Car(apace)

Even after two years of sliding gracefully through stop signs and spinning in place while attempting to exit our well-glazed parking space, my husband and I had continued to question the necessity of a new set of snow tires. Was it really worth 1000 whole dollars just to be able to stop when we wanted to stop or go when we wanted to go? Then came the first genuine snowfall in November, which sent us van-skiing down a steep hill toward a busy intersection right in the middle of rush-minute traffic. That thrilling brush with disaster ended the debate. We wanted to live through another winter. So we slimmed down our bank account, handed over a hefty chunk of our savings to the hardworking folks at Les Schwab, and drove away, accompanied by the reassuring crunchity-crunchity-crunch of metal studs against ice.

And then the snow promptly quit falling. We spent nearly all of the last two months wearing down our shiny new studs on perfectly clear roads.

I'm usually the only one around here who's dreaming of a green Christmas, but the complete cessation of snow this winter has had me wondering whether that fat wad of cash would have been better spent on something useful like, say, a lifetime supply of washable markers. But then all it took was one more good snowfall and a slippery drive up a hilly country road to convince me that those new tires were worth every last penny.

Snow tires or no snow tires, however, I was grateful to avoid any extensive traveling this winter. Three years ago, as you may recall, we flew to Phoenix for Christmas, and in the process of missing our first flight on account of impassable roads, driving back home past stranded cars to buy all new tickets, spending the night in Spokane both before and after our flights, and staying at two different houses while we were in Arizona, I both packed and unpacked suitcases for our entire family six times.

Combine that with the experience of loading and unloading the portable crib, transferring and retransferring car seats, rolling and unrolling sleeping bags, slipping and sliding around the highway in winter storm conditions, and hurrying tiny children with tinier bladders through crowded airports, and you'll understand why holiday travel has, for me, lost most of its luster.

My inner pragmatist would be more than happy to swear off all holiday traveling adventures until the entire family is old enough to not only be out of diapers and car seats, but also to pack their own suitcases—and to help push the van out of a snow bank, should the occasion arise.

• • • • •

When I was a kid I used to enjoy winter travel, usually because it meant spending Christmas with my multitudes of cousins. Long road trips were always as much a part of our holiday traditions as Grandma Kvale's roast turkey, Uncle Ken's egg nog lattes, and Aunt Marilynn's "Hyill-hyill-hyill!" laughter emanating from the kitchen. Each year my family would open our gifts early and then pile into our boxy Toyota Tercel wagon for the drive to Tacoma, to my grandparents' house on the hill.

As we neared our destination in the evening, after six hours of sharing the back seat with my little brother, I would watch expectantly through the window for the brightly lit star my grandfather always set atop the roof—high enough to be seen from the freeway.

When we finally arrived at the house, I loved to run up the spiral staircase to the guest bedroom. From there, through the age-rippled window glass, I could glimpse ten thousand red brake lights and ten thousand white headlights forming a peaceful rolling stream along the interstate below.

After experiencing the speed and intensity of city traffic, the transformation seemed  surreal. Who, seeing that view, would consider the possibility that tragedy could, at any moment, interrupt that graceful slow dance through the fog? As bright and cheerful as a string of Christmas lights, rows of cars, trucks, and buses glistened under the pink-orange glow of the sodium vapor street lamps. What danger could there be in such a lovely procession?

• • • • •

As a child, of course, I never gave the road conditions so much as a second thought. I had implicit trust in my father's driving abilities and never once suspected that there might be even the slightest hint of danger in all that winter driving—not with my dad behind the wheel. Deep in the recesses of my mind lay an early memory of our brand new car being struck by an elderly lady's land yacht, but that did not shake my firm belief that accidents were distant events that happened in other places to other people.

My first true encounter with the hazards of winter travel didn't come until I was a teenager when, due to an impassable blizzard, we were forced to spend New Year's Eve in an Ellensberg Motel 6. As we set out along an ice-encrusted Interstate 90 the next day, we found ourselves watching in tense amazement as the pickup truck immediately in front of us slid out of control, started into a slow-motion spin, ricocheted off the median, struck another car, and then slipped, missing us by what seemed like inches, into the shallow ditch next to the freeway.

That's when I began to wonder if there was, perhaps, something slightly ridiculous about that annual trek over the ice and through the mountains. I began to understand that even the best of drivers can do nothing to prevent black ice, or drunk college students, or wildlife crossings. (I once watched my brother's Suburban collide with a swooping owl.) Scary things happen on the road—things beyond our control.

Every Christmas of my childhood had sent us weaving our icy way around the Palouse hills, through the Columbia gorge, over the mountain passes (chains or snow tires required), and along roadways blasted out of the rock with countless sticks of dynamite. We zipped through snow and ice and rain at historically unprecedented speeds, passing mere feet from other vehicles that raced along at equally breathtaking speeds. One unexpected bump, one careless flick of the wrist, one brief error in judgement, and goodbye family, goodbye beating hearts.

We—all of us—have been living on the edge, and yet most of us hardly consider whether this whole wintertime travel business is a good idea. In fact, most of us hardly think about driving at all, regardless of the season. Even when conditions are at their worst, we remain largely undeterred.

• • • • •

Last Monday the "check engine" light blinked on in our van, but for an entire week neither I nor my husband had time to take the vehicle in for a checkup. What was wrong with our engine neither of us knew, and on the way to school one of the kids nervously asked me if I thought our car might explode. I laughed and said I sure hoped not. How often does that really happen anyway? In my ignorance, however, I couldn't make any guarantees. But did that stop us from going where we wanted to go? Not at all. The kids must be educated, and the groceries must be hauled from afar. Driving is a luxury that most of us really cannot live without—not even at our own peril.

And it is perilous. Not to sound panicky or anything, but, well, you could die out there, you know.

As a mom with young children, I read and hear a lot of buzz about the terrible risks we take with our kids when we vaccinate them, or don't vaccinate them, or feed them foods tainted with high fructose corn syrup, or expose them to chemical pesticides, or (perish the thought) let them catch a breath of second hand smoke. But honestly, I suspect that all of those potential dangers pale in comparison to the kind of overt danger we face just driving our little ones to the mall—let alone across hundreds of miles of frozen freeway—on a snowy January day.

Stop and think about it. If there were any other behavior-related cause of death that was comparable to traffic collisions, the national outcry would be deafening. More than 6500 American children die—and tens of thousands more are injured—every year as a direct result of motor vehicle accidents. If that grim statistic were associated with a drug or a chemical or a tainted food product, you can imagine the backlash. If we could blame a corporation or the government or some other high profile scapegoat for knowingly gambling with the lives of these innocent victims, we'd all be writing letters to congress to make them stop, demanding fines, prison time, and heads on a platter.

But the thing is, even after hearing all about the risks involved, we're the ones voluntarily buckling our very own children into our minivans everyday. We're too busy stressing out about the the trans-fats that the children in the back seat are absorbing from their drive-through fries to think about the death-defying means we took to arrive at the drive through in the first place. We don't even blink when a fully loaded eighteen wheeler comes hurtling toward us at 60 MPH. We fret and worry about long-term hypothetical risks and completely ignore the immediate—but apparently acceptable—risks that are racing along in the lane next to us. Have we lost our minds?

• • • • •

If I'm reading the numbers right, traffic accidents kill more children in a single year in this country than the total number of US military deaths (combat- and non-combat-related combined) in Iraq during the three years from 2003 to 2006. Just a stone's throw from our home in Dallas, a drunk driver swerved out of his lane on Highway 183 and sent a gasoline tanker plunging off of an overpass, where it burst into an white-hot inferno and transformed the stretch of road next to the IHOP into a charred mass of unstable rebar and concrete. A few too many Budweisers and one careless driver had effectively detonated what amounted to a roadside bomb.

But I, just like everybody else, was back behind the wheel—on that very highway, no less—the same day. There was no question that the fire-blasted overpass would and must be rebuilt. Most of us read the headlines, shake our heads, and then cheerfully strap our little ones back into their car seats without a second thought. It's simply a risk that we've grown so accustomed to that we rarely think of it as a risk at all.

Most of us, after all, would rather not revert to the old covered wagon routine for bringing home the weekly mountain of groceries, let alone for heading across the mountains to visit grandma—especially during the winter months.

• • • • •

Driving at any time of year, of course, is risky—particularly if you live in a college town like mine, where roughly a third of the population consists of impatient, inexperienced, and irresponsible drivers.

Just a few months ago, a speeding car ran a red light and nearly collided with me as I was on my way home from my boys' school. And while I was in college, I had not one but two cars totaled by 17-year-old drivers—one that suddenly turned left directly in front of me on a residential street and hit me almost head-on, and one who ran a red light at an intersection and slammed into my front end with her uninsured orange Ford Bronco. Neither of those accidents happened on icy roads, and they both occurred years before anyone had ever heard of texting while driving. I've been an extremely defensive (translation: tense) driver, and an obnoxiously jumpy passenger, ever since.

• • • • •

What I've come to realize is that every time we go zipping merrily along the highway toward an oncoming car, we are defying sudden and violent death. Who of us doesn't have a few dramatic car-crash (or near-miss) stories to tell about a friend or a loved one—or ourselves?

I've spent a blazing hot afternoon stranded in the middle of a fallow field in Central Washington with my radiator punctured by a rusty, half-buried tiller—and with only a 300-pound Spanish speaking junk man and his great dane to keep me company. I've had friends hospitalized after being struck by incautious and intoxicated drivers. I've attended the funeral of a young man who fell asleep at the wheel on his way home from the university. One of my college friends lost her new husband to a wintertime car crash. The lives of the sister, brother-in-law, and baby nephew of one of my high school classmates were taken all at once by a drunk driver. Limbs and hearts have been broken on nearly every roadway in America.

And aside from the terrible human cost of driving, there are all kinds of animal casualties as well. Ten years ago, on a trip from New Orleans to Monroe, Louisiana, my husband and I drove past countless dead dogs, cats, possums, turtles, and even small alligators—a veritable natural history museum of roadkill. I know multiple people who have struck deer on the highway. The streets where we now live are polka-dotted with crushed squirrel carcasses—but then again, perhaps dead squirrels are an argument in favor of the deadly power of cars? In any case, as long as we persist in our driving habits, all sorts of traumatic events are likely to occur again.

So the question is, what keeps us going back for more?

• • • • •

Driving is, frequently, a mere matter of convenience. Even when walking or biking is a viable option, we choose driving as a quicker and easier way to get from point A to point B. Let's face it. Sometimes we're just lazy.

But often, driving is not a matter of convenience but of necessity. Unless you live in New York or Chicago and have nowhere to go beyond the fixed train routes, alternative forms of transportation are hard to come by. You might try to absolve yourself of fossil fuel guilt by taking the bus, but that does nothing to keep you off the busy roads. Besides, as my shocked children immediately discovered, buses do not have seat belts. Most American cities were not built for foot or bicycle traffic, much less for a horse and carriage. And for those of us with multiple kids and gallons of milk to haul across town, we need some kind of vehicle to help.

We also drive out of a sense of obligation. Because modern transportation has made it possible to visit distant friends and family, we feel that we must. Nobody with a functioning vehicle and some money for gas can legitimately say, "Sorry, Grandma. 100 miles is just too far to travel for Christmas."

And, in spite of the obvious dangers, most of the population isn't hitting the road in search of an adrenaline rush. Quite the opposite, actually. I'm not naming any names, but I know some people who  like to take a drive to relieve stress. There is, in fact, a whole genre of driving-for-the-love-of-it songs, typified by Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again." And even I can be carried away by that easy, free-wheelin' feelin' of watching the yellow center stripes flick past to the rhythm of a good-mood soundtrack. You just better hope that a stray moose doesn't wander across your path while you're, in the words of Son Volt, letting the "wind take your troubles away."

That brings me to what is, perhaps, the central reason for our automobile habit: it makes us feel free. "A car in every driveway" is still very much part of the American dream, and individual autonomy is arguably the reigning American value. According to American Public Media, the city of Los Angeles is home to nearly twice as many cars as drivers. It sounds ludicrous. But for us Americans, a car is more than a tool; it is a status symbol. It is more than a status symbol; it is an extension of who we are. To own a car is to hold a sense of power, independence, and importance. We select the time of departure. We set the speed. We choose the music. We decide where to go, and when to stop, and why. We are kings and queens ruling over our own little steel-and-rubber worlds. This might explain why sweet little old ladies can turn into cussing hussies when they get behind the wheel; on the highway we are tiny independent states vying for dominance, and pity the brazen fool who attempts to invade our territory. ¡Vìvà la vehicle!

So, while we may drive for convenience, necessity, pleasure, and the grand illusion of freedom, I have to wonder if even these motivations, powerful as they are, can fully explain our decision to accept the risks involved. Why are we so overwhelmingly willing to play the odds?

• • • • •

The odds themselves are, obviously, part of the answer. Even in the wintertime, you're not statistically likely to die on the way to grandma's house. For every trip that ends in a deadly crash, there are a million more that reach their destination in perfect safety. The bet is a fairly safe one. But that doesn't change the fact that it's our lives that are on the line. Even if there are a million empty chambers in the revolver, Russian roulette is still the game we're choosing to play. (C'mon, kids! Give it a spin!)

Why not stay off the roads whenever possible? Why take the gamble when the stakes are so high? For many, ignoring the risks and trusting blind fate are the best reasons they can offer. But for me the overarching reason is probably best summed up in a quote that I've heard attributed to General Stonewall Jackson: "My religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle [or behind the wheel] as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me."

In other words, the risks we take are never governed by impersonal chance. They are never automatic or meaningless. Which is to say, they are not, in the ultimate sense, risks at all; every outcome was fully planned before we were born.

The well lived life is not the one spent locked indoors, wearing a crash helmet, and popping vitamins. It is spent loving our kids, and visiting our friends, and doing our work with the confidence that comes from faith: Yea, though I drive through the turnpike of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.

This naturally raises deeper questions about the unfathomable relationship between God's sovereignty and human responsibility, but I will let the theologians and pastors expound that one more fully. I will simply say that I believe God uses indirect means, from Roman crosses to snow tires, to accomplish His ends, and that there is no contradiction between trusting God and buckling our seat belts. We are not called to express our faith by being stupidly suicidal but by living each day as we ought, in spite of the apparent danger. We can drive to school or go to battle assured that in God's hands we are as safe there—or as doomed—as in bed.

So, while purchasing expensive new tires was part of being a good steward of our family's lives, and while I may have been grateful to stay comfortably at home for the holidays, there is, perhaps, no better time than during the Christmas season to recognize that evading death is not the point of living. This life is not meant to be lived for the sole purpose of its own preservation. That momentous birth in Bethlehem was all about taking up a mortal life in order to lay it down. Because of this, we are free to take risks, even deadly ones, in order to fulfill our duties and in order to love others—which is, after all, essentially the same thing.

Sparkling

Today, our house is sparkling—not the tidy, freshly polished kind of sparkling, but the kind spangled with twinkle lights, glistening with chipped bits of tree ornaments, littered with shreds of metallic wrapping paper, scattered with glitter fallen from children's craft projects, and sprinkled with colored sugar and a fine dusting of flour all around. Very messy. Very merry. May your Christmas be so blessed it sparkles.

We Are the 99 Percent

We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.

These are stark and disturbing claims, are they not? The above is the summary statement on the home page of the "We Are The 99 Percent" website, a blog where supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement can post their stories of worry, deprivation, and suffering at the hands of the wealthiest 1 percent of the American population–the 1 percent who own and manage some of the world's largest corporations.

A tale of two Americas

I confess that I have not been following the protests closely. But the protesters' signs are big, and their complaints are loud, so it would be hard to miss their point: Corporate moguls are selfish moneygrubbers who couldn't care less about the little guy. They would rather line their own pockets at the expense of the other 99 percent of Americans than consider the economic hardships the rest of us are enduring. And while we dig ourselves deeper into private debts, they cruise carelessly above us in their private jets. Somebody (Congress, are you listening?) had better make them give back some of what they've taken from all of us.

By now, of course, we've seen plenty of opposing commentary highlighting the benefits these corporations bestow upon us Americans, and I know that I myself have enjoyed many of the goods and services that they provide. But let's grant, just for the sake of argument, that these corporate billionaires really are nothing but heartless financial dictators who would rather starve a child than lose a dollar. Let's say that they truly do care more about the bottom line than about the bread line. Let's grant, in other words, that the ugly portrait that the protesters have painted of these Wall Street Scrooges is perfectly accurate. It's not a pretty picture, is it? Wall Street has some serious penance to pay.

But now, just for a minute, let's shift our focus away from those bloodsucking CEO's and back on the protesters themselves. They are the 99 percent. Their signs say so. And they have been painting a portrait not only of Wall Street but also of themselves. You can see it on their website. You can read it in the quote up above. The contrast couldn't be starker: The 99 percent are suffering. They have no rights. They are, to put in their words, getting nothing.

Nothing. Let's meditate on that.

How impoverished, exactly, are 99 percent of the American people? How accurate is the self portrait these protesters have been painting? What if, for the sake of perspective, we took away their paintbrush and instead handed these 99 percent a mirror? What, I had to wonder, does it look like to get nothing? What does suffering look like in the US of A? What does it mean to have no rights? Well, I've got eyeballs, and so, I hope do you. So pull up on Google any Associated Press photo of the Wall Street Protesters and tell me what you see.

Living with nothing

What I see over and over again is a gathering of apparently clean, healthy, well dressed, well fed individuals carrying cell phones and digital cameras and being respectfully allowed to take over city streets to voice their opinions—even in spite of their violation of minor laws about the acceptable use of public spaces.

What I do not see are swollen, malnourished bellies. I see no open sores or untreated diseases. I see no dirty rags or disintigrating shoes. I see no one being beaten or shot or arrested merely for voicing their opposition to the status quo. Nor am I seeing that sort of thing on the streets where I live—or on any American street, for that matter. So, while appearances can be deceiving, just on the face of it the claims of the 99 percent seem suspect.

That's not to say that nobody is suffering, that nobody is underfed, that nobody is being crushed by corporate greed. That's not to say that some Wall Street corporations haven't taken merciless advantage of some of us American citizens. I do believe that more and more people in our country have been struggling to make ends meet in recent years. I might even count myself among them.

I myself have known well enough what it's like to be uninsured, to go without certain luxuries, to live "paycheck to paycheck." Our family spent several years in which my own kids were eligible for Medicaid. Just this past year we lost some of our health coverage due to the economic downturn, and even now our family fits squarely within the definition of "low income" according to federal guidelines for a family of seven. I am the 99 percent, I guess. So it's not that I think these people are completely delusional when they say that times are tough. But the question is, tough compared to what? 

I have no doubt that among the Wall Street protesters there are individuals with legitimate grievances. But do they represent the 99 percent? To ask it another way, for every 100 people in these United States, are 99 being robbed and cheated and trampled upon by Wall Street? I found that hard to believe, so I decided to do a quick search of the internet to find some reliable statistics that might show what life among the 99 percent is actually like during these dark financial times.

A better summary?

Don't get me wrong. I understand the rhetorical power of hyperbole, but is our plight truly as bad as the "We Are the 99 Percent" crowd describes—that 99 percent of Americans are, in essence, homeless, sick, starving, poisoned, unemployed, or "working long hours for little pay and no rights" and are "getting nothing"?

Exaggerated claims like these are, in part, what prompted the government of North Korea, of all places, to issue official public statements claiming that these dire conditions in the United States now prove that capitalism has failed us. Would you, the 99 percent, prefer to emmigrate to North Korea, that great land of economic equality, in order to enjoy the wealth and freedom that it has to offer? Would you trade your American poverty for their prosperity? Yeah, me neither. 

I'm not saying that we couldn't do better. I'm not saying that Wall Street is guiltless or that poverty—even relative poverty—should be ignored. What I am saying is that, before we decide to condemn greed, we might want to take a look in the mirror; before we march through the streets lamenting our poverty, we might first do well to learn what poverty actually looks like in this country. Our "necessities" look surprisingly like luxuries to most of the world's population.

If we compared our poorest citizens to the wealthiest one percent of the rest of the world, I suspect that we might be astonished by the resemblance.

As most of us know, legitimate statistics can be used, and routinely are used, to cloud the truth. So I fully realize that the following percentages are unlikely to paint a completely accurate portrait of American life. What I do hope to prove, however, is that these statistics bear very little resemblance to the portrait painted on the We Are the 99 Percent website.

If nothing else, I hope that after reading the statistics below the response that we come away with is gratitude. We Americans, we 99 percent, have been given far much more than we realize. Thanksgiving is coming up. Allow me to help you get ready:

According the US Department of Energy (2005), of all Americans at poverty level or below,

99.7% have a refrigerator

97.9% have a TV

95.2% have a stove and oven

81.7% have a microwave

74.7% have air conditioning (Really? I am now slightly envious of 74% of poor Americans.)

72.3% have one or more VCRs

66.8% have more than one TV

64.9% have cable or satellite TV (!) 

64.8% have at least one DVD player

63.9% have a clothes washer

53.1% have a clothes dryer

54.5% have a cell phone

51.7% have both a VCR and DVD player

38.2% have a personal computer

29.3% have a video game console

29.3% have internet service

28.4% have a computer printer

24.2% have more than one DVD player

22.7% have a separate freezer

17.9% have a big screen TV

(I should add that these percentages are even higher among poor families with children.)

According to the USDA,

85.5 percent (101.5 million) of U.S. households were food secure throughout 2010.

Food secure—These households had access, at all times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members.

According to National Geographic,

Americans on average have the largest homes of the 17 countries surveyed.

97% have hot running water

94% have a reliable source of heat

82% have air conditioning

85% regularly eat chicken

79% regularly eat beef

79% of Americans drive cars alone (So that's why the carpool lane is always empty during rush hour!)

67% have a dishwasher

57% have 3 or more TVs

48% have their own washer and dryer

19% have 3 or more cars per household.

16% of American homes have 10 or more rooms.

According to Pew Research:

96% of 14- to 29-year-olds own a cell phone

85% of all American adults now own a mobile phone

76% of Americans own either a desktop or laptop computer

47% own an dedicated MP3 player such as an iPod or Zune

42% of Americans own a video game console

And lastly, according to the CIA World Fact Book,

the current average life expectancy in this country is 78.3 years, compared to a global average of 67.2 years. (Throughout much of Africa, you would be doing extraordinarily well to reach age 50.)

After looking at what the majority of us really do have, I think we would do well to rewrite the summary found at the beginning of this post. If we are being honest, most of us could sign our names to something more like this:

We are the 99 percent. We drive our own cars. We have free K-12 education. We watch TV. We play games on our cell phones. We take hot showers regularly and turn on the AC in the summertime. We eat meat several times a week. We wear new clothes and have machines to wash them for us. We live long and prosper. We are the 99 percent. 

That Is Why It Is Called the "Present"

The day before my 33rd birthday I nearly died.

Yesterday morning was nothing remarkable. I had made a few loose plans to do laundry and read books with the kids. I had lunches to pack and errands to run and chores to do. I was preoccupied with a collection of quotidian details as I was driving home from my sons' school where I'd been helping with reading groups.

Just as I was starting to cross the highway to turn left at a green light, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a car flying like a bullet toward the intersection and showing no signs of slowing down.

I slammed on my brakes and lurched to a halt. My front wheels had already advanced half-way into the crosswalk the moment the speeding silver sedan shot through the red light. It was gone before I had gathered enough wits about me to honk my horn or read license plate numbers. With the sound of my heart swooshing rapidly somewhere behind my ears, I rolled forward again, trying not to let my knee shake as my foot pressed the gas pedal. I turned left, catching the eye of one of the drivers who had stopped at the red light. Her mouth was hanging open, and she raised her hands and shook her head in utter disbelief.

Death had just looked me in eyeballs, and my eyeballs were now open very, very wide. My vision, for that moment, was as sharp as shattered glass: My time is decidedly not in my hands.

Had I left the school just a split second earlier, had I proceeded from the stop sign up the hill just a moment sooner, had I driven just a hair over the speed limit on my way down that hill, I might have spent this day not enjoying birthday hugs from my children or lunch with my grandmother or a dinner out with my husband and some good friends but in a hospital bed or, worse, in a morgue.

Ironically, it's brush a death that may revive a love of life in all is mundane details. After that near escape, the fall leaves look a little brighter, the sky a little bluer, the laundry a little softer, my breath a little warmer, my family a little dearer. Life is good.

That "every day is a gift" may have been reduced to a greeting card platitude, but it's a truth nonetheless. Today I feel acutely that the mere fact of a beating heart is the gift of a lifetime.

Today I celebrate the day I was born. Today I celebrate that first day that life was given to me. But today I will also celebrate the other 12,044 days when that precious life was given to me again and again. Today is my birthday. Today I am alive. It is a very happy birthday indeed.

Why, Yes. Yes There Is a Doctor in the House.

The African elephant, I recently learned, has the longest gestation period of all mammals—22 months. That sounds painfully exhausting if you ask me. But I can tell you with certainty that the African elephant has nothing on the American PhD candidate.

Nine years ago, when we had one tiny baby (and we thought our lives were busy), we moved to Dallas, Texas, where my husband would pursue a Master’s Degree in Literature. A year later, he was enrolled in the doctoral program at the University of Dallas and was on his way to earning a PhD.

I, naïve young thing that I was, truly believed that in a mere three, or at most four, years we’d be walking away from that fine institution cradling a sweet little diploma in our arms.

I, of course, ought to have known better; I have had a college student in my household for all but a few short years of my life. I have had a graduate student in my immediate family for half my life, at least. Higher education is and has always been my bread and butter. My own father, if I’m not mistaken, was a college student for fourteen years, and I was old enough to remember when he finished his PhD. (There was great rejoicing.) So why I assumed that my husband would have no trouble accomplishing such a feat in a few short years, I do not know. Looking back now, the expectation seems completely ridiculous.

“I recognize a workhorse when I see one,” said my husband’s professor as he introduced Jayson before his final public lecture two weeks ago, “and when I took one look at Dr. Grieser’s faculty description on the website of the college where he teaches, I could see that that’s exactly what he is.”

It’s true. Only a workhorse (or maybe an elephant) would do what my husband has done. But at that moment, I wanted to stand up and tell everybody present, “You don’t know the half of it.”

For the young, childless bachelor living on nothing but student loans and ramen noodles to complete a doctorate is nothing to sneeze at, I suppose. But for the family man who does the same thing—while simultaneously retaining a full-time job, a social life, and a church life, as well as the love of his wife and five children—some special honor should certainly be added to the degree: PhDE, perhaps (Doctor of Philosophy, Extraordinaire.) Give that man an extra stripe on his academic robe, say I, and an extra tassel on his tam. It wouldn’t be too much, would it, if I followed him around town holding a flashing neon Applause sign over his head, would it? Surely not.

Plenty of people have asked me, “Isn’t it such a relief for him to be done?” And the answer, of course, is yes. But it is more than a relief; it is pride and gratitude and euphoria and fatigue, all rolled into one. If you have ever given birth to a child, you know exactly what I mean.

But just as with the birth of a child, when one kind of labor is finished, a new kind of labor begins. Much as I may wish we could take an extended vacation to celebrate the completion of this degree, I have to remind myself of the saying repeated every year at graduation by my husband's students: Omni cui multum datum est, multum quaeretur ab eo. (To whom much is given, much is required.) Jayson, workhorse that he is, had hardly taken on the title of "doctor" before he moved on to the task of planning new classes to teach and making improvements to the classes he currently teaches. He finished his glass of champagne, and then took up his books again for the work ahead. After all (as Shelley once observed), "nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon."

Now that the dissertation is complete and successfully defended, you can only imagine how good it feels to be delivered of that 250-page burden. It took my husband nine years of graduate school to bring forth that baby. Nine years. That, if you're counting, is the gestation period of the African elephant five times over. So if you notice a new lightness in his step, you now understand why.

After all these years, I am delighted to finally report that yes, there is indeed a doctor in the house.

The Birds and the Bees and the Flowers and the Trees

I have done some writing in the last month. Honest. As a matter of fact, I've written more than usual during the past five weeks. But unfortunately, all those words weren't coming together into any proper shape, which is why editing was taking far too long. I felt like I was sculpting jell-o. So rather than publish the formless, strawberry flavored blob I've been chiseling away at, I thought I'd be better off sharing something a bit more concrete to ponder instead.

Here, therefore, are 2,000 "words" from my photos this week:

A Little Local Limelight

Famous people don’t often rub shoulders with folks living in this small Idaho town surrounded by wheat fields. Red carpet premiers and star-studded galas simply don’t happen up here. So whenever some big name arrives in town, it’s almost always front page news. When Jesse Jackson came to speak at the University of Idaho last year, half the population turned out to hear him. Nevermind that half the population thinks he’s a joke. He’s famous, dadgummit, and that gets us excited.

But if the mere arrival of somebody famous gives us a thrill, you can imagine how much more thrilled we are when somebody from around here—somebody we actually know—becomes a household name.

That is why a bunch of us here in Moscow are all abuzz this weekend over our newest—and probably our biggest—encounter with fame. The J.J. Abrams/Steven Spielberg movie Super 8 is opening nationwide on Friday, and it just happens to star one of our local home-grown kids. We are more than excited; we are practically intoxicated. This sort of thing just doesn't happen here.

I remember listening to NPR while washing the dishes in my kitchen in Dallas one day when an album review came on the air. “Our next artist hails from Moscow, Idaho,” said the announcer. I stopped scrubbing. Nobody had ever mentioned my home town on a Dallas radio station before. Who on earth could they be talking about? “Josh Ritter’s newest album, The Animal Years…”

Wait. What? Josh Ritter is a musician? I know that guy! Well, sort of. He’s in my junior high yearbook! I used to go to the Lutheran church with his family!...Whoa. So, of course, I had to look him up online where I discovered that he’s actually made something of a name for himself on the folk/pop music scene. And that made this Moscow girl feel mighty proud. I like to see my home town on the map from time to time, and I know I'm not alone.

When Sarah Palin's name went global during the last election, our town—well, half of it at any rate—was happy to remember her as having spent her college years here in Moscow.

When track star Dan O'Brien made sports headlines when I was a kid, our local university named its outdoor track after him. We claimed him as ours.

And then there’s N.D. Wilson who graduated from high school with me (lo, these many years ago) in our little class of 17 and now lives just down the street. And he is a bestselling author who has appeared on a National Geographic special and the Today Show. Every time Nate's work makes the news somewhere, we small towners who know him immediately start posting links all over Twitter.

Successful people are impressive. There’s no denying it. We get a charge out of our little brushes with fame. We’ve all heard people tell those long stories in which some chance encounter with a rock star is the punch line of the whole narrative. And most of us actually like to hear those stories told. (Count me among them.) If you shake hands with Alice Cooper at a Target store in Phoenix as my husband did many years ago, you’re going to tell people about it. And if you have a movie star as one of your acquaintances, you and I both know that that tidbit of information will find its way into plenty of casual conversations.

And I think all of that is just fine, to a point. It’s inspiring to watch friends succeed. We love our hometown "heroes," we love to tell their stories, and we especially love to be somewhere within their orbits. There's something just plain fun about being little moons to their sun—satellites that are just near enough to reflect some of the glaring spotlight; the higher their stars rise, the brighter we ourselves seem to shine. But sometimes (maybe more than sometimes) the glow of that limelight turns us a bit more green than it should. To be honest, when astonishing success comes close to home, it can be subtly tempting—all too easy to start thinking that hey, it could have been me. The thought, fleeting though it may have been, has crossed my own mind more than once.

But no. Actually, it couldn't have been me. And to think so would poison the delight of seeing our friends being publicly recognized. Far better to rejoice with them and for them. Far better to enjoy the show than to stupidly regret not being a part of it. It is inspiring to watch a friend succeed. And that, I think, is the reason for all the excitement over tomorrow's release of Super 8.

It’s been entertaining and a bit surreal to see Joel Courtney, who attends our sons’ school and whose family has been part of our church community for years, on the cover of Entertainment Weekly and showing up next to Steven Spielberg on MTV. That cute kid with the bed head who used to sit in front of us in church is a movie star? And we’re not just talking about a bit part in a low-budget, limited-distribution art-house flick. We’re talking about the lead role in what some reviewers are calling the must-see movie of the summer. It’s a bit hard to process.

But most of us who know him and his family are thrilled. We know a movie star! We know somebody who knows Steven Spielberg! I can’t scroll through my facebook news feed without finding link after link to reviews and interviews about Super 8. And I can’t say that I mind. I could take a ride on my high horse and ask what the big deal is. I could wonder aloud why everyone is so worked up about this. After all, it’s not like he found the cure for cancer. It’s not like he’s some kind of genius. It’s just a movie, for pity’s sake.

But that wouldn’t really be the truth. For us, it’s not just a movie. It’s our movie. It’s hard to say how long the thrill will last or whether we’ll get used to seeing our local boy’s face on billboards and movie posters all over the country. But for now, we’re enjoying the ride. Joel’s success feels, in some small way, like our own.