read books written by authors whose lives started and ended on the other side of the world. Read things you disagree with. Take time to notice the vastness and beauty of the oceans and mountains and appreciate what they have to teach you about God’s world and your place in it.

Don’t go through life with your eyes closed to that which is different from you. You are not only smarter than you think, but you also have nothing to fear from Truth. Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” What you learn changes you – makes you more of who you were created to be. Being a learner changes you. You’ll be a better wife, mom, employee, and friend when you are a learner. And it’s funny – what you learn for school hardly ever changes your life. It’s the learning you do on your own that makes the difference.

So, open your eyes. You are smarter than you think you are.

 
Christmas is over. The tree is gone, the needles remain. The cookies are gone, the calories live on. It is now 2010, in spite of the fact that I will continue to write "2009" for months. 

In 2010 I will turn 49. My older family members would snicker up their sleeves if I were to get dramatic about this fact, but nevertheless, it's a notable year to me. My mom was 49 when she died. I know that I'm in pretty good health and most likely will live long enough to be a burden (or at least an annoyance) to my daughter, so I'm not worried. It's just that life has noticeably changed in the last two years. I get glimpses of directions my life could take if left untended, or if given a little attention.

I have never been one for New Year's resolutions. They are so appealing in theory, but then the holiday is over and the distractions of commuting, work, and what to eat for dinner take over my life once more. I may not often make resolutions, but I do like to have goals. And the older I get, the more I need them. When I was younger I think I lived more in the moment, hoping the future would take care of itself. But still I had goals. Goals to move to the next level of life: Get married, have a family, buy a house, get a degree, get a job. Things to attend to, to check off a list.

Attention is a valuable commodity. We have a limited amount, and we get to choose how to spend it every day. Children must have it in ample supply to thrive. Good marriages require it. Careers need a certain amount of it to move in the right direction. But for the most part, I squander this valuable resource. I spend too much of it in once place or another, or allow it to be fragmented into meaningless bits too small to have any effect.

I want, this year, to spend much more of my attention on God. I want to pray with complete attention to the conversation. If prayer is a two way conversation, I must be a very annoying participant. I'm constantly looking off over His shoulder and wondering what's for lunch, forgetting what I was saying. Not acceptable.

I want, this year, to give more focused attention to myself. I supposed it is stereotypical for a middle aged woman with an empty nest to suddenly be all, "me, me me." It isn't about that. But instead of wasting my time and attention by fracturing it into nothingness, I want to be intentional about my life in big and small ways. I don't want the next ten years to pass and find that I'm unhappy with what I have let happen to me. In the areas where a little attention can make a difference, I want to spend it.

My favorite photographs are the result of focused attention. A moment focused on relationship, on relaxation, a talk. Here are a few: