Saying "Yes".

“ Surely you know what a kiss is?” she asked, aghast.
“I shall know when you give it to me,” he replied stiffly, and not to hurt his feelings she gave him a
thimble.
-J.M. Barrie

When I was little I was in love with the character of Peter Pan. I dreamed of having grand
adventures with the exciting, charming boy in Neverland. I even wrote him a letter or two, the way many children write letters to Santa Claus.

As I grew older (but never up), my determination to go to Neverland subsided, but J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan remained one of my favorite stories. A love of this story was one of the many things that I found Dane Gustafson and I had in common after we started dating in December of 2009. In fact, he at one point told me how he had conducted “Panning classes” with his sisters when he
was little (this involved things like sword fighting, tree climbing, ect.).

It was with this in mind that I purchased a thimble during the semester I spent in Oxford during
spring, 2009. It was a wonderful semester in so many ways, but also difficult for me and for Dane: we had only been on two dates before I left the country for sixth months. We hadn’t said the words, “I love you” yet, but as my house-mates might be able to attest, it was already painfully obvious by the way I couldn’t stop talking about him, many letters we wrote and mailed to each other, and the endless hours we spent video-chatting on Skype in the middle of the night. Nor had we experienced our first kiss yet. I would see Dane during his birthday week shortly after my return to the States and I thought, just maybe, I would give him the thimble I had bought-and the kiss that went with it(hoping that he would get the reference to one of our favorite stories).

What actually ended up happening on that birthday week in May blew us away.
Dane and I had been having such an incredible week. We stayed up late and woke up early: soaking each other in after the long months apart.
It was about 2 a.m., the early morning after Dane’s birthday. For his gift, I had written and bound a short story for him. We were in the living room, talking and listening to old 40s romance songs (we share a love for that era) when I realized that I hadn’t even given him his present yet.

I went to the guest room to get it, and saw the bag that held the thimble I’d bought in Wales a few months ago. I took a deep breath and grabbed both, not yet sure if I’d have the guts to give him the thimble’s companion gift: I had never kissed anyone before and didn’t really know what I was doing. Instead of presenting him with the story right away, I gave him the thimble first, nervously. I tried to play it off like a souvenir from England. However, when he poured what was in the bag out into his palm, his eyes got wide and the electricity in the room seemed to surge. In that moment I knew there was no going back. He knew that I knew that he knew for what that tiny object stood. So very slowly, we leaned towards each other. Old Big Band tunes played in the background as we pressed our lips together for the first time: a shy, sweet kiss (it was his first, too).

“I can’t believe you just did that,” Dane said just a few minutes later, his tone painted with astonishment. Slowly, he pulled out his wallet, opened it, and drew out a tiny thimble that was in one of the compartments and showed it to me. “I was planning to do the same thing….I can’t believe you just did that,” he repeated, shaking his head.

Later that week, he would give me his thimble and tell me that he loved me
(with words, for the first time).

I couldn’t believe the odds: how is it that two people would plan something like that, the same way and time? He later told me he had always thought it would be romantic to do, but had never thought he would find a girl who would even understand the gesture. He assumed I might appreciate it, being a J.M. Barrie fan. But even so, he never could have foreseen what had happened, either.

This is only one incident, out of countless others before and since, that have made it so clear to me that Dane is my person in this world. However, this is the one that you need to know about in order to understand how Dane asked me to marry him.

The Proposal

Friday night Dane told me that he was planning to come over on Saturday morning and that he would let himself in and see me in the morning. Saturday was our two year dating anniversary, and I went to bed excited about seeing him first thing in the morning and celebrating the next day.

Sleepy-headed with eyes tightly shut, I heard footsteps creaking down the hallway around 7:30 on Saturday morning. My door opened and my mattress sank down. I rolled over groggily and saw Dane sitting on the edge of my bed. He smiled at me, looking wide-awake and handsome and holding a beautiful bouquet of red roses. He rubbed my back softly and told me I was “so pretty” (even though I wasn’t really feeling that way first thing in the morning).

He leaned down and whispered: “I’m going to go make us some tea. You go ahead and get ready and then we can go.”

“Go?” I asked, confused. “We’re going somewhere?”

He just nodded mischievously and kissed me on the forehead before heading to the kitchen. We ended up driving to Dahlonega, GA, a lovely mountain town about 35 minutes from my house. Dahlonega has a great square and is a big part of my childhood, being really close to one of my family’s favorite camping destinations. We had breakfast at a terrific café that we’ve been to before (Picnic Café & Dessertery), and had such a sweet time chatting, walking around, and holding hands.We also had something really funny happen when we went into an Antique store and didn’t realize (aside from a weird smell) that there was any kind of emergency until a fireman saw us walking down one of the aisles and said: “Maybe yall should leave.” (in a typical Southern, casual manner).

We talked a lot that morning about all kinds of things, some of which concerned love, life, where we’d been and things we wanted to do: we were both very warm and smiley when we got back to the house.

In the middle of our anniversary date, we had planned kind of a family date on Saturday as well: my mom, dad, Dane and I were all completely excited about the new Sherlock Holmes movie, and went to see it together in the early afternoon. (It was very, very good by the way. Go see it
if you haven’t).

After the movie was over, Dane brought me back to the house and told me that he would give me a call when it was “safe to come over.” For some background, something that he and I sometimes
do on special date nights is cook a nice meal together, light some candles, and clear out some space for a dance floor to dance together. We especially do this on “17th” dates. Last month on the 17th, I cooked a dinner for us because Dane had just started his new job and was really tired, and this month he was planning on doing the cooking. However, all week he had been very mysterious about what he planned to make and kept threatening Chick-fil-a.

I got dolled up and waited for the phone to ring. Finally, I was notified that I could come. When I opened the door I felt a little breathless. The lights were dim and there were candles everywhere. One of our favorite songs was playing. He took my hand and led me into the dining room where the table was decorated with vines and leaves and twinkly-lights. For dinner he had made asparagus, corn on the cob, and lobster, something I’ve never really had on its own, but had been wanting to try. I was blown away by the efforts he had taken to make everything so beautiful and magical. Dinner was delicious and wonderful (aside from when I shot lobster-juice
on myself).

Afterwards, we danced and talked quietly for a long time to candlelight and a playlist of romantic 40s’ songs. The feeling in the room was pretty heavy with emotion. I was replaying the whole day in my head. Not only that, I was also replaying our whole relationship in my head.

I was thinking how amazing God is and how amazing it is that he brought two people together in
such an unexpected way (another story for another time). I was thinking about
how much I would love this kind, funny, wise, Godly, handsome man even if he
didn’t even know I existed. But the fact that he loves me too simply blows me
away. I thought about the songs he would sing, record, and send to me when I
was in England so that I could listen to them on my MP3 player on the walk into
town. I thought about how he helped me stay on track the craziness of senior
year by providing me with deadlines and listening to me vent. I thought about the horrible empty feeling of missing him during those long weeks or months when we were apart and the
wonderful miracle it was to see him again when those times were at a temporary
end. I thought of how he gives the best hugs known to mankind, and can always make me laugh. I thought of the last few months together, finally in the same place-how he moved up here to be with me, and how he’s become a very real part of our family.

I thought all the new memories made since then: hanging out and cooking, laughing with my parents, reading books together, staying up late talking or watching a movie, singing silly songs in the car, kissing while we stand outside and look at the moon. We don’t take one another for granted, a gift in exchange for the pain of being apart for so long.

I may not have said these, or so many of the other things that I was thinking or feeling aloud, but my eyes welled up a couple of times. His, too, were a little more moist than usual while we danced. After a while, he took me back into the dining room and we ate dessert (pumpkin and pecan pie). He took my hand and rubbed it softly, reminding me of his birthday two years ago and how amazing that experience was when he told me, “You’re my Wendy.”
I smiled and then remembered, of course, what happens to Wendy at the end of the book.
“Just don’t forget about me.” I teased.
“Never,” he said, “I want to always have adventures with you.”

He excused himself for a moment, leaving me to my warm feelings.

I expected him to go straight down the hallway, but he turned left instead, into the office. When he came out he was holding a box. My heart stammered a little bit. But it was too big to be a ring box, I told myself. He came back to the table and set it down amidst the vines and lights. It was about the size of most functional jewelry boxes but looked a bit like a small treasure chest. He flipped it open. Inside, there were several thimbles, some of which looked quite old and unique. There were also acorns and little tiny balls of light that slowly turned themselves on and off.
In the middle of all this, there was a very large thimble. Too large, I thought, to ever actually
be used for sewing. Something had to be under that thimble. But I didn’t lift it up.


“Wow,” I breathed. It was beautiful. I looked at him and looked at the box . Then I looked at him again, having no idea what to do. “Pick it up,” he said, smiling and looking at the oversized thimble. I did so. Under the thimble was a ring. The center stone was blue and the filigree and two small diamonds on either side of it glimmered by the fairy lights inside the box. It was perfect for me.
At this moment I had two thoughts:
1. What a lovely ring.
2. I can’t breathe.

Exactly what he said afterwards is now a little fuzzy in both of our minds, but it went something like this:
“The first time you gave me a thimble, it stood for an action. Later, when I gave you one, it stood for words (“I love you”). But this time, all I want to do is ask you a very important question.”

He got down on one knee.

“Kathryn Elizabeth Powell, I love you and want to spend the
rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?”

And of course, I exclaimed, “Yes!” and threw my arms around
his neck.

At the beginning of our relationship I prayed about whether or not Dane and I were supposed to be together and received what I felt was a very huge “duh”from God ( if God says “duh”.) The fact that we just belong together hasn’t been something that I’ve ever had to ponder much, or question, or worry about. It’s just the way it is. I don’t worry about him being interested in other girls, and though all couples argue sometimes, I don’t worry that any fight would be big enough to tear us apart. We’ve been through two years of being in a long distance relationship,
experiencing heart-wrenching goodbyes and sadness alongside the happiness and
romance. It’s made us stronger, and now that we’re finally in the same place it would be hard to take one another’s company for granted. Every moment with him has just felt right and complete. I’m definitely not perfect, and neither is he. But he’s my perfect match in every way. I’m so excited that we belong to each other, officially, and that we are in store for a lifetime of adventures together.

Preface

Coffee and laughter at our café in town. As we drove back to the house, the journey had been a dark and silent kind of ride that cherished the absence of words, lit by the energy of things unsaid.

He rolled the windows down as we drove over the gravel road, through acres of dew-scented meadows. I breathed in deeply and let my heavy eyelids droop as I turned to look at his face.

It was too dark to see each other, really. But I could still see the way he had looked at me over our cappuccinos: with that sexy gleam that made me feel like I couldn’t say anything. Or more aptly, like I wanted to scream something so profound that the words hadn't been invented yet.

When we first met, that look had made me want things that I barely even knew how to want. Even now, years later, he couldn’t know what it did to me. From the shadows of the car, he felt me look at him and his warm hand moved to cover mine.

We reached the end of the country drive. Now the engine was off. Crickets, night music, and warm air.

We sat there for several moments with unbuckled seat belts, saying nothing.

He leaned over to rest his lips against my forehead and I breathed in his familiar sun and earth scent.

I pressed my lips to his with feather-lightness. Home.

…..

It was a simple evening of simple pleasures, and we had experienced many like it. But that night was different because none have followed since.

Perhaps because of this, those are the moments my mind has taken and wrapped so carefully for my dream-self to live over and over again. When I wake up to find them vanished and empty, I feel like I can’t breathe, like all the air has sucked through the gaping hole in my chest and abdomen.

We were happy. For so long we were happy. But maybe I always knew that so much of a good thing wasn’t fair in a suffering world.

That morning, when I woke up next to him, he was changed. His arms were familiar, and his face, and the rest of him, but it was not him.

He jumped up out of bed, and looked at me with the eyes of a stranger. I scurried out quickly after him, twisted in the sheets and feeling panicked. I grabbed his hand, but the way he tensed at my touch told me that if he could remember the night before he may have recognized my hand as the hand that held the coffee mug across from him, but that was all.

He did not know it to be the hand that had held his countless times, that had placed the wedding band on his finger, not even as the hand that had been burned by the stove two weeks ago when I made us chocolate chip cookies.

He looked at my hand, and he looked at my face, and the panic in his eyes told me what would happen in the next moment. His legs were longer than mine, and he was faster. Of course, I bolted after him.

I couldn’t help but glance in the mirror in the hallway as I ran past it. Had I turned into a monster overnight? But no, I was just typical flushed and messy-haired morning me.

“Aidan!” I cried after him as we raced down the stairs of the old country house. He looked back at me with an expression that I have never seen him wear. He was a terrified child, and the distress written on his face nearly broke my heart.

As his hand pulled the door open the light outside almost blinded me. The door closed behind him, and I opened it two seconds later.

Then he was really and truly and totally gone.

Seaside Hospice

When you go to take him in

embracing with your living limbs,

you will feel a rush of cool. No ice, not rough,

just shadowed quiet: the smooth, dark surface

of a stone. You’ll look into those pond-gray eyes,

dimly reflecting what he sees. Or smell the stale rot

of his breath, swelling in and out of teeth. You’ll listen to

the drained- dry voice. And maybe, fearing all these things,

you’ll pull away to wrestle with each knot that’s tied

between the years, you two. Everything that once

was woven. But maybe, before you are set free, you’ll look

and notice the tattooed years of folded flesh

he wears. They are like a proclamation: “This was me.”

And now he offers what he has: a map of charted courses.

Cafe Holiday (or a fluffy poem about candy based on an earlier entry)

The crusty cube is covered white with flakes A prickly, sweet and loosened coat which falls In pieces: messy, pale against dark wood. Biting in, taste buds find a very new And gooey sort of treat. Inside, The flavor’s nutty, amber-colored, rich. It makes me think of winter days when school Is out and kids escape to play in snow. Returning home at dusk, happy and cold, They peel off layers. Warmth is what they find, And dinner: day well-lived. But snowy-days End like café candy, melting away. One piece of hazelnut Turkish delight Can’t write a thesis, make decisions, fix An aching heart. Too much will only make You sick or poor or fat. But ten minutes Ago there was no end: now there has been.

Pancakes

Sunday morning pancake breakfast has long been a tradition for Johnson & sons. Long ago, Mama served them up hot from the skillet, poured over with thick and amber maple. For years and years they would sit at the small blue table in the kitchen and eat hurridly before the early service at First Baptist church, before hide and seek in the Fellowship Hall, and before Papa planned out what he would build, for who, that week. Now, if it's Sunday, you can walk between the aisles of booths at the MacDonalds in Meridian, Mississippi and see them sitting there. 11 o'clock and father and son are eating their thawed-out pancakes, slowly. They don't talk much and they don't seem to really notice what they're eating. They remember Mama's pancakes instead. The smell of hot oil unfreezing potatoes is fused with the odor of disinfectant spray that wets the plastic seats. Junior sits big and tall, his BP baseball hat almost hiding the sharp, watchful eyes that never leave his father. Senior sits across the booth, small and wrinkled in a faded pair of overalls. One strap has slipped off his shoulder. Neither notices.

So drained from aching, clutching, missing, a black and holy sense of gone. And waiting for sense of finding: of joy and longing to belong, Is trying to catch something like the sun while sitting in it all along. How does the empty not consume? How does the full not stretch apart? So full of dark and light and wonder, When will the ending seem to start?

The crusty cube is covered white with flakes.
It’s prickly, sweet and crumbling coat now falls
In small and messy pieces. Soon, as teeth
Encounter what’s inside, the tongue will find
A new and very gooey sort of treat:
An amber-colored, rich and nutty taste.
It makes me think of kids who played in snow
All day. Returning home, they were so cold.
They came inside and peeled off layers. Warmth
Is what they found, and dinner: a day well-lived.

I've never had Turkish Delight anywhere like I had at Pasha's one night. In fact, I'm not even sure that it can be called Turkish Delight, legitmitately. But it certainly did taste delightful.

Late at night

Late at night, and I feel -once again-like I'm waiting for something.
While I long to be contained, I also long to escape.
I feel like a lion that grew up in a zoo. There's a sharpness, a brightness that wants fly at the world. I don't want to put an apron on it. I don't want to hammer a degree to it. I would hate to smother it. What do I do with it?
Does this make any sense? Maybe it won't in the morning, but I know that these are things I feel late at night. Maybe my dream self figures it out better than I do.

Lost in the woods. Dreams, reflections, ramblings.

I was looking for someone, and then I was running: running in the woods between two aisles of autumn trees. My feet kept slipping because the forest floor was so covered by the bright orange and gold and yellow leaves. When I looked up the canopy above was just as cluttered. There was no sight of the sky. All around me was just a swirl of black bark and vivid foliage, and as I ran, the urge to find who I was looking for heightened-as did the sense of my lostness. The colors on all sides began to blend together and then I had no sense of direction, not even a sense for what was up and what was down. In the end of gave up-falling in some sort of direction until I met some kind of landing.
I covered my eyes as the wind blew and the woods continued to swirl around me uncomfortably. It felt like the whole world was the woods, and I was lost in them, and they were shrinking in around me. Beyond that, I felt watched, watched by something cruel.
Then a loud, crackling, female voice came from all the trees at once. It was deep and round and echoing.
"You think you can escape the woods, child?" it boomed at me with laughter. "Everyone thinks they can escape the woods, they run and run and die running. Or they find a place to cut some trees down and pour cement over the decay. They carve out squares of dirt and live like children who play in street filth and cigarettes, and they think they have left me. But they are still here, and they only decieve themselves that they ever left. You can never leave the woods. You can never get out."
The words echoed in my head this morning as my eyes twitched open. In the comfort of my bed, with the blue sky clearly shining, uncovered, through my glass window, I pulled the covers around me tighter. I couldn't shake the words in my head. It's funny, for someone who really likes nature I was pretty disturbed by a dream wherein I couldn't escape it. But the dream, I knew, wasn't about flora and fauna.
I climbed out of bed and pulled out my laptop-heading to Facebook. I saw people's stati about Japan, so I headed to a news Web site and read up, horrified. I thought about Japan, and then I thought about China because one of my relatives is supposed to be there right now, and then I thought about the U.S. And then I thought about those three great nations in relationship to each other. And then I thought about the last century of wars and inports and exports, and then I thought about outsourcing and then I thought about India. Bits of info from a recent conference and paragraphs of books from various history classes started to seem dizzying. I thought about the increased job competion and increased need for education and the price of my liberal-arts college and what graduate school is going to cost.
And then all of that culminated in disgust with myself and with the fact that the first thing I do in the morning is check my Facebook, a modern convenience which is making the world even more connected and dependent on techonology, and dependent on convenience, and shy of being personal.
I've become pretty concerned for where the world is headed with our obsession with technology(superficial) interconnection. Facebook is a great example. We are so connected with Facebook-but not really too much to any one person, nothing's really real. I'm wondering, in this new age of global connectedness-how deep do our relationships go?
From my dream: The world was the woods...
It's true. And we need to be with others, we need to find someone to travel with us. We need to know people, really know them. We need to really care about humans more than just the system that effects our comforts. That's what we are really looking for in the woods, after all.
But can we get out?
It seems like at the rate the virtual and political worlds are going there are three options A. the best, in my opinion, that things will slow down-that everything will have a chance to even itself out for a little while because of it and we'll learn how to use our new muscles before we roid out some more. B. things won't slow down-things will keep going and going and going and the human race is going to be dramatically changed because of it. C. We're going to hit a wall soon, and the world isn't going to know how to handle it. And it's going to be bad.
Chaos and despair?
No. I don't think everything is absolutely doomed, not exactly. But I do know that as long as we're on the earth, not matter what age we live in, we're never going to find what we're really looking for. Have you ever read C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce? When I think of that book one of the main things that comes to mind is that, as wonderful as some things are on earth (the successes we gain on earth, the relationships we form), they are not in the fullness of what they were made to be before the Fall. So even earth's purest offerings are dirty when compared to what Heaven offers.
So what I said up above, that we need to connect to others-it's absolutely true. I think this is one thing our world is sorely lacking right now, and I know that the more we invest in each other, the happier we will be as people. We were created to connect-in so many ways.
However, there is a whole other level to go. People who are lost in the woods are looking for others to connect with to make the journey better. But we have to deal with the reality that our hearts, in the deepest places, know that the best we can find in the woods is not enough to escape the evil that lurks there-so we'll still be searching for a way out all our lives, and we'll be in the woods.
But if you can come to grips with this- and if you can believe that there is a perfect God who clothed Himself in our dirty, decaying skin and become a sacrifice to redeem us out of the eternal woods-then you know you have a path. You have a way out. Not only that, but you have other path followers others to walk with you-believers and friends to help you find the path when you thought you lost it. We're not aiming to make a mock heaven out of cement inside the evil where we live-we're building up each other.

Communication as a means and an end.

Communication is not just a product of experiencing it the world, but it also has the potential to be means of experiencing the world. This is something Helen Keller just taught me.
This has nothing to do with an Apples to Apples game, I'm totally serious. I just read the the first four chapter of Helen Keller's The Story of my Life and it blew my mind a little bit. Aside from the anecdotes she tells (which are entertaining even before the uniqueness of her perspective is taken into account) there are two main aspects of Helen's autobiography which grabbed my attention.
The first is the way the author's story depicts communication as an innate human need, something that is crucial not merely expressing, but for for seeing and interpreting and living. The need for communication is obviously apparent to most of us. However, I for one have rarely ever truly pondered what not being able to see or hear would be like from a perspective as unique as Helen's. Most of us can only imagine what it would be like to lose our sight and hearing after we already have substantial knowledge of what things look and sound like. In this kind of situation we would obviously miss the ability to express and communicate with ease because it was something we had already known.
However, Helen recognized the lack of something without even knowing exactly what that something was. She identifies this lack as the missing link not only between herself and others, but herself and everything. Her attempt, even from early childhood, to create a bridge between the outside world and dark, silent island that made up her own world is amazing to me.
Helen describes her frustration at this experience as feeling like "invisible hands" were holding her (another incredible statement- how do you conceptualize "invisible" if you have no solid memories of things that are visible?). She acts out her frustration through numerous fits of crying and kicking and acting out. Once Helen, through the help of Miss. Sullivan, begins to develop her own system of communication she begins to understand much of what it is to be human. The sense of connectedness this gave her allowed her to build relationships with things and people which aided her understanding of both love and regret. It's an amazing look at the significance of communicating.
Another thing which really sparked my interest in reading these chapters was the frequency with which Helen describes her feelings and memories through the use of images. Even from the very first line of work, she describes the (hypothetical) golden veil surrounding her childhood. I have to wonder what "golden" meant to her? Was it simply an idea? What was she able to see in her own mind when she read or wrote the word? How is it that "golden" translates so appropriately to readers who have seen things that we would describe as golden? I was reading a book recently where the author described being on an alien planet and seeing colors that he had never seen before, saying that it hurt his brain when he tried to put the colors into some kind of category. It seems like such a fascinating and awesome process- seeing something that you have no framework to even imagine and describing that thing.