Hannah Kaye's Blog

A Series Launches – Celebrating BREAK THE BEAST and A Classic Retold

It’s finally here… A Classic Retold officially launches TODAY! Book one of our 9-week rapid release is now available from all book retailers. So in honor of both the series launch and the book release of one of the best books I’ve read in 2023, I’ve put together a special interview with none other than the amazing Allison Tebo, author of Break the Beast and the mastermind behind A Classic Retold.

Meet Allsion!

Allison Tebo is a writer committed to creating magical stories full of larger-than-life characters, a dash of grit, and plenty of laughs. She is the author of the Tales of Ambia, a series of romantic comedy retellings of popular fairy tales and her flash fiction and short stories have been published in Splickety, Spark, Inklings Press, Dragon Soul Publishing, Rogue Blades Entertainment, Pole to Pole Publishing, and Editing Mee.

Allison also writes under the pseudonym Al Thibeaux and co-runs the speculative fiction e-zine Worlds of Adventure. Allison graduated with merit from London Art College after studying cartooning and children’s illustration and, when not creating new worlds with words or paint, she enjoys reading, baking, and making lists.

Allison, can you share a little bit about your writing journey and your writing process?

I started writing as a ten-year-old, but I was twenty-five before I published my first novella, The Reluctant Godfather. Since then, I have published six books and many short stories. I also started an e-zine under a pseudonym. It’s been quite the journey!

I like to do about 10,000 words of “free writing” when I first have an idea: capturing whatever bits of description or dialogue that have first sprung into my mind with the initial idea. I’ll write up a loose outline then create chapter titles and organize those bits into their respective slots. I then start filling in the chapters, in order, if I can, but frequently out of order. I’ll write a first draft then turn it into my developmental editor. Based on their feedback, I’ll rewrite it again then turn the second draft over to beta readers. Small changes will be made at this point to refine the finer details of the story. I then hire a copyeditor to polish the book until it shines!

Out of all the classic literature out there, what made you pick Beowulf for your retelling?

I’ve loved the story of Beowulf for quite a while. Its mythic qualities, its dauntless heroes, and monstrous beasts greatly appeal to my warrior’s heart. I yearn for the days of “old-fashioned” storytelling when truth triumphed over evil, goodness was celebrated, and role models were applauded, instead of torn down as “unrelatable.” Beowulf preserves those ideals in such an exciting way, and I’m excited not only to remind my contemporaries of this wonderful legend, but also of the truths that are found at its core.

What similarities does your book have to the original story? Any major differences?

It is similar to the source material in that Beowulf is still a noble hero, the culture is medieval, and there are monsters. I changed so much: from narrating from the perspective of Grendel to condensing the events to a span of a few months instead of decades. You name it, I changed it!

Tell us a little about your story’s setting.

My book is set in a fantasy world inspired by Anglo-Saxon Britain. Here is a list of aesthetics that I wrote out for my book! Cold, desolate lochs and tarns. Wild tossing grasses on windswept moors. Pale stately birch trees, glistening white in the moonlight. Smoke-filled wooden halls with rush floors whispering underfoot. Dark waves crashing against white chalk cliffs and sandy, silver shores. Underwater caves, where an oily pool causes warped reflections to dance across rock ceilings. Rocky crevices and stark ravines hidden amongst the moors. Black, ashy plains leading to burning pits of dragon fire. This is some of what you’ll find in my novel!

What is your favorite thing about your book?

The fact that is a salute to Rosemary Sutcliff. I adore Rosemary Sutcliff and I’ve always yearned to write a book that tries to capture some of her style. I’ve been told by a few readers that my book has the same vibes as a Sutcliff novel, so that makes me very happy!

Who are some of the major characters? What would be your dream cast for a movie adaptation of your book?

The two principal characters of Break the Beast are Grendel and Beowulf. Grendel is a young woman who has been cursed to take on the form of a monster and Beowulf is a noble prince from a faraway land who has traveled across the sea to defeat her.

Movie cast is a tough one. I think Chris Hemsworth would play a great Beowulf and Daisy Ridley could play a terrific Grendel. I also Colin Firth as King Hrothgar would be interesting, as well.

Describe the ideal reader for Break the Beast

My ideal reader is someone who is looking for something a little different in the fantasy genre. They’re tired of the standard fantasy heroines and romances. They love unique writing styles and the vulnerable immediacy of present tense. They like stories that deal with hard topics, but focus on the answers to those topics, not the topics themselves. They have a sword in their soul and they are looking for the inspiration and the courage to keep wielding it. They are looking for hope in a dark world. These are some of the themes that can be found in Break the Beast, and I hope it inspires every one of its readers.

What do you hope readers will come away with after reading your book?

I want readers to know that curses are meant to be broken, that true strength is found in sacrifice, and that there is no dragon that cannot be defeated.

Doesn’t that just sound amazing? I am so thrilled for Allison’s book to be out in the world. If you still need some convincing, you can check out my Goodreads review, visit our series website, or join our series read-along Discord server for more interactive A Classic Retold fun!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some serious Break the Beast fangirling to go do on my Instagram page.

Happy reading, everyone!

No, You Don’t Have to Read 600 Pages of Whale Facts…

I never imagined myself writing retellings, but if I only retold one story in my writing career, it would be Moby Dick. Even if you’ve never so much as cracked the spine of what I would consider the greatest (if not the only) American Epic, you probably know plenty about it: mad Captain Ahab, the pursuit across the Pacific, and of course, the legend himself, the elusive white whale. Melville himself called it a “mighty book,” and I’m honored to be able to bring my own perspective to one of my favorite books through A Classic Retold.

If you’re planning to read Chase the Legend, you’re probably approaching the retelling from one of three starting points, and I’d love to spend this post addressing each of these starting points in turn, and hopefully answering some of the most frequent questions I’ve gotten about Chase the Legend.

(And always, if you have more questions, you know where to find me. I’m always happy to nerd out about my books, or Melville’s books, or books in general, or whales…) Anywho, let’s get to it.

Starting Point 1: You’ve Never Read Moby Dick

I would venture to guess that the majority of my readers will fall into this category.

Moby Dick is famous (infamous?) for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is its difficulty to read. My sweet husband, when we were first married, wanted to read it because he knew it was important to me, and I’m pretty sure he was asleep before the end of chapter one. Melville, you were a genius, but not everyone shares your enthusiasm for the whaling industry. I do, and know at least one other person who does, but I get it, not everyone does. Just in the last month, in fact, I’ve encountered notes in no less than three separate books pointing fingers at Melville for overburdening his readers with too much information. Two of them were editing books urging writers to be concise, so that’s fair I guess, but one of them was—no joke—The Princess Bride. I signed up for a swashbuckling adventure and got slapped out of nowhere with Melville slander.

^^me reading The Princess Bride

My advice about Chase the Legend for those of you who have not read Moby Dick: Don’t panic. My book is less than a third the length of Melville’s, and it contains considerably less eloquent prose detailing the specifics of whale anatomy. My poor Grammie was very concerned about what may or may not be required in order to read my book, but I’ll give you the same answer I gave her—no, you certainly do not have to have read Moby Dick to enjoy Chase the Legend. In fact, I beg you, PLEASE DO NOT attempt to read Moby Dick if you’re only doing it so you can better appreciate my book. My guess is that you have at least a general familiarity with the story and its characters just because of its cultural saturation, but if you truly don’t know ANYTHING about Moby Dick, there’s a well-done miniseries on YouTube that might be worth a watch. (Never thought you’d hear that hot take from Hannah The-Book-Was-Better Tindle, did’ya?)

But even that is totally optional. My intent is that Chase the Legend, though it draws heavily from its source material, will also be a book that can stand on its own two feet.

Or, one foot and one peg leg, as the case may be.

Starting Point 2: You’ve read Moby Dick, and you hated it

Yeah, yeah, I hear you. A few days after the Classic Retold announcement went live, a friend stopped me in the hall at church and said “Boy, I sure hope you’re going to improve on that awful book.” While I don’t share the sentiment, I definitely understand. Moby Dick is widely disliked, probably because high school literature teachers force-feed it to tenth graders against their will and then threaten them with flunking grades if they don’t write up a twelve-page paper on its themes and import, which is a terrible way to interact with any piece of literature. If that’s how you first met Melville, I’m sorry. And even if you didn’t have a bad experience with Moby Dick in school, you’re entitled to your own opinions about it.

My word to this group of readers: Keep an open mind. Give me a chance to show you another side of this masterpiece of a story.

My question for you would be, what was it about the book that made you dislike it? If it’s Melville’s style you can’t abide, then you have nothing to worry about with Chase the Legend. I write in my own voice, with no attempt to capture a more archaic prose. If you’ve read my other books, you know I can’t take myself too seriously. While Chase the Legend lacks the lighthearted—and occasionally downright slapstick—tone that undergirds all of Clyde’s narration in the Sadie and Clyde books, it’s still my writing style. I can’t help the occasional quip, even in a book with a more serious tone.

But if it’s seagoing adventure, monster hunting, complex characters, and internal struggle that you don’t like about Moby Dick… well, I’m afraid I can’t help you there.

Starting Point 3: You’ve read Moby Dick, and you love it

If I’m being perfectly transparent, you are the group that scares me the most. I just really don’t want to let you down. You and I both love this book, and I would ask you—humbly—to trust me with this story.

During early drafting, I was discussing the concept of Chase the Legend with my uncle, who loves Moby Dick, and he asked how I was planning to incorporate Melville’s commentary on the whaling industry’s waning importance in my story. The short—and hopefully not disappointing—answer is, I’m not. Melville had nearly six hundred pages to explore as many themes as he liked. I’m telling a story with a much narrower focus and must by necessity pare down the elements I’m able to include. Every retelling, adaptation, or abridgement has to make choices of what to change, what to omit, and what to add (including movies; that miniseries I mentioned earlier completely erases someone I would consider to be a pivotal character, but I digress.)

I’m approaching the retelling with a posture of respect for the original, but I’m seeking to reimagine, not replicate.

If you know Moby well, you’ll have the pleasure of picking up my easter eggs, illusions, and tributes to the original. You’ll see the inspirations for my characters and events, be able to pick out which roles I blended or fused, and you’ll catch all of my references. (Hopefully you’ll appreciate some of the resolution of my own personal beef with Melville #JusticeForMrStarbuck).

On the flipside, if you know Moby well, you’ll also probably be able to pick up on what I changed, left out, or tweaked to fit my own agenda. And I’m aware that (as any page-to-screen viewer well knows) sometimes that will frustrate you. “Why did she change THAT? THAT wasn’t in the book!”

I’m gonna warn you right now, there are big differences in Chase the Legend. Like, major plot, character, and motivation differences. Not the least of which is, ya know, taking away the whales. MOBY DICK WITHOUT WHALES?! BLASPHEMY.

May I offer you a sea dragon in this trying time?

All joking aside, I would ask you to approach this book with the knowledge that Chase the Legend is “based on the timeless classic” in the same way that Melville’s original was “based on true events.” He took the true account of the sinking of the whale ship Essex, and merged it with his own sailing and whaling experience, his personal worldview, biases, messages, and a hearty dose of wild imagination, mashed it all together, and created Moby Dick. In turn, I took Moby Dick, mixed in my Christian worldview, my own experiences, and messages and themes that I felt were important to write about, and the result is Chase the Legend. If you can go in with that mindset, I think you’ll be able to enjoy the retelling, even though it doesn’t mirror the original in every aspect.

So there you have it. No matter where you’re starting from with Moby Dick, I’m so excited to take you on this voyage with me. The cover reveal and e-book preorders are both scheduled to go live on August 2, and we set sail on October 27th. I would love to see you aboard.

Be sure to follow along here or on my socials (@hkayewrites on Instagram, Hannah Kaye Writes on Facebook) to keep in the loop for all the exciting things coming up with Chase the Legend and A Classic Retold.

Questions? Comments? Whale jokes? Drop me a line or shoot me an email! I’m always around.

Announcing A Classic Retold!

I bet you all thought I’d given up writing for good, didn’t you??? Well, consider those fears assuaged. After a year and a half of sitting on this massive secret, it is an overwhelming honor to finally get to tell you all about A CLASSIC RETOLD, an epic multi-author fantasy series coming your way this fall!

Step into classic literature like never before in this hope-filled collection of nine fantastical retellings of the enduring tales we know and love. Rich fantasy worlds breathe new life into beloved characters as they take on terrifying dragons, heartless queens, perilous seas, and more!

This series is the most ambitious project I’ve ever worked on, and I have been amazed and inspired over and over again by my fellow authors in this collaboration. You will NOT want to miss a single page of this series!

Here’s what you have to look forward to:
BREAK THE BEAST by Allison Tebo Author – a Beowulf retelling
CRACK THE STONE by Emily Golus – a Les Miserables retelling
STEAL THE MORROW by Jenelle Leanne Schmidt – an Oliver Twist retelling
UNEARTH THE TIDES by Alissa J Zavalianos – a 20000 Leagues Under the Sea retelling
RAISE THE DEAD by Nina Clare – a Jane Eyre retelling
SUMMON THE LIGHT by Tor Thibeaux – a The Tempest retelling
CHASE THE LEGEND by yours truly!!! – a Moby Dick retelling
KILL THE DAWN by Emily Hayse – a Hamlet retelling
RIDDLE OF HEARTS by Rosie Grymm – an Alice in Wonderland retelling

Ahhhhh I just can’t wait till September! Here’s how you can join in the excitement RIGHT NOW: sign up for cover reveal team by clicking this link and filling out the form. Guys, these covers are gorgeous and trust me, you’ll want to see them early. 

Which one are you most excited for? Personally, I have always had a special place in my heart for Hamlet, and Emily Hayes is one of the few modern authors I would trust to do that story justice. But I’m also pretty stoked about a certain sea dragon story… more on that later.

Stay tuned for more details coming soon, particularly about CHASE THE LEGEND! In the meantime, ask me anything, and I’ll happily answer questions. What’s the deal with classics? Why retellings? How did all of this come to be in the first place? Who are the other authors and why are you so excited to work with them? All good questions, and I’m working on posts to answer them! Maybe if I poke this old blog with a stick enough times, it will revive…

Not Bread Yet

I am a decently good cook.

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Except, of course, when I’m not. There was that one time when Laura and I decided that the boxed red beans and rice didn’t actually need to simmer for a whole 45 minutes like the instructions said, and we ended up crunching our way through uncooked rice and powdery beans. Messing up something as simple as boxed rice takes some talent, but boy, we were talented. We tried to cover up the horror of it with way too much Tony’s Creole seasoning; but Tony’s, while great on everything, does not actually count as a cure-all for kitchen sins.

And then there was the time I actually had to call 911 because my casserole magically transformed into a blazing inferno in my oven, which you guys already know about, so no need to go digging that one up again. (But you can click the link if you want to laugh at my misfortunes anyway.)

And I suppose there was also the time my first-trimester-nausea-ridden pregnant self bought a whole raw chicken with the guts and stuff still inside (and I really struggle with handling raw meat under the best of circumstances) and ended up dropping it several times and also somehow flinging raw chicken juice all over all of the walls and countertops… I don’t even know. It was bad.

…Aaaaaand the time I grabbed the cinnamon instead of the cumin and didn’t realize the mistake till I’d already stirred most of it into my homemade salsa. (Yum, Christmas salsa, right?) Naturally, I covered up that little mistake by adding like thrice the recommended amount of dried chipotle peppers, so yeah, now the salsa tasted like an angry Mexican Christmas monster that wants to set every nose hair you have on fire. Feliz Navidad, amigos!

Speaking of mixing up ingredients, how about that one time I somehow mixed up sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk? Do you know the difference? I do. Now. Sweetened condensed milk is a major ingredient in homemade ice cream. Which means it needs to be kept about a billion miles away from a cheesy onion potato casserole. *shudder*

And how could we forget the incident affectionately (?) known as the Death Hummus, which I’m still pretty sure wasn’t my fault. I didn’t have the recipe in front of me and I’d never made hummus before, so when Master Chef Cori handed me a bulb of garlic and said, “Can you do the garlic?” I got chopping. And chopping and chopping and chopping. And nobody stopped me. I chopped that whole dang bulb, which is like, fifteen to twenty cloves, no joke. Most recipes call for one to two, but Mediterranean food is known for being on the garlic-heavy side, so nothing seemed amiss to me. Nobody told to me that the recipe only called for SIX cloves. Not. Twenty. No, that was a detail I only figured out once the hummus was already blended and served and people were coughing and their eyes were watering and their sinuses were burning.

But hey, nobody got eaten by vampires that night, so who’s the real hero here? (Actually, I think one bite of that hummus would grant anyone lifetime immunity from vampires. You’re welcome, ingrates!) Vampires aside, the Death Hummus earned me a ban on my garlic privileges and a lifetime of chef-shaming. Literally every time I dared to cook after that, my roommate would materialize out of nowhere to remind me that “Garlic is a privilege, not a right!” Five years post-hummus, I still hear that mantra in my head every time I go for the garlic.

Other than all that, I am a decently good cook.

Nobody’s getting in line to come to dinner at my house now, are they?

Let me just say in my defense, I have been married for almost two years now, and my husband has not yet a.) starved, b.) been poisoned, c.) politely suggested I take remedial cooking classes. So I’ve got that going for me at least.

All joking aside, I’ve learned more life lessons in my kitchen than probably anywhere else. Humility, obviously. There’s just something about cooking that really teaches you how to graciously and humbly deal with your own mistakes. If you mess up art, you can paint over it. If you write a blog post full of typos, you can go in and edit them out and no one will ever know (not that I know that from experience or anything, heh heh.) But if you make major mistakes in cooking, there’s really no going back from that. Ever watched the Great British Baking Show? If you mess up, you mess up big, you mess up dramatically, and then you have to sit there and watch people literally eat your mistakes! (Or, you know, you call John and ask him to pretty please pick up takeout on the way home because dinner is on fire no don’t ask questions please.)

I’ve learned a bunch of other life lessons in my kitchen too. Time management, for one. Creativity (which if taken too far can quickly turn into a humility lesson; just ask my sister about “eggmeal.”) Precision, punctuality, persistence. Joy—so much joy! Satisfaction in a job well done. And maybe most importantly, patience.

Recently, I decided it was high time I learn how to make homemade bread. Which, after all I’ve told you about my kitchen misadventures, might seem like a bad idea. But I actually haven’t had any major bread disasters yet (knock on wood!) so don’t worry. And I can’t think of a better patience-building cooking project. Even the quickest of my yeast bread recipes takes a minimum of five hours. Time is as much an ingredient as flour and yeast. Without it, you don’t get bread.

One day, early in my breadmaking experiment, I took my tools over to my sister’s house and made a delicious honey whole wheat loaf to share with my nephews (quick aside—did you know you can use scoring tools to engrave a rocket ship on a loaf of bread? Well, you can, and it’s awesome!) I’d talked up the bread for days, and those little boys were so excited to try it. Everything was working well, and they were so into it. We kneaded that bread way more than was necessary just so we could keep playing with the sweet, squishy dough. But then I put it aside to rise.

“Um, Aunt Hannah,” said my five-year-old nephew in a droopy little voice, gazing at the covered bowl of dough about three minutes into its hour-and-a-half rise time. “I’m sad that it’s not bread yet.”

Don’t we all feel that way sometimes? In any project, any growth, there comes a moment where you just want to skip ahead to the good part. You’d rather go from never-cooked-in-your-life straight to Master Chef, without experiencing all the humiliating ingredient mixups and oven fires that may come in between. But real life isn’t like movies, where the nobody-from-nowhere protagonist goes through a two-minute training montage with some upbeat pump-up music and now suddenly we’re expected to believe he/she is prepared to take on the bad guy and save the world. (That’s a pet peeve of mine. And don’t give me that “but they’re the chosen one!” excuse either. It’s just lazy storytelling, friends.) No, in real life, the training montage takes way longer than minutes. You don’t just wake up one day and make up your mind to be good at something. It can take years. It can take a lifetime. And maybe you accidentally over-garlic some people along the way.

This whole work-in-progress theme has been on my mind a lot in the past few months. Recently on my Instagram (shameless plug, I run a writer account @hkayewrites and if you use Instagram you should look me up) I posted some excerpts from my very early writing notebooks, stories I wrote when I was 11 years old. The change is obvious when you compare those ragged pages to the book I wrote this year (another shameless plug: I wrote a book. Click here to learn more about it!) But what the side-by-side, then-and-now comparison doesn’t show is the years and years of in between. The work, the practice, the scrapped stories and false starts. The things I’m proud of and the pages I shredded. That all happened. It all took time. And it all contributed to where I am now. Am I a beautiful honey-gold loaf now? Not yet. But I’m working toward it.

Apologies for the bread-is-a-metaphor-for-life direction I’ve taken this. I’m kinda hungry right now.

In summary: as the hosts of my favorite podcast say so often, “You have to be willing to be bad at something in order to become good at it.” So do it, and be okay with your work-in-progress self! Whatever you want to be good at, start being bad at it now. Practice. Be persistent. And remember, time is an ingredient. Don’t be discouraged if your bread isn’t bread yet. Keep at it.

And please, for everyone’s sake, control your garlic.

From One Reader to Another

“In the great green room,” I begin. Two little blue eyes widen in wonder as they drink in colors and shapes.

“There was a telephone, and a red balloon. And a picture of…” I pause for dramatic effect before turning the blocky page. Tiny feet kick in excited anticipation. “A cow, jumping over the moon!”

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It doesn’t matter in the slightest that Baby Sam and I probably both know every line of Goodnight Moon by heart at this point. No matter how many times I sit him down in my lap and crack open the cover, the magic of reading together infects us both with the warm fuzzies and we share sweet giggles together, snuggled between the pages of a good book.

It’s no secret—I really like books. If you’ve been to my house, my prominently displayed collection has probably caught your eye. My friends and family frequently gift me with book bags, book-inspired t-shirts and accessories, and even book-themed candles. I’ve loved books for pretty much forever. We have a picture of me when I was Sam’s age, staring intently at a picture book my sister Laura was reading to me (well, she was only about 3 years old then, so I say “reading” rather loosely.)  All this to say, the books I love have always been a part of my life.

The thing about books though, is that there are always more of them out there than you’ll ever be able to read. So many books, so little time, as book lovers often lament. How cool is that?! For millennia, literacy was rare and books were limited to the rich. But now, my four-month-old owns more books than the average medieval peasant would see in a lifetime. We live in a culture where the ability to read is assumed and anyone can walk into a library and be surrounded by literally thousands of books FOR FREE. And the only problem we have to complain about is that there are too many books available than we can read in one lifetime. Wow, we are so very blessed.

So if there truly are “so many books and so little time,” then it would make sense that we want the books we spend our time reading to be worth it. “Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books,” so says the charming book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. So, what factors distinguish good books from bad? I’m so glad you asked cause I just so happen to have prepared a long-winded explanation of my personal book evaluation technique.

Close Encounter with a Coffee Snob

[image error]Ahh, coffee, my old friend.

Don’t be fooled by the name of my site; as fond as I am of tea and the ritual of teatime, this girl loves her coffee. Some days just aren’t good for a cup of afternoon tea (like when temperatures are in the high 90s and humidity is at 80%– hello July!) but I have never yet met a midsummer’s day that could convince me it was too hot outside for coffee.

I actually remember the first time I tried coffee. I was probably about eleven years old, and Mom had made a coffee stop at QuikTrip on our way out to piano lessons. A quick aside about my mother here—I’m pretty sure she’s actually got supermom powers. She would load up all four of us girls once a week for I don’t know how many years straight and drive almost 45 minutes out to music lessons. We’d also pile up our schoolbooks and work in the van, so Mom was homeschooling and chauffeuring simultaneously. She definitely earned that coffee! It’s actually a little surprising that she shared a sip with me, all things considered. I almost bought a mug the other day at Hobby Lobby that said “You’re really cute and all, but I’m not sharing my coffee with you.” John told me I didn’t need it because at four months, Sam isn’t old enough to want to steal my coffee, but I told him it wasn’t Sam I was worried about. (John occasionally is a coffee thief. He’s got this problem where he doesn’t want enough coffee to warrant pouring his own mug, but he wants it enough to drink out of mine. It’s a good thing I love him so darn much.)

Anyway, my first taste of coffee was a shared sip from Mom’s cup, and let’s just say it was a less than magical experience. It didn’t live up to how good it smelled, for one thing, which is why I wanted to try it in the first place. It probably also burned my tongue, so even though I can’t imagine life without it now, my first impression of coffee was anything but love at first sight. It’s like when Elizabeth first meets Mr. Darcy and even though it’s destined to be a beautiful romance, she’s not super impressed in that first moment. (Did I just compare Mr. Darcy to coffee? Wait, there might be something to that—after all, he’s tall, dark, rich, a little bitter… excuse me for a minute while I go perfect the argument that the character of Mr. Darcy was actually written as an extended analogy for coffee.)

But like the Lizzie Bennet I was meant to be, I fell for coffee in the end. In college I’d make myself a pot in the mornings, then often another one for afternoon homework, aaaaand if I had a night class or rehearsal, I might stop at the campus café for one more little evening pick-me-up.  At any of the numerous office jobs I’ve worked, the coffee machine was my favorite coworker. Coffeeshop gift cards are always a good gift idea for me, but I enjoy brewing it at home just as much. My mug collection is legendary.

I’m a much more moderate coffee drinker these days– I quit cold-turkey when I found out Sam was on the way (that was a rough couple of weeks let me tell you.) While I’d like to say I went the whole nine months without caffeine in my system, that definitely didn’t happen, because I am weak. But I don’t think I’d be lying to say that I came out of pregnancy a much more self-controlled coffee lover than I once was. But I am, after all, still a coffee lover.

I’ve got to be honest though, I am not a coffee snob. I tried, in college, I really did. I hung out at the local hipster coffeeshop and tried to get excited about the bean origin, and the roast, and the floral notes or whatever it is coffee aficionados like to talk about. But to be completely frank, I just don’t care. My even worse sin, in the eyes of horrified coffee experts everywhere, I actually prefer cheap grocery store coffee to hand-picked-organic-mountain-grown-aeropressed-or-whatever-mumbo-jumbo-twelve-dollar-served-with-a-vinyl-record-on-the-side coffee.

I jest of course— the vinyl record is an extra charge.

Most of the time, I happily drink my coffee-can coffee without giving much thought to it at all. On occasion however, I’m reminded just how unrefined my coffee tastes are. For example, I had a conversation with an actual certified Coffee Snob the other day that went something like this:

Me: “I would make you coffee, but I know you’re a serious coffee guy and I mostly just keep Folger’s on hand.”

Him: “That’s ok. If you’re actually able to enjoy that, good for you.”

I laughed a lot at that, mostly because a past version of myself probably would’ve gotten super offended at that remark, and maybe a little defensive about how condescending Mr. Coffee Man just was to me and my quaint little coffee. “How dare he talk down to my grocery store coffee! Who does he think he is? Does he mean to imply he’s a better coffee drinker than me?”

Actually, yes, he does. And that’s okay.

It took a while for me to accept that I am not, in fact, a coffee snob. I’m not a coffee expert, authority, connoisseur, or even just a discerning drinker, no matter how much I thought I wanted to be. I’m just a regular person who likes a mug of coffee without caring about it much beyond that. But here’s the deal: I don’t think I enjoy coffee any less than Mr. Coffee Snob does. I just enjoy it differently. He enjoys it as a subject to study, an art to refine, a science to be explored, and a ritual to perfect. (I think he might actually be a champion of some statewide barista competition… I’ll have to check my sources on that one, but I think I heard that somewhere.) I, on the other hand, enjoy coffee as a simple comfort that tastes good and helps me start my day. It would be wrong to say that either of us is not a coffee lover just because we love coffee in different ways. The rugged hiker who treks for days with only a backpack and uses the woods for a bathroom is definitely more of a mountaineer than the tourist who drives up to the scenic overlook, but they both can agree that views are beautiful.

The truth is we’re all snobs, about one thing or another. If you think about it, I bet you can come up with something that you enjoy and care about more than most people do, and you kind of consider yourself an expert in that field, at least compared to the casual observer. I, for example, am a Book Snob. I’ve spent years reading, studying, and collecting good books. And I’ll admit, sometimes when I see someone reading (even enjoying) an objectively “bad” book, it makes me want to tell them, “Hey, don’t enjoy that; that’s garbage comparatively. Here, read this instead, it’s actually a GOOD book.”

On the flipside, there are probably a boatload of things you can think of that you’re not a snob about. For example, I enjoy movies, but I am NOT a movie snob. I dated a movie snob in college, and there were so many times when I just wanted to tell him, “I couldn’t care less about the groundbreaking cinematography or deep symbolism in this indie movie. Please, let’s just watch Pirates of the Caribbean so I can actually enjoy some witty but shallow one-liners and overly melodramatic plot points. What makes a ‘good’ movie does not matter to me.”

At the heart of this snoblem (heh heh, get it? Snob + Problem = SNOBLEM! Yeah ok, I’ll stop.) is pride. For the snob, pride says “I know better, this is my thing, and your way of doing it is inferior to my way.” For the non-snob, pride rears up defensively: “You think you’re better than me! You know what, if the so-called “right” way to do this thing isn’t the way I happen to enjoy it, then it’s just stupid and I’m going to make fun of you for caring about it.”

Actually, no matter which end you fall on the snob spectrum, pride is an ugly thing, and it hurts people. Being a high and mighty snob makes people not like you, because you make them feel inferior. (Just ask Mr. Darcy.) You step on other people to make yourself look taller. Being scornful as a non-snob can seriously hurt the feelings of people who actually care about the thing. You can make them feel like the time and effort they put into it isn’t worth it, and therefore make them feel like you value them less as a person because of it.

So what exactly am I saying here? That it’s wrong to have likes and interests that are different than other people’s? Not at all! There are a billion ways to interact with the world that God has created for us to explore and enjoy, and I think when we explore something (like coffee) with interest and passion and excitement, it pleases Him. The key is to do it graciously, and keep pride and selfishness out of the picture entirely. So how do we do that, when the temptation to ugly snobbery is so present? Here’s my thoughts on it, and let’s be honest—I’m preaching to myself here, because I struggle hard with both ends of the snob spectrum.

How to be gracious when you are the Snob:

Realize your way is not the only way to enjoy things.

My Coffee Snob friend had it spot on. He didn’t look at me and my Folger’s can and say “Oh, come on, you can’t be serious, that’s not even REAL coffee.” He recognized that I was enjoying the same thing he enjoyed, just not the same way, and because of that we had common ground. (Heh heh, coffee pun.) He also didn’t try to get me to change—“you know, you really should buy a *insert whatever fancy coffee machine is the coolest thing these days* if you want to enjoy good coffee.” Nope, he recognized that I like coffee the way I like it, and it wasn’t his duty as the resident expert to change my mind about that.

 (A side note here: even a non-snob can do this too. For instance, I drink my coffee black, so there have been times when I’ve turned to my Frappaccino-sipping sister and said “oh come on, that’s not REAL coffee.” Seriously, pride can slip in even when you have nothing really to be proud about.)

Don’t get a big head about it

Just keeping it real here: No matter how good you are, chances are high there’s someone better. There’s always going to be someone with a bigger library than me. Someone who has read more classic works, someone who – heaven forbid—loves Melville more than I do. If you ever reach a level of snobbery in your snob-field where you think you are truly the top banana, then it’s time to come back to earth. Enjoy your thing, learn as much as you want, enjoy it to the fullest, but if you get to a point where you catch yourself thinking you’re the best, pay attention to that little red flag. Chances are you’re already being prideful and hurting people.

Don’t make it your identity

Oh man this is a hard one for me. It is so easy, when you’re good at something, to feel like it makes you who you are. I’ve always struggled with the need to label myself, ever since I was little and was known in my whole friend group as the Frog Girl. Since then I’ve been, at various stages, the Rocks and Minerals Girl, the Civil War Girl, the Flute Girl, the Sailboat Girl, the Ireland Girl… and the list goes on. So what happens, if your identity is intrinsically tied to being your family’s Civil War history expert, and then you marry into a family where a somebody else literally holds a doctorate in American Military History and you’re not the expert anymore? (True story. Love you anyway, James.) If your identity is tied to the thing you feel you’re the best at, it’s super easy to feel threatened and get prickly towards others anytime somebody else shows an interest in the same thing. Someone says, “hey cool, I like pirates too.” And pride says “MINE! I’m the Pirate Expert here!” Linking your interests to your identity is dangerous game that never ends well.

 

And now, how to be gracious in a situation where you’re the Non-Snob:

Accept that you aren’t the expert (and that they are)

It’s a big wide world out there, and there are a million billion things to learn and know and enjoy. If you’re reading this, you’re a finite human who doesn’t have the ability to learn and know and enjoy everything in the world. Some people find that super frustrating, but it’s a fact. So here’s the deal, when you come across someone who has spent time learning about something that you haven’t, accept the fact that you don’t know as much as them. Maybe it’s something you’d like to learn about someday, but you haven’t gotten there yet. My friend who has a garden knows more than I do about growing cucumbers, even though I’d like to be a cucumber farmer someday. There is a vast untapped treasury of vegetable-growing knowledge that I haven’t touched yet and she has, so yeah, of course she’s going to be the expert in this situation. And that’s okay. Also, she shares her cucumbers with me, so we’re all happy.

Don’t get defensive / poke fun

This is a biggie. When you do find yourself snubbed by a snob, maybe even a proud, ungracious snob, how do you react? Even if you were just legitimately belittled by a prideful snob, nothing good gets accomplished by rearing back in ugly pride yourself. If you find yourself reacting to snobbery by belittling them right back –“Oh yeah? Well it’s stupid that you waste your time on that anyway! I at least care about more important things!”—then you’re behaving no better than they are. There are also cases, like me and my coffee friend, where he was not intentionally trying to belittle me with his comment. He really meant it nicely, but if you’re on the defensive and looking for a fight, even a nice word from a Coffee Snob can set you off. “Oh, how dare you patronize me like that! I see you think you’re better than me!”

Or, when snubbed by a snob, you can be more indirect about your prideful response. Often this manifests itself in casually poking fun at their interests. I say that a little bit tongue in cheek, since I definitely took a little jab at bougie hipster coffee in an earlier paragraph. But no matter if you’re “just joking,” when you make fun of something someone really cares about, it’s hurtful and downright unkind. And who really benefits by you tearing down someone else’s interests? Nobody, that’s who.

Be confident in what you do like

In a world full of snobs, it’s easy to feel pressure to be one all the time. But in truth, it’s just fine not to be an expert. Being a casual fan of something is not a sin. You can like a few of a band’s songs without knowing every album by heart and knowing the backstory on why every song was written. You can enjoy books even if you only read whatever YA series is super popular at the moment. The Melville police won’t arrest you. You can reference Pride and Prejudice several times in your blog post even if you have never actually read the book all the way through and seriously prefer the 2005 movie to the Colin Firth miniseries. It’s okay. You don’t have to be a snob about everything, and you can enjoy your Folgers coffee without feeling guilty that you don’t know when or where the beans were roasted. Enjoy what you enjoy, and be grateful that God gave you the ability to enjoy it.

 

Well, now that I’ve effectively stepped on everyone’s toes, I think I’ll sign off and go drink my cheap coffee while pondering fine literature. Till we meet again!

Home Stretch

When I was growing up, my dad ran marathons. A LOT of marathons. He’s got a hoard of race medals that would rival the collections of most Olympians. Seriously, if you tried to wear all of his medals at once, you’d probably need to keep a heating pad on your neck for a week afterwards. In fact, he is the first (and to my knowledge, only) holder of the title “King Marathon Man,” which is among the highest of honors daughters can bestow on dads, right up there with Grillmaster and Ultimate Hawk Spot Champion—but those are stories for another time.

I’ve lost track of the exact number of marathons Dad has run, but it’s a big number (especially to me, the gal who walked the majority of the one and only 5K I “ran” and still felt like a limp noodle afterwards.) It seemed like he and his group of running buddies were always training for one race or another. They would meet together at ungodly hours of the morning several times throughout the work week and then again on Saturdays for their training runs. But don’t be fooled by the word “training.” These practice runs were nothing to sneeze at themselves. We’re talking up to 18 miles here. Sometimes more.

I loved Dad’s Saturday morning runs, but it was mostly for selfish reasons. While he’d get up at 3:30 or 4 in the morning, my Saturdays began hours later when he’d come home from his run. My sister and I shared a bedroom that was directly upstairs from the garage, so the rumbling of the garage door opening was our signal that Dad was home. It was an obnoxious, deep hum, the kind of sound that made guests freak out if they happened to be in the room when it happened, but Claire and I were so used to it that we hardly took note of it. We could even sleep through it.

Except, of course, on Saturday mornings. And that’s because the garage door opening meant Dad was home, and Dad coming home from a Saturday run meant he had brought donuts. It was a wonderful tradition. Rare were the Saturdays that dad came home without a box filled to bursting with sugary decadence from Krispy Kreme, or, even better in my opinion, Top Spot, a local bakery that I will defend to this day as the makers of the best blueberry cake donut in existence. And boy did Dad ever know how to pick out good donuts! Those Saturday morning boxes weren’t your average, run of the mill half-dozen glazed, half-dozen chocolate iced that your boss brings to the office to appease you after he sets a 7:30 a.m. meeting—no sir! These post-run donut boxes were stuffed with a glorious mouth-watering cacophony of sugar-saturated flavors: old-fashioned, maple-iced, chocolate cake, pink icing with sprinkles, donut holes (which were almost always still warm, *drool*) and of course, my favorite and most beloved blueberry cake. Combine that with a tall, frosty glass of milk that had been stuck in the freezer for a few minutes to make it, in Dad’s words, “so cold it hurts goin’ down,” and there you have it: the true Breakfast of Champions!

(Good grief, I’m making myself hungry just thinking of it. Dad, if you’re reading this, SEND DONUTS!!!)

So with all that deliciousness in mind, you can imagine the scene when the garage door rumble echoed through the upstairs rooms on a Saturday morning. Somebody would raise the call of “Dad’s home!” and four pajama-clad little girls with bed head would go thundering down the stairs. While Dad, the hero of the hour, retreated to sooth his sore muscles with a well-earned soak in the jacuzzi, the four of us descended on that little white donut box like a pack of hungry wolves, eager to divide the spoils.

And when I say we divided the spoils, I mean it literally. It frustrated Mom to no end the way we hacked each donut into bits and pieces. “Why can’t you just make choices?” she’d say when she’d see our plates, dotted with halves and quarters of different flavors of donuts. But I think that’s because she grew up an only child, and therefore had no concept of what kind of trouble could arise when there were four sisters and only one pink-with-sprinkles in the box. Nobody would dare take an entire donut—the best solution was to get out a knife and get chopping. Everybody always got a little bit of everything. Except of course, the cinnamon roll. That one was off limits. It was Dad’s sacred portion, his favorite, and nobody dreamed of touching it. After all, he was the one who had just run an unholy number of miles and probably burned off the cinnamon roll’s calories three times over.

“How far did you go today Dad?” I asked one morning around a mouthful of donut as Dad joined us at the kitchen table, his warm cinnamon roll oozing gooey frosting and his icy milk stein in hand.

“Twenty,” he said, like it was no big deal. It must have been very close to an upcoming marathon if the training runs were getting that long. A marathon is 26.2 miles long. I asked him, if he was already going 20 miles, why not just add that last 6.2 onto the end? It couldn’t make that much of a difference, right? But Dad shook his head and assured me that the last little bit DOES make a difference, and a big one at that. The home stretch, with the finish just almost in sight, is often the hardest part of the race.

Now, I’ve never run a marathon, and quite frankly, I never plan to. But I think I’m starting to get an idea of what those final 6.2 miles feel like. I’m not in the middle of a race, but you might be fooled into thinking I am, based on my stiff and sore muscles, swollen feet, and near-constant trying to catch my breath. You see, I’m 8 months pregnant. (Ha! You can’t blame me for the excessive donut nostalgia now, can you!?) My due date is 6 weeks away, but it may as well be 600 years.

But you’ve already gone 34 weeks, you might be thinking. Surely tacking on another 6 couldn’t be that much harder, right?

Ha ha. Sure.

Even though it’s already February and my countdown only goes through March, sometimes I feel like I’ll never ever make it. Thankfully, in this endurance test, there’s not an option for me to flop on my face on the side of the running trail with a dramatic moan of “Just go on without me!” which is what I’d be doing in a real marathon.

No, much to my relief, my Little Guy will keep growing at his own pace with little to no input from me. And since God is in control of Little Guy’s birth, I know he will come at exactly the right time, whether I feel like I can make it there or not. Psalm 139:16 says that God has all of my baby’s days already written down, even though none of them have happened yet. It’s a comforting thought—God knows my body is tired. He knows that every passing day is yet another uphill climb and I feel like I’ll never make it. And He knows exactly what day and time I’ll cross the finish line. He’s taking care of Little Guy, and He’s taking care of me.

There’s no medal waiting for me when this marathon is over. In fact, I’ve been told I can expect even more sleepless nights, weird aches and pains, and haywire hormones in the weeks after having a baby than in the weeks leading up to it. But every time I feel Little Guy’s squirms and wiggles (and there are a lot of them—he’s a VERY active wee one) I am reminded that this race is so worth it. God gave me this baby, and I can trust Him to give me the strength I need to be his Mommy. The thought of me and John holding our mushy, squalling, red-faced baby boy for the first time is what I’m counting on to propel me through every staggering step (or waddle, as the case may be) of the Home Stretch.

But if you think it would help to bring me donuts, you know, I wouldn’t refuse those either.

Into the Sharknado

Last summer, I wrote to you from the top of a tower, chronicling my days as an intern in corporate America. It’s been a whirlwind of a year since that time, and I admit, from where I stand now, my cozy little cubicle seems very distant.

But I had a random internship memory today that made me smile. Would you think me an entirely lame and boring person if I admitted to enjoying Tuesday afternoon staff meetings? Our six-man team would take an hour every Tuesday to update each other on what we were working on, highs and lows of the week, new things we had learned, that kind of thing. However, it was also late enough in the workday that sometimes it also turned into a time to swap stories, jokes, vacation photos, funny Facebook posts, and that kind of thing. The specific memory I had today was of one staff meeting where somehow the conversation had devolved so far that we were talking about the Sharknado movies, of all things. One of our coworkers had never heard of them so we ended up watching the trailers to the movies. All five of them. In a row.

If you haven’t heard of the Sharknado movies, allow me to enlighten you. It’s pretty much like the title sounds. Basically the plot, from what I gathered in the trailers, is that a tornado forms over the ocean and… picks up a bunch of sharks. In a tornado. And then it moves over to a populated area (with sharks still swirling around in this giant tornado of water) and they start eating people and wreaking havoc and the heroes have to fight them with chainsaws or something.

I’m not making this up. Somebody actually thought, “hey, let’s make this into a movie,” five times.

Correction. Six. The sixth installment of this masterpiece of cinema is apparently arriving in 2018. Spare us all.

But to continue on in a sharky vein for a while—can we all agree that sharks have it a little rough? Give em a break! They seem to always be the bad guys.  It’s easy to laugh at the ridiculousness of a tornado full of sharks spewing angry sea life down the street. It feels noble to join in the outcry against the portrayal of sharks as mindless eating machines (and to chuckle at the reformed sharks trying hard to be nice in Finding Nemo.) Sharks are beautiful to gaze at from behind bulletproof glass in an aquarium tunnel. They’re fascinating to learn about (hit me up if you want some cool shark facts!) and Shark Week is probably the best program there is on Discovery. I even follow a couple of tagged Atlantic Great Whites on Twitter (Yes, that’s a real thing. The future is now, folks.)

But even as pro-shark as I am, when I found myself in the wildly tossing Atlantic ocean and circling between me and the sandy bottom was a literal sharknado, my first thought was to jump back in the boat as fast as my snazzy yellow flippers would carry me.  Instead, I let my brand new husband stuff a five pound block of solid lead into my pocket, because that’s the logical thing to do in these situations, right?

And so down we went, swarm of sharks and all.

[image error] Come on in, the water’s fine!

(That’s an actual pic from John’s GoPro while we were still near the surface. If you looked down and saw this, would you jump in?)

I think it’s time for me to introduce you to my husband, John. He’s pretty much the coolest person I’ve ever met, and literally the only person I would jump into a school of sharks with. John’s a bit of a fish nerd (understatement.) He’s worked at an aquarium, been stung by a lionfish—that was a difficult injury to explain to the ER staff in a landlocked Midwestern Urgent Care—tracked down eels in the Caribbean, lived on an island in the Great Barrier Reef, observed wild Platypuses in their natural habitat (which I know are not fish but it’s a super cool fact about John so I thought it deserved mention here) and cruised around on a live-aboard dive boat off the coast of Australia. Casual. *swoons*

Our first conversation that I can remember was actually about sharks. So it seems fitting that we picked our honeymoon destination based on where we could go diving to see some together. When we told our friends and family that we were going cageless shark diving on our honeymoon we got responses ranging from “that’s super cool” to “YOU ARE CRAZY DO YOU WANT TO START YOUR MARRIAGE BY GETTING EATEN?!”

It’s fine, it’s safe, I would answer the skeptics in an enlightened voice. They’re actually small sharks, just between five and six feet. Not that big.

Guess who else is small, between five and six feet? Yup, it’s that little first-time SCUBA diver flailing about in the pink and purple wetsuit and suddenly reconsidering her definition of a “small” shark.

Oh, did I mention that jumping into shark town was my first dive as a certified SCUBA diver? Yeah, I actually finished my certification about an hour before the shark tour left the dock. If it’s not cool enough to descend into open ocean water for the first time without my instructor’s supervision—let’s make it interesting and throw 30 hungry sharks into the mix.

Oh yeah, the sharks were also hungry. Did I mention that? We actually planned on them being hungry, because our guide brought them treats and we paid to come down here while he gave them fish heads—literally putting blood in the water in the presence of hungry sharks because we are actually crazy.

[image error]A hungry Sharknado, with the dive master for scale

My brain screamed in shark-induced terror for about 3 seconds. It shut up when the first of those shiny grey beauties glided past me, almost close enough to touch, and then disappeared gracefully into the watery gloom.

I don’t know if you’ve ever visited a predator in his own natural habitat who was so indifferent to your presence that he could just swim past you without a glance, cruising along on his sharky day, just doing his thing. If you have, you know what it feels like. It makes you want to break the number one rule of SCUBA which is always keep breathing, and just sit there and stare in breathless awe.

More and more of those lovely sharks passed us by. Some looked like they were headed straight for us only to veer off at the last second, giving us up-close views of their sleek bodies and their dark eyes. One of them had a jaggedly torn jaw that made his mouth droop open, giving him the appearance of having a big goofy grin. When our dive master brought out the fish, it was like a shark magnet. Suddenly there were more sharks—they were everywhere. Sharks have little regard for personal space, it seems. As they swarmed and jostled each other for some fishy snacks, they’d swim right between my head and John’s head. One of them just almost tail-slapped me in the mask. I felt the whoosh of the water on my face as he charged on by to try to get a treat.

I’ve seen the colors of the Grand Canyon. I’ve hiked along the edge of the Cliffs of Moher. I’ve stood at the top of the Eiffel Tower. I’ve held the tiller of a sailboat as the wind drove me across the waves. Those are all spectacular things. But holding hands with my life companion on the bottom of a sea that’s pulsing with life everywhere, with sleek, beautiful sharks swimming above us, behind us, and between us?

That’s something else.

I think it’s safe to say I am now even more pro-shark than I was before. If you visit our home, you’re likely to notice our shark mug, shark fridge magnet, shark bumper sticker, wooden shark figurine, and shark t-shirts. I guess it comes with the territory… if you don’t get eaten by the sharks, you have to buy all the merchandise to prove you actually swam with them. And even though the sharks didn’t bite me, I definitely got bitten by the diving bug. Now that I’ve got a lifelong dive buddy, I doubt you’ll be able to keep us out of the ocean. It will be hard to top sharks though, but I think I have an idea.

Next stop… whales???

Fires, Floods, and the Queen of Capability

Operator: 911, what is your emergency?

Me, trying to sound pleasant, professional, and non-panicked: Um, my oven is on fire, and I’m not sure what to do.

Operator: Hello? Is anyone there?

Me, far less non-panicked than before: Yes! Yes can you hear me? I said my oven is on fire!

Operator: Would you like police, fire, or medical.

Me, close to losing it: FIRE!

Operator: Please hold.

Me: *glances awkwardly at the pluming cloud of black smoke blooming from my oven, then awkwardly goes outside because I don’t want to stand around in an apartment with a fire in it.*

New Operator: Fire department, what is your emergency?

My brain: HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY THIS?!?

Me, keeping it together with difficulty: My oven is on fire, and I’m not sure what to do.

New Operator: Where are you located?

Me: *Gives apartment complex name and location*

New Operator: I’m going to need your exact address.

Me: Um…

New Operator: Do you not know your address?

Me, sweating: Uh, well, we just moved here, and we don’t get mail here yet, and the mailing address is the complex address, not our particular building, so…

New Operator: Well, is it not printed on your lease agreement?

 

Ok, can I just interrupt with some commentary here? I don’t have a lot of experience with fire emergencies. Actually, I don’t have ANY experience with fire emergencies except for that one time my sister managed to catch a paper towel on fire while making PopTarts (that takes some serious talent) and just threw it in the kitchen sink and ran water over it to put it out. But I do know that A.) You’re not supposed to go back into a building that has a fire in it, and B.) responding to a fire is a little bit time sensitive. Going back into my apartment to dig through my husband’s file box in search of our lease agreement so that I could find the address was contrary to both of those fire safety tips. Anyway.

So her next suggestion was that I go to the office and ask for the address of apartment unit number. So cut to me, sprinting across the apartment complex and bursting in the office doors, full Aragorn son of Arathorn style, blurting out that my kitchen was on fire and scaring the living daylights out of the ladies working in the office and (I am so ashamed) the potential renters they were meeting with.

Do you ever get the feeling you are the walking embodiment of disaster? Cause I do.

I sat outside marinating in shame while the firemen dealt with my oven. Turns out it was just a grease fire that probably could’ve burned out on its own, but when I went to peek at my casserole and instead of delicious sizzling chicken I saw the fires of Mount Doom, I panicked. I don’t own a fire extinguisher. And if I did, I wouldn’t know how to operate it. Heck, I don’t even know my own address!

I escaped with little more than a blackened kitchen and a snarky remark from the maintenance man that I needed cooking lessons. (I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I actually had a full time job as a cook as little as five months ago.) My very kind and patient husband got home and told me to take a hot shower while he went to get us Chinese takeout—even though I had set the kitchen ablaze while trying to cook one of his favorite foods.

I’m just gonna stop right here and tell you there’s no moral to this story. A lot of times when I write blog posts I try to make a point, to turn my experiences into some everyday application. It’s like at the end of some cartoon episodes where characters sit around and discuss what their adventures made them learn about themselves (bison time, am I right, Claire?) Well, none of that today. Today I just need to write through some things and hopefully give you a laugh or two and maybe assure you that if you feel like the Princess of Disaster, you are most certainly not alone.

In the middle of the flaming oven debacle, I had the most random thought. It’s interesting how billowing black smoke and being on hold with the fire department will mess with your brain. Cause for some reason, my brain said, “Well, throw all your laundry on it. That’s how you solved your last kitchen emergency!”

I am so glad for impulse control.

In explanation, my last kitchen emergency was a flood. NOT a fire.

This was in November, back in Northern Ireland. We had been having trouble with our hot water heater/reservoir that we used for cooking and for having instant boiling water at all times—which is amazing when you live in the UK and it’s perfectly acceptable and even almost expected to drink tea like five times a day. Or more. Anyway, we knew it had been leaking for a while but it was a slow leak and a tray underneath it that we emptied daily seemed to be doing the trick.

Well, for some reason the hot water thing changed its mind about the leak unexpectedly. Ergo, some of the students and I walked into the kitchen to discover about a centimeter of standing water covering the kitchen floor. And in an industrial-sized kitchen, this was no small puddle. My first thought? We need to find an adult! Oh darn! I AM the adult!

We stuck the treacherous water heater in the sink and tried to deal with the damage best we could. Mops weren’t doing much against it. They were basically just pushing all the water around in little ripples.  As fun and slightly pretty as it is to turn a kitchen into a tranquil pond with nice little ripples, it wasn’t exactly what we were going for. So after a bit of useless mopping, I had the bright idea to overturn the kitchen laundry basket in the middle of the flooded floor. A week’s worth of dirty washrags, towels, tablecloths, and aprons splooshed into the middle of Lake Kitchen and soaked up a good deal of it, to where the mops could actually take care of the rest.

Sometimes dirty laundry fixes everything, I guess. Just not fires.

If we can overlook the shameful oven fire episode—and that one other time when my dishwasher melted itself and filled the apartment with noxious fumes and smoke, but we don’t need to talk about that now— the past two months of being a full-fledged married woman and Qualified Adult have been a walk in the park. Haha. (My roomie says my life could be an I Love Lucy-style 1950s sitcom.) Seriously though, half the time I feel on top of the world, and the other (more realistic half) I realize I have very little idea what I’m doing but I just keep doing it anyway. I don’t know why people think they need to spend money or go somewhere exciting or do something intentionally risky to “have adventures.” I’ve got adventures every day of my life—admittedly I handle some of them better than others.

My first semester of college, I took a class on the Chronicles of Narnia and Theology of C.S. Lewis. It was one of the best classes I ever took. After the final, our dear professor awarded each person in the class with a Narnian name based on our personality and character, crowning us Kings and Queens of Narnia. You know like how at the end of the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe Aslan calls them King Peter the Magnificent, Queen Susan the Gentle, etc.? Just like that. We had a coronation ceremony where we all called out “Long live King [insert student’s name here]!” after they had been crowned. It was so fun, and a great thing to remember your classmates by.

Wanna know what my name was?  Queen Hannah the Capable. (Feel free to laugh.) But hey, you know what they say, “Once a King or Queen of Narnia, always a King or Queen.” So I am the Queen of Capability whether I look like it or not. After all, I didn’t burn the house down.

Now I just need to learn my own address and everything will be fine.

 

 

 

Adeste Fideles

Inspired by true events. Merry Christmas, my WordPress friends!

 

“I wasn’t good enough for Coleen’s da,” I said, striking a match. A hiss and a glow appeared with the flame, and I cupped my chapped hand around it, trying to contain what little warmth and light it gave. I guessed that it was close to midnight, and the little light was a welcome relief from the deep cold of that unforgiving darkness. The match’s friendly sulfur smell filled my cold nose. I extended the light to him, and he leaned forward languidly to dip the tip of his cigarette into the fire.  It was a casual movement, cultured almost. He held himself as if he were reclining in an old friend’s parlor. Looking back on it, I think maybe he was.

I lit my own cigarette and shook out the match.  We both took a silent contented moment to relish the first pull of our smoke.  I could hear muffled conversations and laughter from comrades down the way, but for the most part, things were quiet with him and me. I let out a natural breath through the nose, but I watched him deliberately purse his lips and blow a steady stream of smoke upward, lookin’ for all the world like one of those puffy-cheeked clouds you sometimes see in the corners of old maps. He watched his cloud slowly disperse with a thoughtful expression. The spell it had over him seemed to break when the last spirals of it curled into invisibility. He broke from watching it and turned his attention back to me, nodding a cordial thanks.

“It’s good,” he said.

I shrugged in reply. I wasn’t fond of the army-issued smokes myself, but they were better than nothin’.

He said nothin’ else, but looked at me expectantly, so I continued on with my story.

“I can’t blame the old man much though. What could a poor tenant farmer with nothin’ to his name offer a lass like Coleen? Beautiful, she was, and as good a girl as ever was made, and that’s the truth.” I shook my head, feelin’ the defeat of rejection wash over me afresh. Coleen. I wondered what she was doing at this moment. Was she by chance thinkin’ of me, so far away on this cold Christmas Eve?

The lad sittin’ across from me nodded in instant sympathy.  It matters not a bit who you are or where you come from, there’s a certain brotherhood it seems that forms between young men who all share in the same reverent terror of men with pretty daughters.

“So I says to meself, I’ll put on a uniform and go off for a bit.  Maybe when I come back it’ll have some kind of medal on it. Maybe then I’ll be something. Maybe it’ll impress the old man…” I trailed off. Looking down at my cold-chapped fingers peeping through threadbare gloves, I knew it was useless. The war wasn’t making me a greater man. Could’ve been making me a wiser one, but wisdom won’t put a satisfactory roof over the head of a girl like Coleen. It’s hard to feed a family a dinner of wartime philosophy. But I shoved the gloomy thoughts away, it bein’ Christmas Eve after all. There’s plenty of time for melancholy the rest of the year.

“So here I am,” I finished, a bit lamely I thought. But my new friend nodded in general acceptance of my story. A man doesn’t need a reason to go to war really, not when he’s sittin’ smack in the thick of it. The fact of the matter is we’re all here and have to deal with it best we can. When it comes down to it, the original motive for joinin’ this madness is just a meaningless relic to dust off and show to comrades when they ask.

And like a good comrade, when I finished my tale I in turn asked this fellow what he was involved in the fightin’ for. He gave a surprisingly familiar answer, somthin’ about his da and his teachers all talkin’ up the glories of combat and him wantin’ to be a dutiful and patriotic son. Just the same as most of the boys I’ve talked to. Brits, Irish, Frenchies, even the few Yanks scattered about, the story doesn’t really vary much. They all wanna do their duty. They all wanna make someone proud. But at the end of the day, when the shells are explodin’ and their mates are dyin’ and the trenches fill with water and blood and the cold seeps into their very bones, well, then none of us really knows what it is that’s worth it all, do we?

My companion was a quiet one. His pale face was thin, with a sharp nose and sunken cheeks. The face looked altogether too small for the round, wire-rimmed spectacles that perched on his delicate white ears. Blue eyes, dirty yellow hair. It would’ve been a nice face if he’d been a little better fed.

Sometimes I wonder what impression he carries around of me.  Probably quite the same that I do of him. Sunken cheeks, haunted eyes, dirty unshaven face, red-chapped nose. Hardly the stocky, apple-cheeked boy I always remember being me, the one with a smile for everyone who would always go for a joke and a drink.  I wonder what my friend looked like before I met him, before the war turned him into what I saw that cold night.

He might have been a scholar, I’ve always thought, but course, I could’ve been gettin’ that impression from the spectacles. His English was textbook, like he’d done more readin’ of it than speakin’ and more than once he had to stop me, who’s been speakin’ it me whole life but never so much as cracked open a book, and ask me to explain what words meant.  But it didn’t seem to bother him none. In fact, he smiled quite a bit, and seemed to be enjoyin’ himself grandly. I tried to smile along with him, convince meself to have a good time of it all but the more I realized I liked him, the sadder I became.

I didn’t like likin’ him, I realized. I wanted to believe his sort were all bad, heartless terrors to be fought off and destroyed. I didn’t like it that now he had a face and a name. I didn’t like hearnin’ his story, or imagining him as a happy schoolboy with a mam who loved him.  And I didn’t want to kill him.

I think he could tell what I was thinkin’. Maybe he was thinkin’ a bit on the same line himself, for he reached out and put his hand on my shoulder.

“Forget the war tonight, eh Comrade?” he said. He spoke lightly, like we was old friends meetin’ over a pint, but something in his eyes was earnest. He was begging me to forget that we both were over our heads in death and suffering. He was pleading with me to pretend, even just for a moment, that the two of us weren’t enemies. “It’s Christmas, ja?”

“Ja,” I repeated. Christmas. Peace on earth and all. It had been so long, I hardly knew what peace was anymore. But then he showed me. That scrawny German boy, who had lately been lobbing shells at me from across no man’s land, taught me what peace sounded like.

“Perhaps you know this one,” he said. “My family, we sing this as we walk to mass on Christmas morning.” And then he began, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the dirt wall:

“Adeste fideles

Laeti triumphantes,

Venite, venite in Bethlehem.”

 

His clear tenor cut through the cold, still air. His voice was soft but strong, a beautiful, almost eerie melody that split the gloom as swiftly and effectively as a flame cuts through darkness. Tears sprung to my eyes as I instantly saw myself as a small child, singing these very words with my da as we walked, hand in hand, along the crunching snow to Christmas morning mass. The church bells were ringin’, our words formed clouds in the icy air, and the village roads were full of people all comin’ together to sing and pray and celebrate… Something like joy welled in my chest and I threw my own less skilled voice in along with his.

“Natum videte

Regem angelorum.”

 

Voices around us began to join in. All up and down the trenches, the song grew, one glorious chorus. Friends and enemies alike united in a simple song.

You know, the history writers called it the war that would end all wars. Well, that was the only moment I ever believed it could be possible.

“Venite adoremus,

Venite adoremus,

Venite adoremus,

Dominum.”

He stayed all through the night, and far into the next day. We swapped songs and stories, what food and drink we had, and plenty of laughter. Comrades came and went, sometimes we had a large festive group full of our boys and theirs, and nobody cared. But it was me and him who stayed the longest, unable to leave each other’s company. And as the sun was settin’ on Christmas evening, I was sorry to see him go. He clasped my hand and shook it firmly.

“Happy Christmas,” I said, and my throat felt tight of a sudden.

“Fröhliche Weihnachten,” he replied with a smile. He turned and was gone, back over the trench, back across no man’s land, and back into the war we had both managed to forget.

The shells and gas and blood and screams started up again the next day. The truce of Christmas 1915 evaporated from memory like a dream. The killin’ picked up like it had never stopped. All explosions. No singin’.

It was another three years before the war ended. And twenty have passed since. I came home to Donegal, married Colleen, and avoided talking about the fightin’ whenever possible.

But the war didn’t end all wars, that’s sure enough. It’s comin’ again, and with Germany too no less. You’d think the bigwigs up in world government would’ve learned their lesson, done what they could to keep us out of another war. But then again, they weren’t the ones doing the killin’ and dyin’. They weren’t the ones in the trenches or field hospitals. They don’t even know what they’re talkin’ about really, when they talk of war. I keep me mouth shut for the most part, when I hear the young folks spoutin’ off about the glories of war, the necessity of it all. I’ve done my part, and no use talkin’ of it to the lot of them. They’ll know soon enough, poor lads. I can’t fathom what it’ll be like, when it comes, like reopenin’ a wound just barely healed.

I think of him, you know, when I hear all the talk about the evils of the Germans. I don’t doubt their Fuhrer is a madman. If I thought long and hard, I might even come to the conclusion that another war is the only solution.  But I’ll always remember that cold Christmas Eve, sharing a smoke and a song with a German soldier, my enemy, who was quite an awful lot like me.

Odds are stacked against him coming out of the war alive. He may even have been killed December 26, 1915, when the first shots were fired after our little truce. And it may be that I fired the shell that killed him.

But if by some miracle he saw it through, came out unscathed, I hope he remembers me, like I do him. And I hope he looks back and thinks, “Not all of them were so bad.”

His name was Josef. My name, as it happens, is Joseph. We were both twenty years old that Christmas. Both of us far from home, both cold, both hungry, both wishin’ we didn’t live each day fightin’ for our lives. It didn’t matter much that one of us was an O’Kelly and the other was a Müller. It didn’t matter what language we spoke or what uniform we wore. All that mattered was there we were, a good Irish Catholic and a good German Catholic, sitting in a muddy trench in France, singing in Latin about a boy born in Bethlehem.

And we were at peace.

 

 

©2017 Hannah Kaye

 

Note: Apparently there’s a movie that has pretty much the same plot as this story called Joeaux Noel, but I’ve never seen it. I guess that’s what happens when you try to write about true stories!