Playing Red Light, Green Light

Our daughter Sarah was up early today. So were all of us, actually – with me, that's a fact of life, while Martha had to go in early to cover for one person who couldn't get into Minot due to our heavy snowfall this weekend, but Sarah woke herself up at about a quarter to seven after I'd bathed (oh, right now, you have to bathe in our house for we're having shower head issues) and was starting my Bible study in conjunction with having breakfast of a Shaklee 180 strawberry smoothee, coffee, and milk when Sarah met Martha and then me. She said she was waiting until I'd gotten done with writing in my journal before asking to play with me … but I think God will understand play time is important.

So Sarah and I took turns being the light in several games of “Red Light, Green Light”. You know, the game where a person or group of people approaches a person as their back is turned and then they turn to say “red light” and the person walking has to freeze or they go back to the beginning. It was fun to do, that and then spinning her around. Jeffrey I still had to wake up this morning, but all of us I'd say were livelier than usual. And as it was MY turn to take Sarah and Jeffrey to school, there were really no problems. Even though I had to bring Sarah her “music shoes” (music and gym and library all insist you not wear your snow boots in there) before work, and I was glad to do it as I had time after doing today's BURST exercises – warm up, three twenty-second workouts of three different exercises interspersed with breaks, then cool down.

Exercise is supposed to generate those natural feel good endorphins, and they do, but when you're down it's not easy to know how to deal with that. And in the middle of the nineteenth century, when “depression” wasn't even diagnosed it was something people had to live through day by day, colloquially known as The Hypo, or melancholy. And in Noah Van Sciver's black and white graphic novel by the same name (ISBN 9781606996195), we see how a string of repeated failures led none other than Abraham Lincoln when he first arrived in Springfield to seek some grand glorious thing to do, or failing that, a grand exit out of this life. Oh yes, there's the text of an 1838 suicide note attributed to him, and the account of an 1842 duel I've only read about in How to Win Friends and Influence People. Which I am on my annual re-reading of this month; it's got 31 chapters, so it works great.

“Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires.” Reviewing my accomplishments and lack thereof up to this past weekend, I have to ask myself: am I? Sunday morning Krista – boy, am I going to miss having her as my teaching assistant, as she graduates high school in two months – and I had Sarah along with six other first graders in Parable Playhouse and while I believe we accomplished reading and acting out the story with puppets (note to self: DO NOT utilize a radio play as a puppet script without significant edits) I find myself doing way too much second guessing. Sarah, Jeffrey, and I went to Story Time at Main Street Books after his soccer practice was canceled – or it's ended, I still have to check on that – and with Clare (another high school graduate in May) the kids took in a Pinkalicious story – and made crowns for St. Patrick's Day, essentially bands around their heads balanced by one red and one green shamrock each.

I need to be sympathetic, David