Posterity 2.0… 2?

I’m re-posting a blog entry from not long ago, as it reveals what is still fluttering around in my mind concerning technology & me. I do so with both a pit in my stomach and a half-smile on my face, as my husband just made me aware that his blog somehow got deleted last week. He doesn’t know how it happened, and I am in shock. How do you delete an entire blog? I don’t even know how to delete mine on purpose… and his happened by accident. It should definitely not be quite that easy to do such a thing. Yet it makes some of the questions I ask in “Posterity 2.0” a little more interesting I suppose…

The other reason I’m re-posting is because I am taking a break from social media that will last at least this coming semester, if not indefinitely. It will be an experiment of sorts. I look forward to discerning how the lack of Twitter and blogging begging for my consistent attention will affect my student brain. We shall see. This post was one of my more enjoyable ones to write, so I thought it fitting for the occasion.

Till…

__________________________

Originally posted on April 6, 2011

Maybe this idea hails from movies and books, or perhaps it lies in family stories from of old, but I often imagine my kids one day discovering a dusty attic chest filled with letters and writings of mine/my husband’s. They would acquaint them with us in ways which speech would not allow. An organizational bin is already home to piles of journals filled with my own penned chronicles of life. We have some letters from our first few years together. I hope to have more.

But what of our “online life”? 

Last week I spent some time scrolling through my personal Twitter feed. I feel a little sheepish (and rather vain) to admit that reading through many of my tweets caused me to laugh aloud. Not unlike poring over pages of handwritten scrawl in old journals, my tweets evoked memories galore. Yet unlike the allowance of a physical diary, tweeting forces this apologetically verbose, wannabe blogger (oughtta-be grad school wordsmith) into dire straits of brevity. 140 characters constrains my usual uninhibited vernacular eruptions–which are being exhibited this very moment–into a tiny compartment. Happy remembrances of life have been kindled in looking back upon stores of writing and typing alike. I can pull one repository down from a shelf, while the other sits on a ginormous server out there… somewhere? They are both me, are they not? 

Although I have many handwritten journals filled with much pondering, prayer, and processing (which would give my children glimpses into their mother’s life) I also have a blog. My husband has one too. What of them? 

Blogging and tweeting may be generally less transparent, while journals and letters delve into recesses of myself I wouldn’t dare share online. But they are both personal (albeit in different ways), both aesthetically expressive of their creator.

My grandparents, my parents, didn’t blog. Didn’t tweet. Will their dusty attic chests filled with letters be our dusty terabyte hard drives backed up with blog posts?

Could I make both? Could I leave both for future generations to one day find? 

I dearly love the sadly waning medium of handwritten letters. Mail. I daresay I enjoy Twitter and blogging too, however. One medium uses pen and ink, limited only by the number of pages in a journal’s binding. The other employs Helvetica font, and allows for infinite scrolling.

Maybe I will print out our tweets. Perhaps I will tea-stain the papers impressed by our modern Canon printer’s CMYK color ink. I could burn the edges with a candle. Then they could be thrown into the attic chest to collect their own dust. Would that fill our digital discourse with nostalgia? 

Will the medium matter? Or will the writer’s content [his/her faults and foibles, digitizations and delights, joys and jaunts] found in the dusty attic chest effect heartwarming insight, regardless of cursive or typeface?

Big Feet, Little Feet

Big Feet

• Yesterday evening, after a particularly full, event to next event-to next event-to next event etc. few days, my husband and I collapsed on our couch. He stretched out on one end, propping his feet upon me as I sat on the couch’s opposite end. Tiredness had befallen us quickly. I absentmindedly began kneading my fatigued spouse’s feet as we chatted. Perhaps it was because I was quite so drowsy, but my mind began to wander as I studied my husband’s feet. 
• As I scrutinized, I began to consider them. I had never noticed their shape, really. It was like I was looking at the feet of someone with whom I was newly acquainted. For some reason, looking at his feet made me realize I have much yet to learn of my husband. 2+ years of marriage (prayerfully many more to come) and I don’t yet know my husband’s feet. His hands, yes. Their strength and masculinity I noticed the first weekend we met. I wonder what new things of him and his life I have yet to discover.
• He asked–smiling at me in the way only he does–what I was doing, perusing so diligently his lowermost extremities. I simply told him what was swimming through my head. He laughed a little, continuing that me-only smile, and continued his rest. 

Little Feet

• The 6 y.o. has a friend who’ll be with us all this week. We had decided last week we’d have a day to paint nails soon. After playing imaginatively upstairs for a bit, with hot pink and sparkly purple shellac in hand, they bounded downstairs and shyly asked me to paint their nails. The glee appeared on their faces when I agreed.
• As I played mani-pedicurist for the last half hour, they mused back and forth about whether or not I should paint a heart on their big toes, or maybe purple polka dots on top of the pink base, or stripes! When they beheld the lovely sheen of the fuchsia’s second coat, they decided to leave their toes plain.
• As for their hands, something must have compelled them to branch out a bit…

No Settler of Disputes

This nanny would like to state for the record that she does not consider dogs to be legitimate witnesses in settling disputes between 6 and 8 year olds.

Especially not this dog. Pepper is loyal. Pepper is loving. Pepper will give you the saddest puppy dog eyes, laying with her head on the ground beneath her paws, looking up at you with her round, brown globes. Sweet as she is, this makes her no settler of disputes. She just wants a cheeto.

Scene: Children and dog running about, zigging into the kitchen, zagging around the Apple computer, singing a song from “Tangled,” but inserting the dog’s name into the lyrics in random places.  Vibrato sounds from the 8 y.o. The 6 y.o. echoes back.  They stop singing momentarily to discuss which person and canine is playing which “Tangled” character. Their tones, serious, quickly turn to brother-sister bicker-banter. I listen in to see if nanny restitution is necessary when I hear…

6: No you should be Flynn Rider! Or maybe Pepper could be…

…More hushed bicker-banter. Volume increases. Intonation rises and falls…

8: But PEPPER heard me! She understands, she can back me up!

I had to step in to calm the waters at this point. The jury is still out on Pepper’s testimony.

Death by Reference

A fifteen year old boy from my church died in a tragic accident last week. I didn’t know him personally nor ever had the pleasure of interacting with him since we belong to a rather large church. Yet my husband and I attended the funeral, and the somber atmosphere was felt as soon as I walked into the sanctuary.

I found myself tearing up at several points during the service, and even just sitting quietly, waiting for it all to begin. I wondered why I was so deeply affected during the moments my eyes were welling, despite never having met the boy in the casket outside. In part, I was certainly “weeping with those who wept” as part of my church family. Being part of the family of God means all other Christians are family: brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers. I should feel loss when others lose because of this.

The circumstances reminded me of my grandma’s funeral. She is the closest person to me who has died in my 20+ years of life thus far.  And yet, even at her funeral, the harder part for me was watching my mom cry. I remember my mom viewing her mother–dressed in her favorite color, purple–one last time, laying in her casket.  She cried and hugged my dad’s neck tight.  Seeing this caused me to cry and put a hand on my mom’s arm.  It was harder for me to see my mom losing her mom, and also to think about losing my mom.  As close as my mother was to hers, I’m pretty sure that she and I are yet closer. I couldn’t imagine losing her, and that made me weep even harder.

At this week’s funeral, the youngest brother of the deceased said a few sweet words. I noticed a dear friend blotting away tears as the little boy spoke. I began to drop tears from my eyes too, thinking about her two sons, thinking about the younger having to process through losing his older brother.  Then I began to think about what it would be like to lose someone so close to myself, and I gripped my husband’s knee. He probably didn’t know that’s what caused my tears.

I seem to experience death by referencing losing someone else closer to me than who has really died. I don’t know why. When I write that down, it seems odd, like I’m taking away from the one who is no longer. Yet I don’t know what it’s like to feel that type of loss, and for some reason my mind just begins this referencing, unwittingly.

I’m only in my mid-twenties, and as a friend reminded me recently, the day will surely come that I will be the one experiencing deep, personal loss. A little like, “you’ll understand when you’re older…”  I think that’s true.

Our prayers go out to this grieving family. I long for the day that every tear will be wiped from our eyes.

Father’s Day ‘11

Happy Father’s Day, to all the dads in my life.

To mine:

To my dear father-in-law, and to the future father of my children:

To my friend, who’s faithful fathering is an encouraging inspiration:

To my little brothers who’ll be fathers one day.

One sooner:

one later: 

To my spiritual father, who has always pointed me to my true Father:

I’m grateful for all of you!

(All photos in this post were taken by Kori Hoffman)

Glow

I love how the morning light made this photo glow.

As a still pretty newbie photographer, shots like these that have some special aspect just by catching light at the right moment are rare. I don’t have too many. But I really love the way this one turned out. Again, this shot is SOOC except for a tiny bit of sharpening. I wanted to leave it as is because, well, it isn’t often that I can do that.