Twenty - Part 3

Part 1
Part 2

When we were 21 years old, we accepted that a wedding reception involved a nicely decorated church fellowship hall or gym,
punch and cake,
church-approved background music,
and if you were really on the cutting edge....a picture slideshow.
And not much else.
 
Back then there were plenty of relatives and friends to hug.  We got almost nothing to eat while visiting with everyone and woke up in the middle of the night at a bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere starving to death.  I deeply regretted not having more formal photos taken of the groom's side of the family that had assembled from parts unknown across the country. There is a photo of Robb fake-dancing with my Mom.  We had fun....I mean...we had pulled off the wedding part and were very relieved. But it was a buttoned-down affair, reflective of our theology at the time.

Fast forward 20 years and we found ourselves once again in a church.  But this time, there was no question about having fun.  This was a party. And Robb had thought of everything.  For him, God is in the details.

He hired Fayetteville's poet laureate, Clayton Scott,  turned food-truck-chef of Best Frickin' Chicken to cater with chicken and waffles on the menu.  Their secret maple cream gravy is no longer available on the menu, but Robb got him to make me my own delicious batch because he knew how much I love it!  Long-time friend Derek from Core Brewery brought kegs of delicious local beer.  Samantha, who is one of the single most interesting and beautiful people I have ever met in my life, created the cake with a nod to our original wedding cake, with gorgeous flowers on top and candied rose petals on the cupcakes.  Scott was emcee and spun the tunes ...a masterful mix that included personal favorites and crowdsourced dance-tunes...while his exquisite Julie arranged all the flowers, including the bouquets and boutonnieres...using daisies and roses, our original flowers.  The whole thing smacked of thoughtful planning, generosity, joy, collaboration, inclusion, and un-self-conscious celebration.

Our friends Derek and Natalie spoke words of blessing over us in the form of toasts. Their words reminded us again that the love we have for each other, the life we are building, isn't just for ourselves, but instead, brings good to our community, both in and out of our church.

Somewhere in all of this, I was getting bits and pieces about the secret Facebook Event Page where the collaboration had run wild since March.  That's right...for almost five months, this joyous scheming had been simmering away.  There had been a moment when I glimpsed the page open on Robb's computer and I saw the picture at the top of the page from our wedding day, and I asked him what it was, and he had fumbled for an answer.  I chalked it up to "the surprise" and didn't think much else about it.  Little did I know of the playlist suggestions, group-thinking, and clandestine virtual high-fives that were going on under my nose as each piece of the puzzle fell into place.

What I did know was that something wonderful was becoming obvious:  My husband, who finds it so difficult at times to be vulnerable, had dropped all masks while planning this event with everyone. He was telling the truth when he wrote on the event page: "If you ruin this surprise, I will never speak to you again."  But he was also bringing people along on a grand adventure. Instead of acting as a lone wolf, he shared the whole project, inviting everyone in on the fun.  Creativity IS leadership, and he was building trust and bonds with our children and with everyone involved with the event.  Who does something like this unless they are an extraordinary person?  He believes deeply in the comedy and the fairy tale of the gospel and he has a gift for keeping child-like wonder alive for people who sometimes drift out of Narnia and think they've outgrown it.  That is what fuels him.  That is the consistent, stubborn, nearly insane assertion he has been rock-steady about since I met him: this belief in God's grace as the transformational element above and beyond all we could ask or imagine. So why not throw a perfect party for the love of his wife?  Why not pastor a church tirelessly with a full time job as well? Why not help a stranger in need?  Why not welcome all to the communion table? Why not attempt to wade the water of politics with love in your heart for everyone?  Why not believe the Cleveland Browns could win the Super Bowl?   All is grace.

If he had a twin, separated from him at birth, it would be Natalie.  They are wired so similarly and appear so differently.  So it is no wonder that my beautiful friend was intricately involved in the whole thing, I couldn't possibly explain all that she did, except perhaps that she "got it."  She knew what he was shooting for and worked to make it all happen.

 We never learned to dance.  It was "not done" at weddings by most in our circles and there are no dances at Christian schools, either.  I would fumble badly through even the Chicken Dance.  It is kind of a metaphor, really, for how we learned to be in the world: some unfortunate mix of my personality type, circumstances and lousy theology had kept me for years under the impression that emotions must always be expressed neatly and tidily and our bodies aren't to be trusted as a medium of tidy emotional expression.  But looking around, I was easily reminded that everyone was here for joy and not one person in the room would judge us. We could dance like David and there would be no snooty Michal to ruin the fun.  So we danced the night away.   Which suited my parents just fine, because my parents are nothing but smooth and elegant on the dance floor and Robb was sure to include "their song" in the playlist.

Our Charleigh was born for dancing.  I asked her where she learned to dance like she does and she turned her chin and said, "I just make it up."   Her athleticism and fully-committed attitude had us in stitches.  I tried to keep up with her once and ended up with burning thigh muscles and a river of sweat running down my back.  But how we laughed!  And our friends!  I knew I could count on them to keep that party swinging. I could watch them dance for hours and my sides burned from laughing.

At the end of the evening,  our friends whisked us out the door without letting us help clean up.  Their send off was a sweet detail:  At our wedding, I dreamed of being sent away under a shower of rose petals, of course captured iconically by the photographer.  But our florist forgot the rose petals, and instead, I have a photo of 300 people outside a church that always reminds me of the frankly awkward scene in the Sound of Music when the partygoers wave to the children and echo their "Goodnight."  It always bothered me.   (the movie and the omission of the rose petals. Equally.)

So of course, my husband remembered the rose petals.  Of course he did.   And Nikki captured it all.

And then he said,
"Are you ready for one more surprise?"

Homecoming

It was a harried and anxious woman who flew out of XNA airport on Thursday morning. No fewer than 18 lists filled sticky notes on my MacBook's desktop. With the show happening this week, going away for a weekend was poor timing, but Robb was class president of his college class and a 15 year reunion just seemed like something he ought to attend.  It had been 10 years since we were on campus, but I suspect all the ways we have changed in the last 6 years really made it seem like longer.  We kept trying to find a word to describe how we were feeling about going back, but nervous wasn't quite right.


Some of my readers knew me then. Some of my readers know what it was like to attend a Bible college. It would take a book to fully describe it. I suggest Kevin Roose's Unlikely Disciple (which left me howling in helpless laughter). Ours were even stricter rules than those wild students at Liberty University. Curfew at 10 on school nights, midnight on the weekend. Lights out for freshman at 11:30.  Freshman couldn't go on single dates. I wore a skirt or dress to class, guys wore dress pants and collared shirts. Upperclassman had to wear a jacket and tie.  We attended chapel every day and church on Sunday morning and evening and prayer meetings on Wednesday night. We were required to be active in some form of ministry service and to share our faith for a certain number of hours.  We were required three one credit classes in sharing our faith, in fact, which is money I would really like to have back, please and thank you.  You had to have your room clean by chapel time (10 am) and your bathroom clean by the end of the day. You could not hold your boyfriend's hand on campus or kiss or any other form of public display of affection.  Guys hair had to be short, above the ears, and thy could not wear facial hair. We couldn't attend movies and smoking or alcohol was a clear no-no. Some offenses resulted in fines. Some of the biggies would have meant expulsion.  Most of the rules I kept faithfully.  Several, I broke egregiously.

What I know now, these 15 years later is that the breaking and the keeping of those rules was equally sacred.    The slow, plodding discipline of cleaning the bathroom and the wild free-falls into God's grace, tasting forbidden fruits gave me a gift that not everyone experienced.  I was not the student who couldn't understand the value of the rules and spent their whole time chafing against them and lost the opportunity to focus on anything other than getting out of there.  And equally important, I was not the student who believed that my standing in heaven was bonded to my spotless record in the Office for Student Development.  Knowing that I was a sinner, having the five dollar fine for kissing my boyfriend on campus (or rather, getting caught) kept me from the worst kind of pride...the insufferably self-righteous students (usually girls) who were shooting for perfection and thought they could hit it. (The guys, on the other hand, thought their standing in heaven was bonded to if they believed the right things about the Bible and it's teachings, thus resulting in the nearly constant rounds of theological ping-pong)  I arrived on campus as a freshman one of those girls.  I left as a married student, a true follower of God, with my sense of humor fully intact.

I suspect that going back was odd because Robb wears an earring and a tattoo. He is outwardly branded with a different kind of Christianity than we were taught there.  We are no longer subscribers to our denominational teaching.  No longer "in the fold."  We went beyond what we were taught.  Planted a church that values much different things than we were taught to value.  In short, we break a lot of the rules.

But things change. Even when they stay the same.  The rules at BBC are no longer the same. The students wear jeans to class. They boys have facial hair. The girls are allowed to be security guards. And most of the students don't come from The Denomination anymore. You think, driving on campus, that you will be going back in time. But you aren't.  Kids are standing around with cell phones, and even if the dorm smells the same, now the lounge has an actual television in it. 

I don't exactly know what I'm trying to say with this post, only maybe, that we thought we might be going back to visit as prodigals, and discovered instead, that we were products of our school.  That we felt at home there with people we loved then and still love now.  That without our time on that beautiful old campus...(which used to be a monastery) we would not be who we are now. It was a precious gift to go back, to remember.  To think again on all the ways that God guided us.  It deepened our faith and our confidence in what we are doing with our lives, and why we get up in the morning.  It was good for our souls.  It was sweet to go home.

What the Heck is Bakelite?

Without fail, every time I scan the jewelry racks at my local thrift stores, I am searching for something in particular....shades of cranberry red, pumpkin orange, a mottled green, a toasted yellow. The average buyer thinks it's just old plastic that they are seeing on handles of silverware, bracelets, handles of toasters and tea-kettles, cases of radios, cameras, game pieces and dice, pool balls, furniture pulls, and knobs on chrome casseroles and coffee pots.  But it is not just plastic, exactly.  It is Bakelite....

or polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride, is an early plastic. It is a thermosetting phenol formaldehyde resin, formed from an elimination reaction of phenol with formaldehyde, usually with a wood flour filler. It was developed in 1907 by Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland. (thank you Wikipedia)

Bakelite does not conduct heat and has been designated as a National Historical Landmark Chemical for being the worlds first synthetic plastic. It can be carved, but has no mold marks like you normally see on a modern piece of plastic.  It yellows with age in a distinct way that collectors recognize quickly.

My first encounter with Bakelite came in a pumpkin orange bracelet I bought at a garage sale in Michigan for about a dollar.  That was when eBay was hot and I was quickly able to research it, learn the tests for bakelite and immediately sell it for around 45 dollars as I recall.  After that, I was hooked on Bakelite and have looked for it ever since.  I've had many bracelets over the years, flatware, earrings, chromeware and furniture pulls.  There is just something about it that collectors love...and I am with them.

You can test Bakelite in several ways:  my favorite it to dip it in hot water and see if it brings out a smell of formaldahyde.   Other ways include using Formula 409 cleaner on q-tip or simichrome polish swabbed across a piece to see yellowing on the cotton swab.  The hot-pin test is naughty and should not be applied because it ruins the piece when the tester heats up a straight pin with a match and then pokes the item to see how it is affected by heat.  I find non-Bakelite bracelets with burn marks in them all the time from people testing them this way.  When you become more familiar with Bakelite, you can do the a simple visual and tactile test, looking for light scratches that new plastic doesn't have because it isn't old enough. Bakelite is also heavier than new plastic.  It is dense and makes a gorgeous sound when two true Bakelite bracelets clink together.

While a modern plastic bangle has little value, a Bakelite collector expects to pay as much as 5000 dollars for a rare, carved, inlaid or extra large bangle.   Of course, with those kind of possibilities there are fakes and reproductions, so you have to be cautious.

Bakelite is still used today in everyday things like brake pads and cooking pan handles, but not for decorative items because it is labor intensive to make. Searching for old Bakelite is one my favorite treasure hunts.  You never know when or where you will find it, but I assure you, I am always looking. 



(All of the pictures included are items I have sold in my etsy store.  I have one bracelet available currently found here.)

Things I Love

If you visit my actual blog, not just read it in a blog reader or on facebook or whatever, you may have noticed the little widget (I love that widget is an official word) on my sidebar.  I have one that shows stuff in my own Etsy shop up in the tabs across the top, but I really love the one on the side because it shows off the things I have noticed in my travels through Etsy-land and marked as favorites.

The reason this is so cool is that when my birthday or some other gift-giving holiday rolls around, my sweet husband scrolls through this magic assortment and buys me presents!  Which is why I am really careful about what I mark as a favorite;  some people just "Heart" things willy-nilly, but my favorites are almost more curated than my own shop.   

At the top of my list is this necklace that Robb bought for me for Christmas.  It's pretty obvious why I would be drawn to china. And up-cycling (that's when you use something old to make something new but better...it's not up-cycling if you are just making more junk to say that you used junk...that's why regretsy.com is in business).   Broken china jewelry isn't rare, but I think that The Broken Plate has a great take on this kind of jewelry.  It has a modern feel that isn't too granny.  It's all about the china and how great it is;  it's not, "Oh, I'm so cool...I used a plate in my jewelry."  It's a subtle difference, but a good one. I'm sure there are lots of copy-cats wrapping up broken shards into jewelry, but this artist has a consistently beautiful product.

The other plus about this seller is that she is wildly successful.  I love seeing sellers that are really making their craft work for them and setting a great example for the rest of us how to do it.  Juliet Ames is doing just fine without my plug for her.  I love the fact that the same person that made my necklace made one that Rachel Ray is wearing.   Find out more about her here:  http://ibreakplates.com.