Emily Smucker's Blog, page 2

My Book Reading, and Other Events From My Week

Every week at work I’m required to submit a “weekly report,” in which I list my “weekly high,” “weekly low,” and “anything else you’d like to add.” I often use this space to write funny stories from my week or random interesting facts I’ve discovered lately.

I’ve thought before that this could be an interesting format for a blog post. 

Let’s try it!

Weekly high:

Sunday evening, I had my reading at church. 

The thing about book events is you never know how they’re going to go. Your mind goes wild, imagining masses of people showing up, and then you panic, thinking what if no one comes at all? And sometimes masses of people show up, and sometimes no one comes at all.

But usually, it’s somewhere in the middle. 

This one was somewhere in the middle. Not masses of people, but enough to fill the chairs lined up in the art gallery at my church. 

I greeted people as they arrived, directing them to the table where they could get some tea, and then, when most people had arrived, I took my place at the front of the crowd. As usual when I’m public speaking, my nerves vanished instantly the moment I was in front of people, and I felt energized and ready to go.

I started by giving a brief summary of my background, and then I started reading from The Highway and Me and My Earl Grey Tea. I started with the first part of Chapter 1. After that, I skipped ahead to the portion of Chapter 2 where I visited Nashville and hung out with my cousin Jason. That was relevant to the group because the section detailed my first-ever visit to an Anglican church. Also, Jason himself was in the audience. 

In all honesty, it was a bit hard for me to know what portions to read, because I haven’t read my book since I wrote it. After five years, I’m a little fuzzy on what’s all in there. My friend Mariah, who’d recently read it, helped me choose the sections. But in the Nashville section, I wrote about my cousin Lenny’s death when I was a teenager and how it still affects me. And even though I’d practiced beforehand, I wasn’t really prepared for how vulnerably I’d written, and I started to cry.

Note to self: next time you do a reading, bring a Kleenex, just in case.

I managed to pull myself together, but for the rest of the reading, bits of salty snot dribbled into my mouth.

Since that section dealt with generational mental health issues, I tied it together with the short portion from Chapter 3 where, in Ohio, I went to a hidden Amish fabric store in a tiny town, and later discovered it was the town where the-ancestors-of-the-bad-mental-health had come from.

Then, the reading portion concluded, I did my best to sum up what I’ve been up to since the trip I depicted in my book, and how I ended up living in Chattanooga, attending an Anglican church. 

The people who came really seemed to enjoy it, and a bunch of them wanted to buy copies. Then, after it was all said and done, I went out and got a burger with some friends, because frankly, my pre-reading nerves had not been particularly conducive to eating food.

Weekly Low:

There was a moment Sunday morning where I began to despair. My computer screen went black, but the keyboard still lit up. No matter how long I held down on the power button, it wouldn’t turn completely off.

My computer is getting to that age where it periodically has little glitches like this. But it always heals itself. And I am the sort of person who would much rather keep using old things than buy new things. So I haven’t replaced it yet.

But meanwhile, I needed to streamline and print out my notes, as well as create a sign listing the prices of my books alongside a Venmo QR code. And I needed a computer to execute both of these tasks.

For a while, I thought it was beyond the skill of even my brother Matt, because he didn’t seem to be finding solutions either. But just when I’d fully despaired, he sent me a solution: hold down the volume-up button while pushing the power button.

I tried it. My laptop powered off. I hit the power button again. It turned on normally. Everything was right as rain.

Other Things I Want to Add:

I spend way more time with friends here in Chattanooga than I ever did in Houston or Blacksburg, but it came with a small downside: I felt like I no longer had time for adventures.

But one Thursday, while making plans with my friend Mariah, I suddenly had a thought: I don’t need to go on adventures alone! So I asked her if she wanted to go on adventures with me. 

Our plan is to have weekly Thursday afternoon adventures, and this week, we went to a tulip farm. It was kind of a drizzly day, and we were too poor to actually purchase luscious bouquets of tulips, but we had fun anyway.

“Oh! These tulips match your boots!” said Mariah, and we stopped to take pictures.

An interlude to talk about red rubber boots:

When Mariah first saw my boots, she said, “Are these THE red rubber boots from your blog?”

The answer is…I guess?

There really is no “official” pair. When I named this blog, I didn’t even own red rubber boots⁠.

Here’s the story: I had Thanksgiving at my aunt’s house one year, and her friend’s children were watching an episode of Phineas and Ferb that was a parody of The Wizard of Oz. Instead of ruby slippers, there were red rubber boots. 

Why did this detail enchant me so? I can’t explain it. Perhaps for the same reason I was obsessed with duchies when I named my Instagram. But later, I did buy a pair, and I took them along to Bible School, and I guess they were pretty iconic because recently I ran into a guy I hadn’t seen since we were at SMBI together in 2013, and he said, “you had those red rubber boots!”

However, that pair eventually wore out.

But then, a couple of years ago, I saw a girl in Starbucks wearing a pair of red rubber Chelsea boots, and wee little hearts popped out of my eyeballs. It was all the charm of red rubber boots, but a more sophisticated, grown-up version! The image lodged in my brain and when I moved to Houston, with its yard full of boggy puddles and ditches after the rain, I needed some waterproof footwear and ordered a pair on Amazon.

Back to the tulip farm

This farm was selling bags of cow feed for a dollar. Feeding cows sounded fun! I handed over my cash.

But then, clutching the heavy paper bag of cow feed as we wandered along admiring tulips, I had to ask, where exactly are these cows?

The pasture to the north, where we expected them to be, was empty. To the east stretched a field of dead sunflowers, the south had a collection of cow statues (we’re not just supposed to pretend-feed a statue, are we?), and to the north was the parking lot and the road. 

Finally, I asked an employee. She looked around. “Oh, they’re back there.” She pointed to the pasture beyond the dead sunflowers.

So Mariah and I walked along the edge of the sunflower field. 

I’ve never fed a cow by hand before. I’ve fed goats, and they always run toward you, excited. The cows, however, did not. We walked along the fence until we were close enough to hold a handful of feed through the barbed-wire fence, but the cows just blinked their big black eyes at us, uninterested. 

I wished my mom were with us. Surely, she could speak to them in Pennsylvania Dutch and they’d understand that we were kind people offering a snack.

In the end, I managed to entice one cow to briefly lick my fingertips. But I ultimately ripped the bag open and set it on the ground for them to eat. 

Final thoughts

Sometimes I struggle to know how to end blog posts. 

Five Short Stories of Life in Chattanooga

The Mysterious Package

My mother loves to send packages. If I ask her to send me something small I forgot at home, a hefty flat-rate envelope stuffed with goodies will arrive at my doorstep.

One such package arrived at my new home a few weeks after I arrived. Eagerly, I ripped it open. But what awaited me was hands-down the strangest substance I’ve ever been sent in the mail.

Seriously. Can you tell what this is? I couldn’t, and the more I examined it, the more baffled I became.

So I sent Mom a text.

At which point she sent me a voice message, absolutely screaming with laughter, to explain the situation.

You see, at the time Mom sent the package, she was starting a new diet that required her to eliminate dairy. Left with lots of dairy products in the fridge that she didn’t want to waste, she impulsively threw a large handful of string cheese sticks into a Ziploc and shoved it into the flat rate envelope, assuming it would easily survive one to three business days in the mail.

But it was so deformed by the time it arrived that when I sent her the picture, it didn’t even cross her mind that this was the cheese sticks. She assumed it was something random I’d found in my landlady’s freezer and wanted help identifying.

Needless to say, we had a good laugh. I still wonder sometimes what harrowing journey that cheese must have had to transform from neat, individually-wrapped cheese sticks into the monstrosity pictured above in less than a week.

And speaking of harrowing journeys…

The Harrowing Road Down the Mountain

My current residence is on a small mountain overlooking the city, and when I first arrived, I found it a bit harrowing to drive up and down all the time. But like with most things, once I got into the habit of doing it regularly, it wasn’t bad.

Most of the way down, the mountainside is so steep that there are no residences. But once you get near the bottom, there are more houses and streets.

One Friday night in early December, as I drove down the mountain to my first meeting with the local writer’s group, I saw a policeman parked across the road, directing traffic down the first of these side streets. So I followed his directions, and entered one of the worst traffic situations I’ve ever encountered.

It was around 6pm, with lots of folks coming home from work while lots of others, like me, headed out to their evening engagements. And all this traffic up and down the mountain was on these narrow, rutted side streets.

Frankly, these streets were not meant for two lanes of traffic. Given how large vehicles are these days, it could barely handle one lane of traffic.

I had the advantage of having a small car, but the disadvantage of low clearance, as the drop between the edge of the pavement and the ground looked about six inches or more.

Inch by inch, the two lines of traffic squeezed by with their side mirrors gently kissing each other. At one impasse, a man three cars back got out and shoved decorative boulders out of someone’s driveway so a pickup could scoot past.

I arrived to my writer’s group 20 minutes late, where I discovered that two other members also lived on the mountain and were similarly inconvenienced. One woman said she called her husband crying, which made me feel better about my own stress levels.

“Do you know what happened?” I asked.

“I’m sure it was a semi truck,” she said. And then proceeded to explain that Google Maps sometimes redirects truckers off the highway and over the mountain. As there is no warning sign, truckers have no way of knowing that the route down is quite treacherous for semis, and they often lose control and block traffic.

The Incompetent Starbucks

In the show “Gilmore Girls,” there’s a running joke that every time the characters go to the grandmother’s house, there’s a new maid, and the grandmother is complaining about a new incompetent thing she’s done.

That’s how I’ve felt at my local Starbucks.

Aesthetically, it’s a step above your typical Starbucks, with plenty of seating, stone pillars, and a huge fireplace that’s lit on blustery days. I have nothing against the staff personally, as they all seem like decent, kind individuals, albeit quite young.

But every time I visit there’s a new person behind the counter, and they always get my order wrong. Every. Single. Time.

Now, I’m not the type to make a fuss over an occasional wrong order. But it’s so egregious that I’ve become a Very Assertive Person. Now, my typical Starbucks interaction goes like this:

Me: I’d like a small English Breakfast Tea in my mug, please.

Employee: Punches buttons

Me: (carefully watching the monitor) I said a small.

Employee: Oh. (Punches different buttons)

Me: And can you give me the cup discount, please?

Employee: (Calls manager over. Manager explains. The cup discount is applied.)

I still don’t understand how it’s possible to go to a coffee shop 20+ times and NEVER receive the correct order without speaking up and asking for changes, but alas, I suppose I’ve found the Unicorn.

And to their credit, the one time I went my phone died and I hadn’t brought a backup payment option, and they gave me my tea for free. So I think that makes up for all the points I lost when they forgot to give me my cup discount, haha.

Lent

In the past five to seven years, I’ve noticed more and more Mennonites participating in some liturgical traditions like Advent and Lent. I’ve been intrigued and dabbled in some of these traditions, but I’ve never had a clear idea of how to participate.

Since I moved to Chattanooga I’ve been attending an Anglican church called “The Mission.” I didn’t exactly set out to be Anglican⁠—truthfully, I was just looking for a Church that followed the fundamentals of Christianity where I could plug in and find community. I attended The Mission because my cousin Jason went there, and as it fit the basic requirements, I kept attending.

I’ve discovered, through the season of Advent and now in the season of Lent, that it’s FAR more meaningful to go through these traditions with a church body than to try to do them on your own.

I wasn’t terribly familiar with Lent, besides the fact that you’re supposed to fast from something for 40 days before Easter, so my landlord gave me a short book to read⁠—Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal, by Esau McCaulley. I found it very interesting to compare the Anglican tradition, the Mennonite tradition, and the Baptist tradition that McCaulley references from his youth. Specifically in regards to things like feet washing.

Also, McCaulley mentioned in the book that every week is like a mini holy week, with Fridays as traditional “fast days” and Sundays as traditional “feast days.” During Lent, it’s common for people to break their fast on Sundays. But even during non-lent times, it’s common for Anglicans to fast on Fridays.

To Anglicans, communion is a “feast day” activity. They take communion every Sunday. They have a service on Good Friday, but they specifically refuse to take communion that day.

This is in contrast to Mennonites who, at least in my church growing up, only take communion on Fridays, especially and specifically Good Friday. In fact, the way McCaulley talked about Lent reminded me a lot of the way Mennonites practice communion—full of repentance and solemn reflection.

I enjoy the practice of taking communion every Sunday, but I’ll be honest that seeing it as a joyous “feast day” activity is strange to me. I still view it as a somber remembrance of Jesus death and my own sin. I mentioned this to my landlord, who grew up in the liturgical tradition, and he said that Anglicans view communion as looking forward to the joyous marriage supper of the Lamb.

Anyway. I’ve given up social media for Lent. I’ve been feeling rather desperate to get off. The Internet is a nasty place, turned extra-nasty post Trump election. I’ll still post my blog links, but I will not see or respond to comments, so if you have something to say, leave a comment here on my blog or DM me!

The Reading

Promoting my book has never been my strong suit, especially since I couldn’t really do book events when The Highway and Me came out in 2020. Some of my post-Covid events have been successful, while some were derailed during that trip in the fall of 2023 when Mom got Covid.

It didn’t occur to me to try and do an event here in Chattanooga until one day in January, when we did a white-elephant-style women’s book exchange at church. My friend Mariah sweetly decided to bring The Highway and Me and My Earl Grey Tea to exchange, and she explained to the group what the book was about and told them that I had written it.

The other women in the room seemed really excited, and someone said, “we should have a reading here at The Mission!”

So, long story short, I spoke with some of the pastors about it, and they were all for this idea. They really value supporting the artists in their congregation.

The reading will be at 6:30 pm on Sunday, March 16, at The Mission Chattanooga (806 E 12th St). I don’t know if any of you blog readers are within driving distance, but you’re invited!

Until then, I hope Spring is Springing in your area, and life feels full of hope and promise. Longer days are coming soon, folks!

***

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Sydney Wiese: Faith, Basketball, and Life in the WNBA

Back in my college days, I became friends with Sydney Wiese, the star of the Oregon State University women’s basketball team. We did group projects together and sat in the back of class watching games on her phone, but didn’t necessarily have a lot of deep conversations.

Sydney went on to play professional basketball, both overseas and in the WNBA for seven years. Then, this past summer, I heard the news that she was coming back to Corvallis to work as an assistant coach.

I was in Oregon for the summer, and one Sunday I went to church at Grace City in Corvallis. As I was entering the row to get to my seat I realized there she was, right next to me.

We exchanged numbers, got coffee, and I was so enchanted by her stories and testimony that I asked her if I could interview her for my blog.

Well. I’d never verbally interviewed someone for my blog before. She came over for Sunday dinner and we had a fascinating three-hour conversation where I asked every single question I was curious about. But then, the transcribing and editing process completely daunted me, and I didn’t finish until this week.

Nevertheless, I hope you’ll find Sydney’s story as interesting as I did.

Photo: Sydney, me, and our friend Dakota on graduation day

Emily: So we met at OSU and had classes together, and the three things that I remember about you that stood out were:

You had a deep love of basketball and your coach and your teammatesYou were a woman of faith and very open about loving Jesus…And you were also in love with Justin Bieber.

Sydney: (laughs) All three are still true!

Emily: So my first question is, as a girl from Phoenix, Arizona, how did you end up as the star basketball player at Oregon State University?

Sydney: Well, I think it first starts with Justin Bieber.

(laughter)

Actually, it’s crazy how all those three are interwoven. The recruiting process⁠—coaches will come to watch you play basketball games, and then they’ll start to have phone calls to get to know [you], and I just remember my first phone call with my head coach at Oregon State. It was about Justin Bieber. 

I loved it because a lot of my other calls [were] about basketball things [and] school things that were just so, like, boring. And so then when we were talking about Justin Bieber, I was like, this place seems different. I’m interested. I’m intrigued by this.

Once I had my first conversation with my head coach Scott Rueck, I started comparing my conversations with him to my other schools that I was talking to. 

Emily: Was the difference that you felt like Scott Rueck saw you as an individual person more?

Sydney: Yeah, I felt like a human⁠—like a kid instead of a prospective student-athlete. Not that the other schools didn’t value me⁠—I just felt more of a genuine connection, and it was fun talking to him.

Then I went on a visit after the summer to Oregon State and I met my future teammates. Corvallis just felt like home right away. So it all started with J. Biebs, but it’s rooted in Christ. I knew that this is exactly where I wanted to spend my four years. 

One of the things that was always told to me when I was trying to make a decision for where to go to school was, Where would you like to live and enjoy going to school if you didn’t have basketball? Like if you ever got hurt? And I knew I loved Corvallis. I loved my teammates. I didn’t need to be playing basketball to enjoy living here. 

And I’m still here. So clearly, I still love it.

Also, the staff is a faith-based staff. I knew that coach Rueck was a man of faith. Not only does he claim to be Christian, but he walks it. Our conversations felt deeper than surface-level questions. I felt like it was rooted in faith.

Yeah, so that also drew me to wanting to play for him and to be part of everything at Oregon State. [But] J Beebs doesn’t hurt as well. (Laughs)

Emily: What was your faith journey like during that Oregon State era?

Sydney: How much time do you have? I’m so grateful. At Oregon State, it’s not that we just focus on recruiting Christians⁠—everybody comes from their own walks of life. But one of my first weekends, I met Ruth Hamblin, and she invited me to church at Grace City. I remember walking in there and it felt like home. I was being introduced to a deeper dimension of my faith walk that I was so excited about.

I love that you asked this question because it’s bringing back a memory. I think it was towards the end of summer school before freshman year started. We’d just had a student-athlete meeting⁠—like all student-athletes [from] all the sports. And I felt so overwhelmed by everything⁠—it was becoming real. 

I decided to go for a run after the meeting. It was sort of rainy, becoming like fall in Corvallis. I was praying while I was running and so anxious and nervous about everything. I remember, towards the end of the run, crying and dropping to my knees. It felt so big to me that I just…I couldn’t do it by myself. There was no way. 

[As] I fell to my knees, the sun came out. I felt so seen, and the peace that transcends understanding came over me. My theme going into my career was “God is good all the time,” and it started there because I just felt like wow, like another dimension of God is real. He’s taking care of the details. 

Emily: (After taking a moment to pause in awe over that great story.) Did you always dream of playing in the WNBA? At what point did you realize this was going to be a reality for you? 

Sydney: Yes, similar to that God moment at the track at Oregon State⁠—I was in Minnesota on vacation when I was like in eighth grade. We were in the grocery store. I was one of those kids that always had a ball with me. It might not have been a full-size basketball, but I had a little ball dribbling through the grocery store. Just laying a ball up over, like, the sign “frozen pizzas.” That was me. God bless my parents.

And I just remember being in that grocery store and a vision came to my mind of playing high school basketball, getting a division one college scholarship, and then playing professionally. And I was like, okay. Those are my main goals. I didn’t know how it was gonna come to life, but that’s what I knew was set out for me.

And then it became real my senior year of college. I think I always believed in it and wanted it, but once my senior year of college was happening, I was like, oh my gosh, I actually might be able to do this.

(When Sydney said this, I thought it was really funny that she didn’t know she was WNBA worthy until her senior year. We met junior year, and even I, a person who didn’t really follow sports, was aware that she was so good she’d probably end up in the WNBA. Then later, as I edited this interview, I decided to go dig up the Facebook post I wrote when I first met Sydney. Here it is:)

Sydney: (After I expressed my dismay that she didn’t realize she was WNBA material until senior year.) Yeah, I’m a pretty one-track mind person. I was so immersed in what we were doing in college, and it required everything. Towards the end of that season, once I could actually see the end, I was like, oh, the WNBA would be next.

I that’s I think why it took me so long, cause I was just so focused on what was in front of me. It’s so funny how the people around us almost see our potential way before we do.

Emily: Can you walk me through how that was for you, getting drafted to the LA Sparks, and then that first summer season with them?

Sydney: Being drafted⁠—you hear athletes talk about it all the time and I’m just gonna be another one of those athletes that’s like, I can’t put words to it. But it really was this overwhelming feeling of indescribable emotions, because not only did I get drafted. I was invited to the draft.

Emily: Um…I don’t know much about sports…what’s the difference between getting invited to the draft? Like what does that mean?

Sydney: So like, 12 athletes from college sports were invited to New York to be part of draft night. Leading up to the draft, you got to meet people from the WNBA business offices, our union, [and] some players that can help with questions and getting used to the next journey.

Emily: So does that mean if you’re picked for that, you’re one of the top athletes? Is that what it means?

Sydney: There’s a couple things that go into deciding that. Definitely, the probability of you being chosen is high. What you did for this last college season gained a lot of notoriety throughout the nation that they want to honor. And so when I got the call that I was being invited I was like⁠—it was my dream to be drafted. But [to] actually go to New York! My first thought was, I don’t have anything to wear! And we’re gonna be on national TV! Help, people, help!

But being drafted like that⁠—the moment your name gets called, you just feel like everything that led to that moment was worth it.

And then the reality comes of like, I’m in it. The work’s just starting.

That first year in LA, [the LA Sparks] had won the championship the season before and I was surrounded by legends. It was so overwhelming, but amazing. The little kid in me was like. I watched them play growing up, and now I’m on the same team as them.

Going from a college level to that professional level is a tough transition for anybody. Being on a team that [had] an established rotation⁠—like, the starters were the starters and then people were coming off the bench⁠—that was basically set⁠—so I had an opportunity to learn from watching on the sidelines, practicing, and just finding my routine as a professional to make sure that when my name does get called and it’s time for me to perform like I know what’s going on.

It was a very uncomfortable position for me to be in because, my whole career up until that point, I’ve played basically every game, all the minutes. And [I’m] very fortunate to have done that, but this was a different dimension of mental preparation. That was hard, but I learned so much my first year, and my teammates were amazing. They were so helpful.

Emily: I remember you telling me that WNBA players supplement their income by playing in other countries in the offseason. I believe the first year, you played in Australia, and then Israel, and then Spain, all while you were still playing for the Sparks, right?

Sydney: Yeah.

Emily: This was confusing to me, so I was trying to research it. What I understand is that…oh! It’s a stink bug! But it shouldn’t harm you, thank goodness. Are you scared of bugs? (I was conducting this interview outside on the porch.)

Sydney: I mean, I think I like observing them from a safe distance. 

Emily: (Thwack!)

Sydney: That was aggressive. You were ready for that. Wow.

Emily: So am I correct in my understanding that countries like Australia and Israel and Spain have their own league⁠—it’s basically like the WNBA but in Spain?

Sydney: Mm-hmm

Emily: And then one of those teams will hire you for a season, and it’s just a different time of year than the US season?

Sydney: Yeah

Emily: I don’t understand how that works. Isn’t there a language barrier? You don’t speak Spanish, do you?

Sydney: No. I don’t speak Hebrew…I do speak Australian (laughs). Yeah, I’m so grateful that I had the opportunity to play in so many different countries. Some people will end up on a team and that will be who they’re with for their whole overseas career. Each person’s journey is different. Some people might not play overseas⁠—they might stay home and do commentating or have a job completely separate from the W. Or just like train and chill and be with family in the offseason and then when the summer comes around play again. 

But for me I was led to five, six different countries, which I loved. I have an agent and so my agent would be the one that would present different teams to me. Sometimes I would talk to a coach. Sometimes I would talk to the general manager. Oftentimes it would just be like my agent telling me what the situation was and a lot of prayer. It’s always a leap of faith to go overseas.

Language barrier depends on the country, but usually there’s at least two or three people on the team and then one or two on the staff that speaks pretty decent if not really good English. And then everybody else, like, they speak their native tongue.

Emily: So if the head coach is telling instructions is someone just translating for you?

Sydney: Yep! The only time that I really had to experience that was my last year in Turkey. Because the head coach did not speak English. We had one of my teammates translate, or a translator on the staff that would [go to] pregame meetings. [The head coach would] be speaking and then my teammate would be right next to the ones that didn’t understand Turkish to tell us what he was saying. 

And I really appreciated her because she would pick and choose what she would say. Because there would be some things, like if he was yelling at us or being disrespectful to us, she wouldn’t say that to us. 

Emily: So is women’s basketball, like…are the Spanish players coming to the US for a year to play, too? Is everyone just swapping?

Sydney: The W is considered the best women’s basketball league in the world. There’s 12 teams, each team has 12 spots, and based on money and salary, sometimes teams can only afford 11 players. So [the] max that can be in the WNBA is 144 players, which makes it super competitive and difficult to be in.

Overseas you can have teams basically buy championships because they have more money. There’s a team in Turkey who has so much money that they can all but guarantee that they’re gonna compete for the championship in Turkey. 

If you’re in the WNBA, teams pay attention to that. You could get more opportunities based on being in the WNBA to end up on those higher-level teams in Europe, if that makes sense. 

Emily: So does that at all… how do I put this into words?

Sydney: A hundred percent. I already know what you’re asking. Yes, it does. 

Emily: Knowing that you were just on a great team because they happened to be rich and they bought a great team⁠—does that dull the feeling of success and accomplishment?

Sydney: I haven’t been on that top team in Turkey, but I have friends who have been on that team. And I think it’s still meaningful when you win. It’s a lot of work that goes into winning a championship, no matter what. But when you look at [their] roster compared to a roster that doesn’t have as much money, then it sort of just makes you feel like, well, yeah, [they] should have won.

But it’s similar in a way to college where on paper, you could have a really good roster, but it’s still about how you put it together and go about your business to have success every day.

That’s one thing that I’ve struggled with professional sports, honestly, since I’ve stepped into it. I want to approach it still like I’m a kid playing a game, but there’s the reality that comes with business, salary, money stuff, and that impacts the W and it impacts overseas. But that’s professional sports. It’s a business. When you’re a kid dreaming about it, you’re [not] like, “Oh, I can’t wait to deal with salary cap.”

Ignorant Emily: Wait, what is salary cap? I don’t know about this. 

Sydney: So, WNBA, most professional sports in the States have salary cap where a team is given so much money to distribute to your players. 

Emily: Oh, okay. So it’s an attempt to make it a level playing field. 

Sydney: Which makes the whole thing more exciting. 

Emily: More fair.

Sydney: Yes, a little bit more fair compared to overseas that does not have a salary cap. But overseas they do have loophole[s] that [are] interesting. Like, in Turkey, you can only have two foreigners. Americans and, like, an Australian would be considered foreigners. But you could have unlimited European players.

Sometimes people will get passports, so they might not be American anymore, they’re now Croatian. Then teams can maneuver and get really high-level players who have two passports. 

Emily: Wait, how do you randomly get a Croatian passport? 

Sydney: There’s always a way. It’s crazy. 

Emily: Like, people actually go and become a Croatian citizen?

Sydney: I almost went and got a German passport because I do have a German lineage. That would be an advantage for me because then I could set my American citizenship to the side and be German.

Emily: So, the people in Germany that are deciding if people are eligible for citizenship, are they just fast-tracking sports players?

Sydney: Yeah

Emily: I had no idea.

Sydney: It’s nuts. And it’s not always simple and easy, but there are ways, where you can become nationalized in certain countries because you’re an athlete. It’s wild. 

Emily: Okay, so we’re back with L.A. Sparks now. Were you only in L.A. for the season? How was your life spent in the off-season?

Sydney: I would be in L.A. from, like, end of April until end of September or October. And that would be our season. And then I usually would have, like, maybe a week, max two weeks before I would go overseas. So I’d be home in Phoenix for a little bit, make my rounds, get ready for the next season, and then I’d go overseas and be there.

Depending on how our team would do⁠—like if we went into the playoffs⁠—that would determine how much time I would have before I would go back to L.A. So sometimes I would be home for three weeks. Sometimes it’d be two months. It just depended.

So bless my parents, truly, for just, like, oh, Sid’s coming home for three days this time. Oh, it’s three months this time. 

Emily: Were you just chilling? Or training? 

Sydney: I’d be training all the time. It was never really time off. 

Emily: So this era that we’ve kind of been covering⁠—those three years you were with Sparks in the summer and then overseas in the winter⁠—what was your faith journey like in that era? 

Sydney: One of my first days of training camp, I woke up so freaking anxious. I’ve dreamt about this since I was a kid, and now it’s here, and I didn’t dream past that moment. 

I just said, like, God, if you’re not in this, I don’t want it. I need you to be in the center of it because it feels too big to me right now.

I was guilty of putting professional sports on this pedestal because that was my dream my whole life, and now I was here. I didn’t want to totally identify with it, but I also wanted to recognize the privilege to do this. 

When I got to my second year with the Sparks, so my second professional season, that was the hardest because it was the first time in my life where I felt like I was giving everything on the court, off the court, more time, getting there early, staying there late, and it was not paying off, and that was really hard to, like, not get rewarded.

Emily: When you say it was not paying off, do you mean you weren’t improving your game or it wasn’t being recognized by your coach?

Sydney: It wasn’t being recognized. I wasn’t getting playing time, and I would like to think that I’m not someone who cares about playing time, but there’s an expectation of I’m working really hard to at least get a chance. Maybe I suck. Maybe I’m just not cut out for professional sports. 

It really messed with my mind, but I think that season also taught me, all right, I’m going to be such a good teammate. Like, we’re going to come up with cheers at the end of the bench. We’re going to celebrate and ones, three-pointers, amazing plays…

It helped me learn it’s not about me. I’m privileged to be in a team setting [where] I can still learn and show up every day. I get to decide how I show up [and] give God the glory no matter if I’m playing or not playing, playing well, playing bad, whatever it is. 

And then I got baptized at Grace City. And then my Israeli season was the hardest season, naturally, after getting baptized. The wilderness happened, as it does. 

Emily: Can you give any sort of clarification about what was so difficult about Israel? 

Sydney: I think it was more the reality of professional sports. It’s not just about the game of basketball. There’s so many other things that go into it. The time and the relationship building that it takes to have a successful basketball team is not valued overseas. They look at stats⁠—they look at how many points does this person score and how many rebounds.

When I was in Israel, we, three weeks in, fired our head coach. I think we went through five Americans in a matter of three months. We kept firing an American and bringing in a new one. Firing them, bringing in a new one. And I said, “How is this going to change anything?” But to them, if you’re not producing points and rebounds and you’re not winning, then you’re not doing your job. 

And so I felt like, I’m already stressed about my job in the WNBA because it just doesn’t feel set. I feel like I’m proving myself every day. And now I’m overseas, which is supposed to be a little bit more like⁠—if I sign a contract, I’m going to be there all season. But now my other teammates are getting fired left and right.

I just want to do whatever it takes to win a game. But I know what it takes to win a game. And you’re firing people and bringing more players in, so then we have to re-teach them everything. And then you have the language barrier, and then you have people who show up and practice a certain way, and then they play completely different because they’re trying to get their stats. 

So many things where I was just like, this is not what I dreamt about when I was a kid.

I was in a beautiful part of the world, and I could not get past how frustrating basketball felt. And then spring of 2019, before going to L.A. for my third season, I started training with this guy named Carlos, who literally breathed the belief back into me. He was such a godsend. 

The way that we trained, he pushed me physically, but I loved it. He’s a believer as well, and mentally, emotionally, [and] spiritually, he was speaking life into me and purpose.

It changed my life. It made me feel revitalized and confident. He helped me to separate, like I am not how I play basketball. That’s not who I am. It’s how I show up when the chips are down and my back’s against the wall.

One day I’m going to have kids, and I’m going to have to teach them how to handle adversity. This is my chance to live that. 

My third season was like a breakthrough season in many ways. I just felt free. Basketball wasn’t heavy. It felt fun again. It felt like everything was making sense. 

But again, it was a lot of wrestling with God and prayer, and making sure that I fill my downtime with being in the word. 

Emily: Did you have a church you attended in LA?

Sydney: So, I started going to Hillsong in LA. 

Emily: Wait, is that where Justin Bieber goes? 

Sydney: I never saw him. I was on the search for him all the time. Oh my gosh, did I tell you that I almost met him? 

Emily: You almost met Justin Bieber? 

Sydney: I can’t believe I didn’t start out with this. My rookie year, so he was at a celebrity game in New York and we’d just got done playing. 

Emily: What is a celebrity game? 

Sydney: So, like, after our game they just invited a bunch of celebrities.

Emily: To play basketball with each other? 

Sydney: Yeah, just to play. Yeah, it’s dumb. And Justin Bieber was there, so I had friends at the game, and they’re like, “Yo, did you know that Justin Bieber’s here?”

I said, “What?” Like there’s no way, there’s no way.

Emily, you’re gonna be so upset at me. It’s my only regret in this life, truly. So I go out there, sure enough, there he is. Like where you are, I was probably (points to a porch pillar) like right here.

And I never talked to him. I was like, I’m gonna talk to him after the game, whatever. I forgot that I was a professional athlete who just played on this court. It was one of those times where I needed someone with me because I was frozen. And then I never met him. 

Emily: Sydney! 

Sydney: I know! Emily, I know.

Emily: Was this before he was married? 

Sydney: Yes! 

Emily: Because you could have been Mrs. Bieber. 

Sydney: It wasn’t meant to be. He’s also about to be a dad, so clearly, it just wasn’t meant to be.

(Mom comes out onto the porch)

Mom: Can I interrupt you? 

Sydney: Yeah, I was talking about Justin Bieber.

Mom: (To me) Were you wanting to go to that concert? I just realized I kind of double booked everything because somebody has to stay with Grandma.

Emily: Oh, I’ll stay here with Grandma. 

Mom: (To Sydney) You know, you look like a Minnesota girl. (Sydney had told us during dinner that her parents were both from Minnesota, although she grew up in Phoenix.)

Sydney: I take pride in that. Again, I take pride that they moved away, because I would have ran away. But whenever I visit, I’m like, I love it here. I think that’s what also drew me to Oregon⁠—the trees, the green. But I appreciate that. I’m gonna tell my parents. I was claimed to be Minnesotan today.

(Mom left)

Emily: Okay, so the next question. COVID hit while you were in Spain. 

Sydney: It did.

Emily: So then, 2020 summer, you played a very unique bubble season with the WNBA. Tell me about how that worked and what that was like.

Sydney: Every team in the league, so all 12 teams, went to IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, and stayed on campus. They had all the resources⁠—plenty of courts for us to use, weight room facilities, everything. And so that was just ours for the summer. We couldn’t leave the campus.

We would bus to our games, which was basically made in a huge warehouse/studio where they just put courts in there. And that was where we would play our condensed season.

Emily: Is the WNBA set up that everyone knows each other? I’m assuming in the bubble, at least, you all got to know each other?

Sydney: Definitely. Probably one of the coolest experiences. I can’t wait to talk about it one day when I have kids. To be with your whole league never happens. 

We’d get swabbed every day. So our team would have our times when we had to get tested, [and then] like across the street, you’d have Seattle Storm players or Phoenix Mercury players or Connecticut Sun.

We were all scattered throughout campus. You could get to know [each other] like at breakfast, [or just] have conversations. There was this unified front of like, we’re doing something that is so unheard of and a little bit scary, but we’re doing it together.

Emily: Maybe this is weird to ask, but would you say that the 2020 season was actually one of the highlights of your basketball career? 

Sydney: Oh gosh, that’s loaded. I don’t know how to answer that. 

Emily: It sounds like one of the struggles [of professional basketball] was feeling like everything was very individualized. But this seems like a moment that was very together. 

Sydney: Yeah, I appreciate you saying it like that, because it felt like we were so united in a way. And I think because of what was going on around the country, how racial tensions were just spiking. We wanted to use our platform to speak on those matters, especially. So basketball became like third or fourth on the priority list. 

It just felt like, it’s a gift to play, but it also doesn’t really matter. Like there’s people who are dying because of COVID. And because like, let’s acknowledge what’s going on with race in our country and around the world. 

It just felt like, all right, let’s go and let’s enjoy this game. Because outside of it, it’s heavy. It’s exhausting. We’re playing during a pandemic. We’re playing when you have so many people who feel super emotional, and angry and scared about so many different matters.

It was such a weird time to be playing. 

Emily: Did you play overseas that winter 2020-21?

Sydney: No

Emily: Was that because of COVID or a different reason?

Sydney: I hurt my ankle. Towards the end of our season, I had a grade three ankle sprain. I stepped on someone’s foot and my ankle basically hit the floor. So I was out of commission from September till February.

Emily: So then that was when you got traded to the Washington Mystics, right? Or when was that? 

Sydney: After my rehab, I went to Israel. Just played there for about a month to get the rust off. And then I went to LA [and] was there for training camp. There’s a roster deadline where every team has to make it set who’s on their team. 45 minutes before the roster deadline is when I got traded. 

Emily: How was that for you? 

Sydney: It was terrible, honestly. Every training camp I felt like I was proving myself. It never felt like I had firm footing. In my spirit I felt⁠—sort of waiting for the shoe to drop. But once it actually happened I was like oh my gosh okay, now what.

I got a call from my new coach welcoming me, excited about it. I was really grateful because they didn’t have to pick me up. Sometimes you just get cut and that’s i⁠t—you don’t go to another team. 

But I [had] a lot of stuff in LA, and [I’d] known these people for five years, so moving away broke my heart.  

So I had all these emotions, but I don’t have time to think about it because I have to pack up my apartment and I have to organize where all my stuff is going to go. Then I have to travel and get a rental car and figure out my new apartment. I’m getting there at 9 p.m Friday night and I haven’t met anybody and have I eaten anything and do I have water in my apartment⁠—and then, oh, we play in the afternoon on Saturday and I still have to do my job and be an athlete.

Emily: You only played there one year, right?

Sydney: I played in DC from May of 2021 until the end of that season, and then I played in Italy, and then I tore my ACL. That same day I was planning to sign a contract to play with Phoenix. 

I had an option to do surgery in Italy, but I was like, no, no offense to them, but I needed my family, and I needed to understand the language.

I got surgery March 16, 2022. It’s crazy how you remember those dates. I got surgery in Chicago and then had to get another surgery in November of 2022 because I ended up tearing my meniscus during my rehab process, which made my recovery longer than anticipated. 

Normally, ACL is nine months to a year. I was hoping that I would be able to play in the WNBA during the summer of 2023, but my body wasn’t ready. My rehab ended up being 18 months-ish. It was⁠—I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of liminal space. 

Emily: I’ve heard the term but I couldn’t tell you what it means. 

Sydney: It’s basically like the land in-between. Nothing is working out, nothing is certain, and everything is so unstable [it] stretches your trust in deep ways.

I had to experience it. I could read all the self-help books in the world and nothing was going to teach me how to get through this. Every month I expected a quick rehab, and then something would come up, and then something else would come up, and then, oh, I have to get surgery again.

Emily: What sounds so frustrating to me is⁠—you told me back in our college days that your dream was to play for Phoenix because that’s where your family was. So you finally get to the point where you can play for Phoenix, and your knee gets injured.

Sydney: Yeah, absolutely. 

I went for a prayer walk when I was in Italy, months before I tore my ACL. I remember the Spirit basically saying, you’re going to be entering a season where you need to hear my voice and keep your eyes locked in on me. And there’s going to be a lot of things coming at you but you need to listen for my voice.

And He specifically said, I’m going to give you the desire of your heart, but I’m going to ask for it back. The desire [of] my heart was to play in Phoenix. [In 2022,] I was going to play in Phoenix, but I never actually signed the contract. The second time, [In 2023], I signed the contract, and I had to give it back.

It was so important because it taught me firsthand that basketball, the WNBA, is not the God of my life. That was my dream my whole life, and I was living it, and I wanted to play at home, but I needed to keep the main thing the main thing, which is Jesus.

Emily: Then you rehabbed enough to go play in Italy this past winter…

Sydney: Turkey

Emily: Turkey!

Sydney: Yup. Italy’s where I got hurt. I know it’s a lot to keep track of!

Emily: Okay, so it was Australia, Israel, Spain…

Sydney: …[then] Isreal for a little bit, and then Turkey.

Emily: Wikipedia only listed the first three. (Laughs.) So you went to Turkey, oh yeah, Turkey is where you got scratched by the cat!

Sydney: Yep! They just have wild cats wandering around everywhere. I’m working on my trust with cats.

Emily: So you did that this past winter. Now you have a job as an assistant coach at Oregon State, where we went to college together. How did you end up back here?

Sydney: In April, I got an opportunity to do training camp in Connecticut, and I was planning on being on that team. I felt good about my chances⁠—and then I didn’t make the team.

Then Coach Rueck called me. He’s like, “Hey, you want to coach?” We have stayed in touch since I’ve left. He’s like a second dad to me in many ways. 

I was like, “That’s interesting. I should pray about that.”

I sat with it for a week or 10 days. I was losing sleep over, like, I think this is what I’m supposed to do but I’m terrified of it. 

Emily: Was the difficulty about being scared about your abilities to coach, or was it about potentially losing that basketball player identity?

Sydney:  I was terrified of, like, I don’t know if I can coach. Just because I played doesn’t mean I can coach. 

I care about this university, I care about these people and these student-athletes. I’ve been saying [this] whole time I have a one-track mind⁠—I need to be all in with this because they deserve it. If I take this job, I’m probably done playing. How do I feel about that? Do I have peace about that? And the answer has been yes.

Emily: Now that you’re stepping into a coaching position, what is your vision for the Oregon State Women’s Basketball Team? 

Sydney: Ultimately, to be an assistant coach, you have to be super selfless because it’s about everybody else. And I love that.

I think I’m tired of the selfishness that has come from being a professional athlete, where you really do have to look out for yourself. I love the idea of pouring into others and being a small part of their journey. 

My biggest theme is, how can I love the person who’s in front of me and treat them with respect?

My coach did a great job of that in college⁠—challenging me and coaching me from a place of deep belief. Seeing a version of myself that I didn’t see yet.

I know there’s a business side to college sports, and I’m learning that as a coach. But I’m never gonna sell my soul and the value of a human being to, like, excel, quote unquote. I’m always gonna choose treating people well and genuinely.

I could be the worst coach in the world. And you know what? I’d rather be that, but still treat people well.

(Car pulls into the driveway)

Sydney: Are they back from their concert? 

Emily: No, that’s my grandma.

Sydney: Does she need help? 

Emily: I don’t think so. My Aunt Lois is there with her. Hi, Aunt Lois. This is my friend, Sydney, an old college friend.

Sydney: Nice to meet you. I hope you guys had a wonderful day.

Aunt Lois: It was relaxing and low-key. 

Sydney: Oh, we love that. 

Aunt Lois: At least when you’re my age, you do.

(Aunt Lois and Grandma go inside)

Emily: You’ve mentioned that there has not been a lot of respect to the WNBA from Americas in general. I’m wondering, how can we move forward from that? 

Sydney: If you really think about the concept of worth, I think it’s a decision. Who gets to determine that a man’s product in sports is better than a woman’s product in sports? 

I think with an NBA player as opposed to a WNBA player, they’re both humans. And so let’s listen and get to know them as people, and appreciate what they’ve been through so they can dominate and do what they do on the court.

There’s things that men can do out there that women can’t do physically. But we’ve decided the value system of, oh, because they can dunk, that’s just so much cooler than the women’s game. If you really know the game and pay attention, there’s things for both that are super cool.

Emily: So someone like me⁠—I can see that someone dunking is impressive. But I’m just a dumb…you know…I don’t know much. How can someone like me come to appreciate the nuances? What should I be looking for? How do I get there?

Sydney: That’s a great question. I love learning about a team. I was privileged to grow up in Phoenix because the WNBA became real to me. Not because I could go and watch the games whenever I wanted to, but because I was able to go to camps and meet the players.

When the players themselves become human, it makes you care a little bit differently because you feel like, I’ve connected to them.

Emily: Who are some of your biggest inspirations and influences from your time in the WNBA?

Sydney: First one right away is Alana Beard. I call her my mom. My mom even calls her my second mom. She is such a blessing. She was 13 years into the league when I was a rookie, and she was one of the first people that texted me when I got drafted to the Sparks. She just said, like, hey, I’m Alana. Super excited to have you. Just wanted to reach out and give you my number. That meant so much to me because, as I went into the league, I realized how rare that is for people to do that. There’s just not enough seats at the table, so [it’s] dog eat dog in many ways.

I’m grateful for the example she set for me as a professional. We could have lost by two the night before, we could have won by two, 20, whatever it is. She shows up the next day the same. Just showing up, doing her job. She was always so professional.

I’ve been privileged to play with so many people that have been so helpful. Like Nneka Ogwumike. She is the president of our union. And she’s also a very steady leader, a wonderful woman.

I had really good talks with both of them when I was in L.A. And then Elena Delle Donne, when I was in D.C.

Actually, [before I was] in D.C. we were doing a fundraiser at our church, and I [asked] a couple WNBA players if they wanted to donate something. I hadn’t played with her, but I reached out to her, and she sent an autographed basketball and t-shirt to our church fundraiser. 

And then one of my teammates in Italy [told me that] Elena Delle Donne was her favorite player, and so I told Elena, and she sent me a pair of shoes that were signed for her, and I brought them back to Italy for my teammate, and she started crying.

Candace Parker saw potential in me when I didn’t see it, and whenever I was doubting myself she would speak belief over me. She’s a legend. 

Gosh, I feel like there’s just so many, and I have such good friends because of it, but those ones are my mentors that I’m super grateful for.

Emily: So, final question. What are some of the miracles that you feel like the Lord has done in your life?

Sydney: Honestly, I feel like it was a miracle to end up at Oregon State. And then the miracle of making it to the WNBA and being able to travel the world.

I feel like everything is perfectly divine timing. I can just feel Him at work and alive in the process.

It’s almost like, you have those big miracles, but [also] the daily miracles where I’m just, like, how did that work? 

Emily: I feel like it was kind of a miracle that I’m just, like, oh, I’m going to church this morning. I think I’ll sit there and then happen to sit right next to you. 

Sydney: I was like, “Emily!” You know what was crazy is I had some anxiety that morning when I was going to church. I have community sort of in Corvallis, but I’m rebuilding it as an adult. People sort of know me, but I didn’t know people well enough to sit next to them. And then next thing I know, you walk up and I’m like, thank you, God! 

Yeah, I think that’s my final answer.

***

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Why I Became a Writer

When I started college in 2010, I thought I’d end up as a missionary, a housewife, a teacher, or some combination of the above. I assumed I’d write a little, but I didn’t foresee writing as my main career.

By the time I graduated in 2017, I’d cast aside my missionary, housewife, and especially teaching ambitions, and instead decided to be a writer.

Where did I get the audacity?

What made me think I had what it took to just…do it?

I got some insight into this conundrum the other day. I was flipping through an old notebook when I found a list I’d made just before I graduated.

Four Things

Four things contributed to my current optimistic attitude about my future as a writer.

The first came out of a sad situation. I found out that I couldn’t wear honor cords, even though I have a 3.86 GPA, because I haven’t been at OSU long enough. I only had 57 OSU upper division credits by the end of winter term, and I needed 60.

What I thought was, “There is no honor for the strugglers.“

Then I thought, “Why did I stick with school, even though I had so many strikes against me?” I thought about my physical and mental health problems, about switching schools so often, about homeschooling myself through high school while living 1000 miles from my family, about getting kicked out of my rental 10 days before the end of my first term of college. Why did I do it?

Then I thought, “I did it because I wanted an education.“

Then I thought, “If I want to be a writer, I can find a way to be a writer.”

***

The second thing was the reaction to the linked story collection I wrote for my Advanced Fiction Writing class. My classmates saw the flaws and yet were fascinated by the concept. My teacher thought my ending needed a good revision, but he wrote “outstanding” at the end. I saw in my head the thing it wasn’t, but the thing it could be: a story worth telling.

***

My mom said, “Emily, I did something I maybe shouldn’t have done.” She had a dazed look in her eyes.

“What did you do?”

“I saw your story lying on your desk, and I just read it.”

“This one?” I asked, picking up the first story of my linked collection.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry, I just…wow. You have to be a fiction writer, Emily. You just have it.“

I didn’t care that she’d read the story. I just felt glowy inside. She’s a writer, too. She knows good writing.

***

That was the third thing, and the fourth was when Tim Jensen fist-bumped me for “killing it on the diagramming packet.”

It wasn’t the fist bump, though, it was when he complimented me on my “willingness to try anything.” How I wrote FAIL across my mistake and then just tried it again.

And I thought, wow.

A willingness to try is something.

A willingness to say “FAIL” and try again is something.

A willingness to re-write my ending.

A willingness to scrap the bad parts and write better parts. To just, you know, write. And keep writing. And stuff. That’s something.

Those four incidents were the incidents that made me know I could be a writer, if I wanted to.

Anyway, I found that very interesting and lovely, so I decided to post it here, since I hope to revive my blog a bit in 2025.

A note on the cover photo: WordPress has a feature that automatically makes an AI image based on the text of your post, and I’m always so curious about what it will come up with. This time it came up with a picture of an androgynous-looking writer, so I asked it to revise the image and make the person a female with bluish-gray eyes and brown hair in a bun with a Mennonite head covering. This is what it came up with. We can pretend I look like that while writing, teehee.

I Moved Again (November 2024 Life Update)

Hello hello, dear blog readers. It’s a crisp, cool, sunny day in Chattanooga, TN, and I’m here to tell you that yes, I moved again.

Probably not for the last time, but hopefully for the almost-last time.

In the last few years, I’ve grown weary of explaining my life to people, which is why I’ve lived here almost a month and yet have not mentioned my move anywhere online.

Slight Tangent: Thoughts About Small Talk

Lately I’ve been thinking about how most small talk can quickly and tragically turn into Deep Serious Talk making things awkward for all strangers involved.

Example:

Q. Oh, what do you do for work?

A. Um…I just lost my job.

Or,

Q. Oh, you’re new here? What brings you to this church?

A. Er, well, I’m recently divorced and my ex started bringing my children to this church and I want more stability for them so I decided to bring them here too.

(This is why I’m a big fan of talking about the weather, sports, endless road construction, and Wordle scores, and am trying to build a repertoire of impersonal small talk questions, like “when is the last time you sneezed?”)

Anyway. Small talk question #1 I’ve been asked since deciding to move here is, “why Chattanooga?” which is difficult to explain and brings up a whole host of personal feelings regarding the crippling isolation and loneliness I’ve felt the past 5-7 years.

You see, as I’ve moved around trying this place and that place, I’ve developed a Theory of Places, and my move to Chattanooga was based on this theory.

Emily’s Theory of Places

There are a lot of things that make a place pleasant to live, such as cute coffee shops, low taxes, general affordability, walkability, people who share your values, great weather, convenient swimming holes, and interesting places to explore. But the real thing, the main thing, is the community.

Unfortunately, it can be incredibly difficult to find your community in a new place.

Last summer at a family reunion I asked my female cousins how long it took them, after they married and moved to a new area with their husbands, to really feel like they were part of a community.

One cousin, who moved to a big Mennonite community where her husband had connections, said it took about two years. Another cousin, who moved to her husband’s community in a remote part of the Midwest, said she felt part of the community instantly. But for one of my cousins, who moved to a place where neither she nor her husband had connections, community was a huge struggle, and it took about fourteen years to feel connected.

It’s easy to think that with determination and zeal, you can find your people anywhere. And I think you can…but despite your best efforts, it might take fourteen years.

So what makes the difference between an instant community, a two-year community, and a fourteen-year community?

Based on my observations and research, I believe it comes down to the following two factors:

Connection points. This might be people you already know who live in the area, or it might be institutions like church, your job, or a community activity you participate in.People who want new friends.

You might move to a place where you know several people, but if it’s an established Mennonite community where everyone already has their friends and doesn’t need more, it might be really hard to find your people. But if you move to a small community where people are desperate for more friends, you might be surprised at how quickly you’re connected.

And connection has a snowball effect. The more connections you make, the easier it is to make even more connections.

But some places, I’m sorry to say, are 14-year places. You try and try. You go to church after church, trying to find a place you can plug in without driving for an hour every Sunday. You go to random events at the library. You send a message to another writer who pops up in your community Facebook group, asking to get coffee.

The problem with 14-year communities is that when you find yourself churchless because you don’t want to go to a church that prays to Mary, or when the local writer cancels the meetup, you still feel like your lack of friends is your fault somehow.

It doesn’t feel possible that any community could truly be a 14-year community. Surely if you just tried harder.

There were things I loved about living in Houston. I liked being able to walk along the bay every day. I liked being 45 minutes from the beach. I loved living with Matt and Phoebe. I enjoyed warm sunny weather in the winter. I loved the game nights with our friends Ryan and Tiffany. But after two years in Houston they were my only true friends, and then they moved 45 minutes away to a different part of town where they had more community and connections.

Houston was a 14-year place, and I don’t want to live in an 14-year place. I’m impatient. And lonely.

Chattanooga

My cousin Jason moved to Chattanooga…I don’t know…seven years ago maybe? Anyway, earlier this year I got this idea in my head, like, oh, maybe I should move to Chattanooga too!

Which, I mean, I’m the type of person who thinks maybe I should move here! any time I visit anywhere, so it was a pretty unserious thought at first. But then Jason, out of the blue, texted me about a friend of his who was looking for roommates.

When I told him that I might actually be interested, he told me I should come visit for a week, meet his friends, go to his church, and see how I like the area.

Because of timing issues it didn’t work for me to move in with his friend, but as soon as I visited it was abundantly clear that this was not a 14-year place. It might even be a less-than-1-year place.

Connection points: Jason’s church, Jason’s friend group, Jason’s writer’s group, all of which contained different people.People who want new friends: not everyone I met, but at least a few people from each group.

The math was mathing. The choice was easy.

Between Then and Now

The decision was easy but the logistics were a little difficult.

First, I knew I wanted to still go to Oregon for the summer. About the time I went to Oregon, Grandma moved in with my parents. She’s pretty independent and self-sufficient, but once when we weren’t home she went on a walk, lost her balance, fell on her face in the middle of the road, and couldn’t get up.

After that, we didn’t want to leave her alone for long periods of time. This was a lot easier to manage with three other people in the house instead of two, so I didn’t want to make plans to move away as long as Grandma was living with us.

It worked out for her to move in with my Aunt Rosie at the end of the summer. But it was still a struggle trying to find housing in Chattanooga while being in Oregon, especially since I wasn’t able to move immediately⁠⁠—I still had to go back to Houston and pack up my stuff.

I eventually found a place, but by then I’d already scheduled another trip. So I had the craziest October, first flying from Oregon to Houston, then, two weeks later, going on a 10-day trip that involved a work obligation in Pennsylvania, visiting friends in Maryland, and going to Rachel/Striped Pineapple‘s wedding in NYC.

On day 8 of the trip I, predictably, got sick, and then once I got back to Houston I had less than a week to pack up and move to Chattanooga.

Now What?

My 10-day trip, especially the time I spent in NYC, was really wonderful despite the fact that I made no plans besides where I’d stay and how I’d get there. Everything felt so chaotic and I just thought, once I get to Chattanooga, everything will calm down and life will be wonderful.

But then I moved and instead of life being calm and wonderful, it was full of questions like:

Why is my car acting strange?Where can I find a reputable mechanic?Did I leave my umbrella in Houston?Did I leave my good knife in Houston?Why am I having so many feelings?What the bunnyslipper am I even feeling?

I forgot that this is just what happens when you move. I feel much more settled now, after being here three and a half weeks, but I still miss my umbrella and my good knife.

Gratefulness

I feel really, deeply grateful this Thanksgiving. I’m just…I’m really happy to be here. So far, Chattanooga has lived up or perhaps even exceeded my expectations. My theory of places holds up.

I’m living in the most gorgeous place imaginable, up on a mountain overlooking the city where all the streets are named after fairy tale characters. I’m living with a couple in their early 70s who are friends with my Aunt Rebecca and Uncle Rod.

I really knew very little about them when I moved in. (They told me that they had an advantage…they were able to read my book and get to know me ahead of time that way, haha.) But it’s all worked out swimmingly, and I love living with them.

Another thing I’m grateful for is living within walking distance of a Starbucks.

Although it must be confessed, while this Starbucks is aesthetically pleasing and in a great location, it has the most incompetent workers I’ve ever encountered. (Sorry workers, if you’re reading this. I’m sure you’re doing your best!)

If you’re wondering what’s going on in the above picture…why it looks like I have two drinks…no, I’m not here with a companion. I was buying a hot tea using my points. Since a medium tea (with two tea bags) is just as many points as a small tea (one tea bag,) I asked for a medium tea in my mug, with the second tea bag on the side.

You know. To use later, in case of a tea-mergency.

Maybe that’s a strange/confusing thing to ask? But no other Starbucks barista has ever seemed confused by it. They just put one tea bag in my mug, fill it with hot water, and hand me the other tea bag, unopened, on the side.

This barista opened both tea bags, put one in my mug and one in a medium-sized to-go cup, put water in the to-go cup (defeating the purpose of my bringing my own mug), and handed me both.

She seems like a lovely person and I don’t have the heart to be upset but it’s just funny to me that something of that nature happens nearly every time I come in here, even though it’s a different barista each time.

Oh wait, I’m gonna keep rambling

On the drive up to Tennessee, when I was driving 55 mph in a 70 mph zone because my car was vibrating excessively at high speeds (turns out a belt in my tire broke? I didn’t know that was thing), I heard an old country song while flipping through radio stations and suddenly felt so nostalgic for the train trip I took last year.

I know I’ve been promising to write about that trip for ages. The problem is that the older I get, the more of a perfectionist I become about my writing. And it’s a long story. Like, I could almost turn it into a book, only I don’t want to, because I have so many other books I want to write more.

So what I’ve been doing is posting it in bits and pieces on my Patreon. Eventually, once the whole thing is written, I’ll post it on my main blog here.

Oh, and speaking of Patreon, here’s a general PSA:

If you want to subscribe to anything, whether it’s Netflix, Youtube Premium, a music streaming service, anything…you should subscribe in your browser, not through an app on your phone.

Why?

Well, Apple charges a 30% fee for any transaction made in the app store, and Google Play charges something similar. Which means that most companies compensate by making the monthly charge more if you purchase through an app than if you purchase through your browser (you can learn more about the system by watching this video).

I got an email from Patreon saying that this now also applies to Patreon subscriptions made through the Patreon app on iPhones. So if you subscribe through your browser it’s still $1 a month, but it might be slightly more if you get it through an app, and all that extra money goes to Apple, not to me or Patreon as a company.

Yeah. Fun times we live in.

Anyway, back to the topic of country music: Ever since that nostalgic song came on the radio, I’ve found myself listening to quite a bit of country or country-ish music. It’s funny to me because I’ve never really liked country music, but I get the urge to listen to it whenever I’m driving combine.

Not being on a combine, I didn’t understand my current urge, until I realized that of course, I’m in Tennessee, not that far from Nashville. Probably there’s something in the air that’s like, okay girl, time to turn to a country station.

Although, for the sake of honesty, I have to admit that I’m not technically living in Tennessee. I’m just across the boarder in Georgia. To get to the nearest Georgia library I have to drive into Tennessee and then back out of it again. My third day here I accidentally walked into Tennessee when I took a wrong turn on my walk.

My first time walking across a state boarder.

Anyway, I suppose that’s my last ramble for now. Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

First Impressions

Daily writing promptWhat’s the first impression you want to give people?View all responses

I’ve always had a desire to be viewed as “interesting.” I’d like to think that has faded with time, since “main character syndrome” is a little cringe, especially when you’re in your 30s. But once I casually mentioned my weirdness to someone I’d recently met, and they kindly said “you’re not weird!” and I got a little offended. So the core desire to be interesting is still there.

I used to think being “sweet” was the most boring personality trait imaginable, but now I take it as a compliment. I’d like to leave a first impression of being kind, a good listener, and someone who has interesting ideas but doesn’t dominate the conversation.

I hope you enjoyed this short-and-sweet little blog post answering WordPress’s daily writing prompt. My life has been really crazy the last month, with lots of travel and another big move. I have lots of blogs planned but I’m feeling snowed under, so I thought I’d do something quick and easy for fun.

Toodle-oo!

June 2024 Life Update

Do you remember when I used to blog about every random little thing that flew into my head? I miss those days sometimes. Not often, though.

Anyway. Here’s a life update if you’re interested.

Where I live

I came to Oregon in mid-April to

Hang out with Amy while she was visiting from ThailandGo to Dolly’s WeddingBe around when Ashlie had her baby

And then never bothered going back to Houston. After all, I knew I wanted to be in Oregon for the summer, and flying back and forth all the time is expensive and uncomfortable. So I’m here through the summer.

Red Barn Coffee Hour

Last summer I started a tradition where, every Thursday morning, I hosted “red barn coffee hour” in our red barn loft.

The idea came to me in a dream one night, and when I woke up, I thought, I should do that in real life. (If this sounds familiar, it’s because I did a similar thing back in 2015).

So every Thursday morning at 8:30 am I made coffee and tea and invited anyone and everyone to stop in and share a cup.

It ended up being the highlight of my summer. It provided a way to catch up with people without the tediousness of endlessly asking people when they’re free to get coffee. I just put the word out there and people showed up if they could make it.

If not this week, maybe next week.

Anyway. Everyone is welcome. It’s at 8:30 am every Thursday morning and usually goes about two hours. You’re welcome to show up late. See you there!

I had to take a pic of Dolly’s cute outfit last week

Smucker Reunion

This June we had a Smucker reunion up at Drift Creek camp. Something like 73 people attended.

Being in your 30s is strange. I used to think “feeling old” meant “oh no, I’m no longer young and cool.” Instead, I find I don’t particularly miss being young and cool, but it’s deeply unsettling to realize how quickly time marches on and see the generations shift before your eyes.

For me, the reunion was what it’s always been—a chance to hang out with my cousins. But for my cousins’ children, who are becoming teenagers, it’s one of those big reunions full of people they don’t necessarily know.

I sat down next to my cousin Kevin’s daughters, and Erin was surprised that I knew their names.

“How many people here do you know?” I asked, out of curiousity.

“Oh, probably ten,” she said.

Despite my existential crisis about the nature of time, it was a wonderful weekend. It’s always interesting, as I get older, to connect with cousins I never connected with before due to our age gap, locational differences, etc.

For example my cousin Esther, who is 20 and grew up in Wisconsin, came to red barn coffee hour the Thursday before the reunion and then we hiked together that Saturday in the mountains.

Here’s a picture a stranger took of me, Esther, and Ben on the rock below drift creek falls.

Yoder Reunion

I guess this is the summer of reunions. The Yoders are gathering in Minnesota this July, and my parents and brothers are taking a classic Oregon-to-Minnesota road trip to join them, just as we used to do in our childhood.

The Yoders have not procreated quite as prolifically as the Smuckers. Also, the cousins aren’t as close, and many are skipping the reunion altogether.

Still, summer on the lake in Minnesota is wonderful and I’m looking forward to the small family reunion just as much as I looked forward to the big one.

Baby Oliver

Another summer preoccupation is baby Oliver, Ashlie’s son, who was born the day after Dolly’s wedding.

A few days after his birth.

My most recent pic. Look at those chubby cheeks!

Harvest

At the Smucker reunion, Aunt Rosie wanted us to go around and let everyone know what we’ve been up to. When it was my turn I explained where I’ve been living and that I’ve been working as a writer.

“And you’re also a combine driver!” my Uncle Steve piped up.

“Oh, yeah, but I don’t really think of that as a job job,” I said, which may have slightly offended the Smuckers as grass seed farming is our ancestrial livelihood.

So yes, for those who are wondering, I’m working in the harvest again this year, but only part time, so as to hopefully keep up with my writing tasks as well.

Train Trip

Finally, I wanted to talk a bit about the train trip I took last year.

I have this odd trait where I feel a huge compulsion to write everything down, but I only want to write it down once. Which means that if I blog about something I don’t write about it in my diary, and vice versa.

Before my epic train trip of 2023, I bought a very cute diary to record the trip in. At the time this seemed like a delightful thing to do. In hindsight, I might have been better off scrapping the diary and blogging instead.

Anyway, this May as I kept thinking wow, this time last year I was in such-and-such place, I decided it was time to blog about the trip. Better late than never, right?

Unfortunatly, I left the travel diary in Houston. Matt and Phoebe will bring it to the Yoder reunion with them, so you can expect to start reading train stories by the end of July.

That’s all for the updates. Hope you’re having a fantastic summer!

P.S. The featured image at the top of this post—the one with the red coffee pot and two steaming cups outside of some red barns and outbuildings—was generated by AI. When I went to upload a featured image I saw a “generate with AI” option and decided to try it out. I didn’t enter any prompts, the AI just read my post and that’s what it came up with. Interesting, huh? I guess that means the “Red Barn Coffee Hour” section was the most outstanding feature of the blog post?

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Dolly + Zeb

Saturday morning I got up, leisurely sipped my tea, and then finished making a pasta salad and a goofy-but-cute card.

It was a typical Oregon April day, chilly and drizzly, and it was the day of Dolly and Zeb’s wedding. Well, their reception, rather. They like to do things their own unique way, so only their parents and closest friends attended their wedding ceremony Friday.

But the next day, Saturday, they hosted a large reception full of family, friends, fun, and food.

I intended to post Saturday, so I had an idea that I’d take notes on their reception as I was experiencing it. As you’ll come to discover, things didn’t quite go according to plan. Nevertheless, here’s how the day went for me.

11:06 am – Ben and I arrived. At this point the reception had been going on for about an hour, but it was a pretty casual, come-and-go-as-you-feel-like-it reception.

Zeb was wearing a kilt. Dolly was dressed as a woodland fairy. At least, that’s what I thought she looked like with the hand-crocheted green lace on her dress and the mushrooms in her garland.

Fun fact: Mom made the wedding dress. Didn’t she do a beautiful job? The lace was crocheted by Zeb’s mom.

The photographer was a friend of mine, and she showed me the way to the kitchen to drop of the pasta salad I’d brought, and then showed me pictures of Friday’s ceremony on her camera.

Instead of having a coffee bar like you might expect at a wedding reception, Dolly and Zeb had a tea table with a carafe of hot water and a large selection of black, green, and herbal tea!

Glorious.

Here’s a photo of my tea, as well as the table centerpieces. The treasure chests were full of chocolate coins.

This was the “fun and games” portion of the day, where guests played Twister, Dutch Blitz, and cornhole. Only most guests, myself included, just chatted.

There’s always so many people to chat with at a wedding. Distant relatives you haven’t seen in a while. Neighbors who haven’t seen you in a while. Friends of friends you like to catch up with occasionally.

11:48 am – My friend Sarah Beth arrived. With her living in Oklahoma and me in Texas, we don’t see each other often, and it was great to catch up.

We took a selfie together, which of course is terrible quality, but luckily enough we had an “in” with the photographer (she’s Sarah Beth’s sister) so there’s a nice photo of us too, out there somewhere on someone else’s memory card.

This is the face Sarah Beth’s son Leonel made when she told him to smile for the camera, haha.

12:12 pm – Time for food! I snapped a picture of Zeb and Dolly praying while my cousin Tristan tried to fix the mushroom centerpiece that Leonel had destroyed.

Dolly’s dad, Darrell, provided the meat, while the sides were brought by guests, potluck-style.

I was going to make you guess which of those sides I brought, but then remembered I told you earlier in this post that I’d brought pasta salad.

1:05 pm – Cake cutting time!

I’m starting to feel pretty embarrassed by the poor quality of these photographs. I have a nice camera, I just never bother to use it. I’ve been thinking, though, that I really should learn to take better pictures. So if you have any free online photography courses or challenges to recommend I’m all ears!

By this time, the table I was sitting at had filled up with a random assortment of cousins and friends. But then, at 1:10 pm, my friend Ashlie showed up. It was the first time I’d seen Ashlie since arriving back in Oregon, and since it was the day before her due date, she was very pregnant.

There wasn’t much room at our table, so I swapped tables to sit with her.

A bit later I glanced at Ashlie and saw that she appeared to be in pain, breathing deeply with a determined grimace. My eyes widened. “Contraction?” I asked her.

She nodded.

It was happening! The baby was coming! “How far apart are they?” I asked excitedly.

She smiled at my childless ignorance. “I haven’t started timing them yet,” she said.

I checked my watch anyway. It was 1:12 pm.

The contraction ended, she relaxed, and we resumed normal conversation. A bit later, another wave of pain hit her. I looked at my watch again. 1:16 pm.

“That was four minutes!” I exclaimed. I don’t know much about childbirth, but I thought four minutes seemed awfully close together.

“This was just a little one,” she said, already over it.

Coincidently, the new table was at the perfect spot to watch the next part of the festivities, and we were soon joined by Dolly’s parents, brother, and dog.

1:17 pm – Dolly and Zeb showed the video of Zeb proposing. There was no sound, so Dolly narrated it, which was fantastic.

Then they repeated the vows they’d said at their ceremony the day before.

After the vows, several people were asked to pray for the couple or give speeches, and then it was open mic time.

It’s hard for me to resist an open mic.

1:43 pm – I walked to the mic and told a story. Here’s the basic gist of what I said.

Hi, I’m Dolly’s cousin Emily. I work for Dolly’s dad Darrell in the summers, driving combine, and Dolly would often ride with me and tell me about various boys in her life. But she always insisted that Zeb was just a friend.

Then, about a year-and-a-half ago, I was taking a 12-hour road trip one day, and I asked my friends to send me long podcast-like WhatsApp messages to pass the time. And Dolly sent me these loooooong messages…it must have been over an hour of messages altogether.

Anyway, she was all in a dither about Zeb. He was giving her these mixed signals, and she just didn’t know if he liked her or not, or what was going on with him.

So I messaged her back and added my two cents. I said that from her description of his actions, it really seemed like he liked her, but he probably did not want to date her at the moment.

But then I said, “You know, you can always just ask him!”

And to my surprise, since people don’t usually take my romantic advice, she did just ask him! And she messaged me back to say that I was pretty much right—he liked her but wasn’t ready to date her at the moment.

But then a few months went by, and they talked about their feelings and figured it out, and pretty soon they were dating.

So I’m sure they would have still gotten together without my help, but I’d just like to take a weeeee bit of credit.

Anyway, I’m so glad it worked out. I love you two and I’m excited for your future!

People seemed to appreciate the story.

Back at the table, Ashlie continued having contractions. They seemed awfully intense and frequent to inexperienced little me. When she got up and walked off a bit later, I followed, thinking this is it. We’re delivering a baby at this wedding.

But it wasn’t it, of course. She just needed to stand up for a bit, as sitting was painful.

2:02 pm – Photo hour. Dolly and Zeb stood by the wedding trellis and we took pictures with them. I don’t have any photo evidence of this because, again, the pictures are all on Lois Sophia’s memory card.

Ben had already left at this point, and my parents were acting like they were about ready to leave, too. I’d originally planned to go home and rest for a while before heading up to Ashlie’s place to hang out with her and some of our friends, but now it seemed she might be having a baby instead.

Still, she was completely nonchalant, telling me her address and how to find her house. “Are you sure you want to have a party while you’re having contractions?” I asked.

“If they’re just as bad as they are now, it will be fine,” she said. “If they get worse, I’ll cancel it.”

2:30 pm – I left Dolly and Zeb’s reception with my parents and my leftover pasta salad.

4:52 pm – Ashlie canceled the party.

6:28 pm – I headed over to our barn loft to eat wedding leftovers with Dolly’s aunts and uncles (my dad’s cousins). They’d rented our loft for the weekend.

8:30 pm – Ashlie headed to her birth clinic.

Sunday, 8:46 am – I woke up, drank my tea, and texted Ashlie asking if there was any news. She did not respond.

Sunday, 10:00 am – Baby Oliver was born!

Thus, this weekend included a wedding and a birth. I’d say it was a momentous occasion.

Also: Oliver is the first baby I’ve known to be born exactly on his due date. Maybe it’s happened to other friends and I’ve forgotten, but usually it seems like babies never manage to arrive precisely on the date.

Finally: I wrote most of this post on Saturday and fully intended to post then, but first I wanted to make sure Ashlie was okay with me announcing the birth of her son to the wide web.

I feel like I should end this with an adorable picture but I’m not meeting baby until tomorrow! Keep an eye out on Instagram though.

The April Blogging Challenge is almost completed! Tomorrow, Ben will post the last post over on Mom’s blog.

April Birthday Week

There’s a particular week every April when most of my close female friends have birthdays. First Ashlie on April 16, then Phoebe on April 17, then Esta on April 20, then Jenny on April 21.

(If your birthday falls on April 18 or 19 maybe we’re destined to be close friends someday, lol.)

For today’s April Blogging Challenge, I’m going to write a small tribute to each of these particular women who’ve meant so much to me over the years.

Ashlie

One of the strange things about being in my 30s is that I have old friends that I met in adulthood. I met Ashlie ten years ago. Ten! So wild that it’s been that long.

I found a photo of us the weekend we met.

Back then, we were friends because we were both friends with the Wilcoxson girls. There was a whole friend group that sprung up around Sarah Beth, and when Sarah Beth moved away, Ashlie and I stayed friends. We were even roommates for a while.

I was obsessively frugal back then, with a tendency to stay home and self-isolate. Ashlie, on the other hand, was always sniffing out fun things to do and taking me along. We did Pride and Prejudice style dancing with a bunch of homeschooled kids. We went down to Ashland and watched a Shakespeare play from the nosebleeds. We hiked to hidden ponds glistening in the sun, where she swam and I didn’t because it was much too cold.

I am deeply affected by beauty, fun, and adventure—without it, the creative part of me dries up. This is why I don’t write much when I’m sick, even though I technically have a lot more time.

So much of the beauty, fun, and adventure I’ve experienced in the last ten years is because of Ashlie. Almost every photo I have of her is from a time we did something new and fun together.

Last summer we went to the fair and watched a concert from outside the fence so we didn’t have to pay. Ashlie has never quite cured me of my deeply frugal nature.

Riding a vintage train at the coast, between Garibaldi and Rockaway Beach.

We’ve gone to the beach together so many times it’s impossible to count. We eat snacks and read books.

Shakespeare in the park, and a picnic dinner.

This pic is pretty old, but it’s from a time we went to the coast with Christina, another member of the friend group that sprang up around Sarah Beth back in the day.

I don’t even remember where this was, but Ashlie found a darling place that was a combination vintage store and tea shop inside an old mansion.

I’m not much of a picture taker, but I have so many pictures just like these, of the two of us having fun times.

Ashlie is about to become a mother, so soon our friendship will look a little different than the spontaneous random adventures we’ve done for ten years. Nevertheless, Ashlie always brings beauty and fun wherever she goes, and I’m so excited for the future of our friendship.

Phoebe

Phoebe entered my life five years ago when she began dating my older brother Matt, and we had an instant connection because we’ve both struggled much of our lives with mysterious illnesses.

In 2019 they got engaged, and we were all so delighted to have her join our family. But we had no idea what a wild ride was before us.

First, before the wedding rolled around, Covid hit. Since both of them were working remotely and their families were in Oregon, they moved out here and my whole family spent a social-distanced Easter together.

Then, in June, they had a drive-in wedding.

I’m forever bummed that this photo is blurry, but it was a blurry moment, full of joy, horns honking, people clapping in their cars.

Those last few weeks of June were the first joyful moments I’d felt since Covid started, and then, the day Matt and Phoebe planned to move back to Houston, my Dad fell off a ladder and everything changed.

That terrible week, we sat on the hospital lawn and tried to understand the mountains of paperwork. And Phoebe was right there in the storm with us. The move to Houston was canceled, and she and Matt bought and Airstream and parked it in our driveway to help care for Dad during that long, excruciating recovery.

I didn’t realize, back then when I’d visit the Airstream occasionally for a cup of tea, that in a few years I’d live with Phoebe in their much larger Houston house. And that maybe on one of those dreadful days when we’re both feeling unwell and skittish we’d make boba tea and drive to the little bay beach to watch the waves in the most low-key excursion possible.

Or another day, feeling a little better, we’d go for a swim.

I appreciate so much about Phoebe. But I especially love her deep capacity for empathy and understanding.

Esta

Esta feels like the first friend I deliberately chose to be friends with. She was so cool, fun, interesting, and easy to talk to that even in those early days I went to extra lengths to keep the budding friendship going. But it wasn’t hard, as she seemed equally committed and interested in being friends.

We started out in the same life stage, living that single life with just enough boy drama to keep life interesting. Going to college and trying to scrape by on zero dollars.

But then she got married, and I stayed single.

Lucky for me, she married a guy that I’d grown up with and moved to Oregon. For many years I went to college and she raised babies, and I’d stop in when I was overwhelmed with life, folding laundry while Esta lent an empathetic ear and gave wise advice.

Keeping a vibrant friendship with someone in a totally different life stage is challenging but deeply rewarding. I like having children in my life even if I don’t have my own. I like hearing about childbirth and schooling decisions and marriage.

There are so many things I love and appreciate about Esta. But I think the thing that’s cemented our friendship is that we think similarly and like to talk about the same sorts of things, but our perspectives differ just enough that we’re always learning from each other.

I feel like we could be locked in a prison cell together for ten years and never run out of things to ponder and chat about.

Here we are having a chat and cup of tea with our friend Kayla.

Shopping for fabric with our friend Janessa for my America’s Next Great Author dress.

Last summer Esta and I overlapped briefly when she moved back to Oregon a few weeks before I went back to Houston at the end of the summer, and she came faithfully to my Red Barn Coffee Hour.

This summer, I am looking forward to many more cups of tea and good chats with my dear friend Esta. I can’t believe we’ve been friends for fifteen years, and I look forward to the next fifteen.

Jenny

Jenny, the youngest person with a birthday this week, is also the one I’ve been friends with the longest as she is my baby sister.

I don’t even know where to being describing all the fun and goofy things we’ve done together.

This girl is talented at everything she attempts, from baking bread to watercolor painting to sewing projects to music to volleyball to telling jokes to math and science and every smart thing.

She has a kind heart and is always a fun time.

Here’s a throwback to that Christmas when we both lived in that apartment in Blacksburg VA, and invited international students over for Christmas.

Jenny is all about traditions, nostalgia, and cultivating joy. That year, she bought a Christmas tree, decorated it with inexpensive and homemade ornaments, and then bought us matching pajamas.

I remember when Mom was pregnant with Jenny, and I, as an eight-year-old, was convinced that Jenny was too young to ever be a close friend.

How wrong I was! And how deeply blessed I was to be wrong.

I love you, Jenny. You are doing and will continue to do wonderful, world-changing things.

(P.S. If you like books and silly fun conversation, check out Jenny’s podcast, Idiot’s Alphabet Soup, that she does with her friend Kathrine! It’s on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and you can also follow what they’re doing on Instagram.)

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Thanks for reading this April Blogging Challenge post! I meant to post it yesterday but was debilitated by a migraine, so I’m posting today instead.

Be sure to check out Ben’s post about the challenges of living in disconnected worlds, which is probably the best ABC post so far this year!

Mom also wrote a great post about childbirth, and how we should be okay with talking about the trauma of it.

Mom will post again tomorrow, and then two days later, Phoebe will post on her blog.

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Latest Patreon Posts:

In Search of BelongingBut What Do You Actually Want?The Wealthy Mennonites of Belize and Beyond

Order my book:
Print Version
Kindle Version

Follow me on:
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Twitter: @emilysmucker
Facebook: facebook.com/emilysmuckerblog
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Patreon: patreon.com/emilysmucker (This is where I post bonus blog posts, about more personal/controversial subjects, for a subscription fee of $1 a month [or more if you’re feeling generous]. I try to post twice a month.)

The Eclipse 2024

It’s hard to describe just how much the 2024 eclipse mattered to me. Seeing the 2017 eclipse was one of the top highlights of my life. Maybe even the best moment of my entire life. Not just the uncanny, indescribable, mind-bending beauty of the eclipse itself but the whole day⁠—from camping with my cousins to the post-eclipse traffic jam where we prepared vats of iced tea and lemonade for strangers and opened our home to anyone and everyone who needed to use the bathroom. 

That day, my whole family started talking about the 2024 eclipse. It would be far away from Oregon, but maybe we could still see it. Visit relatives in Ohio or something.

But once I moved to Texas, the answer seemed simple: I’d just drive north into totality. There are lots of Mennonites in Texas. Surely someone would let me join their party.

I ended up connecting with my second cousin Otoniel and his wife Jennifer. I’d never met Jennifer before, but when I reached out, she invited me to stay the weekend. 

The funny thing is, Otoniel was at the Great Smucker 2017 Eclipse Viewing Party, so I guess we’re eclipse buddies now. He lived in Mexico at the time, but he’d come to Oregon to work that summer. I’d completely forgotten that he was there, but when I looked over my photos of that day, sure enough, there he was.

The Plan

Jennifer and Otoniel were living in a camper on her parents’ property while they renovated their house. But she was sure someone at her church could host me. And sure enough, when she put the word out, a girl named Eileen, whom I met years ago at a wedding in Alaska, said I could stay with her.

I planned to arrive Saturday and potentially stay through Monday night before heading back to Houston. Frankly, I was very worried about traffic, as you can imagine, given my 2017 experience. It’s great fun being the one handing out drinks and offering a restroom, but I had no desire to be the one stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

But the other issue I had to contend with was the weather. Severe clouds, rain, thunderstorms, and other scary things were supposed to begin Monday and last for several days. Would the clouds ruin my chance to see the eclipse? 

Saturday morning, equipped with iced tea and a sense of adventure, I drove out of the city and into the glorious countryside, marveling at the rolling green landscape and endless wildflowers. And while I drove, I prayed for clear skies on Monday. Even a wee gap in the clouds.

I could tell when I entered the “totality zone” because there were frequent signs stating that we were absolutely not allowed to park on the side of the road on eclipse day, as well as signs imploring us to arrive early and stay late because the eclipse might cause traffic delays.

The Weekend

An eclipse is never just an eclipse. Not in 2017, not in 2024. It’s a whole experience, full of bizarre, wonderful things I’d never have experienced in any other circumstance. 

For example, since 99% of my relatives are white, I’ve never known what it feels like to be part of a Latin American family. Although Otoniel grew up in Mexico and his mom is Mexican, I’ve only ever hung out with him in an Oregon Smucker context. I didn’t realize that Jennifer and her family were from Costa Rica, nor did I know that her sister is engaged to a local guy whose family is from El Salvadore.

But as soon as I showed up I was fed a huge lunch, and every day there was some sort of gathering or party with so much food and aunts and cousins everywhere chattering in Spanish. English, of course, if I was involved in the conversation, but Spanish in the corners.

And I was sort of an outsider but sort of not really, because I was family too. 

Then there were the Texas bluebonnets. I noticed the profusion of wildflowers as I drove, but I wasn’t prepared for the pure, ethereal beauty of the bluebonnet fields. We went out late Sunday afternoon just to take pictures, and I made a little nest for myself and read The Enchanted April.

Then, after a weekend of family, food, fellowship, and fun conversations, Monday arrived.

Eclipse Day

The first thing I noticed when I woke up in Eileen’s adorable cabin Monday morning was the sunshine. Glory be! The Lord heard my prayers! A few clouds drifted through the sky, but it was amazingly clear.

In the late morning, we all headed over to Jennifer’s sister’s boyfriend’s parents’ house because they had a wide-open field perfect for eclipse viewing. As usual, there was an abundance of aunts, food, and Spanish.

Most people drifted here and there, cooking and chatting. When the first teeny tiny black dent appeared in the sun, the only people watching it were me, Eileen (who came over on her break from work), and a boy who seemed about 11 or 12. All three of us were extremely invested, with frequent interjections such as “wow, look at it now!” and “it looks like the Apple logo” and “now it looks like a fat moon.”

Presently, other family members would come out and take a peek through eclipse glasses or a welding mask every now and again. And as the world began to grow a little dimmer and a little colder, everyone collected outside. The food preparation never quite ceased, but it did at least settle down a bit as we all waited for the big event.

The UPS man dropped off a package. Someone handed him a welding mask to look at eclipse progress before he headed on to the next house.

Most of the time, the sky was clear enough that we could put on our eclipse glasses and watch the moon slowly advance across the face of the sun. Every once in a while, a dense cloud would block our view, but honestly, it was a welcome reprieve from the heat.

But when there was just the tiniest sliver of sun left, a bank of clouds rolled right across it, making it impossible to see anything through eclipse glasses. But you could see it with your naked eye. What a dilemma! The desire to stare at something that could permanently damage my eyes has never been so strong. So I just kept peeking at it in quick, furtive glances.

And then, bloop! The sun was gone.

There’s something absolutely indescribable about that moment when the sun disappears behind the moon. It feels like you’re living in a slightly altered reality. We cheer or yelp in astonishment without realizing we’re doing so. There’s no quelling the unearthly wonderfulness of it.

And we got four minutes of totality⁠—more than twice what we got in 2017. Unfortunately, for part of that time, the eclipse was behind a dense bank of clouds and looked like this (except darker in real life).

But since we had four whole minutes of totality, there was plenty of time for the cloud to blow away, giving us a great view of the eclipse. This included a strange red spot on the bottom that we assumed was a solar flair, but which was apparently actually a solar prominence.

If you’ve never seen an eclipse before, the sky goes dark, but there’s a ring of light near the horizon, like a sunset in every direction. Presently, Eileen said, “Is the sky getting lighter over there?” and we went running to look around the corner of the garage where, indeed, the sky was getting lighter to the southwest. We looked to the northeast and saw that the “sunset” look had disappeared and the sky was dark to the horizon.

Just then, a bead of light appeared at the edge of the moon. A diamond ring, just for an instant, and then light rushed into the world again and the eclipse was over.

The children started spontaneously cheering. The adults were wide-eyed. “That was amazing!”

“It’s like two days in one,” said the boy next to me. Then, a few moments later, “I wish it could be that beautiful forever.”

After

Back in 2017, we ate brunch before the eclipse, and once totality was over, none of us had the urge to linger. In fact, many of us felt a deep weariness and wanted nothing more than a nap, although, with the subsequent traffic jam/iced tea and lemonade/bathroom situation, we didn’t get a chance.

But here, the eclipse was merely the beginning of the festivities. Once it was over, we feasted, talked, and laughed, and no one showed any inclination to go home to take a nap.

A great weariness stole over me, which wasn’t helped by the fact that I hadn’t slept well the night before. I wasn’t sure what to do. If I asked to nap at Eileen’s, I’d pretty much drive her from her own home since the air mattress took up most of the floor space of her studio. Besides, I’d come with Jennifer and didn’t have my car with me.

My weariness must have shown on my face. Jennifer asked if I’d like to nap. The lady who owned the house offered me the couch. Jennifer’s mom offered to let me take her car to her house. Jennifer’s sister offered to let me use her bedroom. So before I knew it, I was in an empty house, in Jennifer’s sister’s bedroom, taking a glorious two-and-a-half-hour nap.

I checked Google Maps a few times, and it didn’t seem like traffic ever got too crazy. So maybe I could have gone home on Monday. But after my nap, it was late enough that going home would mean driving after dark in possible storms. 

Instead, I went back to the house where we’d seen the eclipse, dashing inside just as a deluge broke from the heavens. Most of the eclipse guests had left, but a few remained yet. We ate leftovers and hung out with parakeets. 

Going Home

The next morning, Eileen tried to show me how to use the weather radar, but all I gathered from it was that terrible storms seemed inevitable. Already, a deep darkness was on the horizon. I said goodbye, hopped in my car, and hoped for the best.

The rain got worse and worse. I was on the Interstate, and the semi-trucks kicked so much water into the air I couldn’t see, only staying vaguely in my lane by watching the taillights of the car ahead of me. It wasn’t worth it. I pulled off at the nearest exit, on the north side of Waco, and parked by a Starbucks where I hoped to wait out the storm.

Having no umbrella, I poked through a plastic bag full of plastic bags I’d meant to recycle at Kroger and selected the biggest piece, which had originally encased a bulk package of toilet paper.

Then I ran inside with a giant toilet paper wrapper over my head and shoulders.

Unfortunately for me, this Starbucks was not designed for people to sit in, cozily sipping tea, tapping away at their computers, and waiting out storms. Its only seating area was one long bench with three teeny-tiny tables that were barely bigger than armrests. The sort of thing where you might rest a cup of coffee, but not a laptop.

Also, it was full. I got my tea and sat on the floor.

“We’re leaving soon, so you can sit here,” a woman on the bench informed me. “But watch out because the roof leaks.”

Something about the wild weirdness of an eclipse turns strangers into friends. Everyone in that Starbucks seemed, like me, to be going home after watching the eclipse and temporarily avoiding the storm. We traded stories and pictures. It was truly lovely. The guy next to me was from Virginia but had spent time in California, and we chatted about the West Coast, the 2017 eclipse, and how amazing it would be to see the Iceland eclipse in 2026.

Buckets of rain poured from the heavens, roaring on the roof of the Starbucks, and wee dots of water fell through the ceiling and splashed on my lap. I looked at the radar on my phone, trying to understand it. The deluge seemed inevitable, lasting for hours and hours. Waco was under a tornado warning.

But presently, I glanced outside and saw two people walking, not running, through the parking lot with no umbrella. I hastily gathered my things and ran outside. Sure enough, the rain had calmed to a mere sprinkle. 

I took several interchanges in Waco and ended up on a four-lane highway, where the deluge began again. This time, however, there were very few semi-trucks, no middle lanes to get lost in, and almost no vehicles merging onto the road. 80% of the drivers slowed to sensible speeds. After another half hour or so, the rain slacked off to a downpour, then a gentle rain, then a drizzle, then a sprinkle. 

By the time I got to Houston, the sun was shining. The traffic here was heavier than usual but overall wasn’t that bad. 

Matt and Phoebe, on the other hand, had gone to the Kerrville Eclipse Festival hosted by NASA, where they met up with Phoebe’s cousin. Even though they left Sunday and came back Tuesday, they encountered a lot of backed-up traffic. So I guess the lack of traffic I experienced was due to choosing a more unpopular spot to eclipse watch.

Final Thoughts 

My eclipse weekend was just about as close to perfect as possible, but I was disappointed by two tiny things.

First, although the eclipse was phenomenal, mind-blowing really, it was a bit like reading my favorite book for the second time. You notice more details the second time through, and you realize just how much you love it, but at the same time, you feel a little bit sad because there truly is no way to recapture the feeling of experiencing it for the first time.

Second, there were no weird shadows.

Both at the 2017 eclipse and during the “ring of fire” eclipse last October (we had 85% totality in Houston), there were very peculiar shadows. The leaf shadows made little crescent shapes all over the concrete, and when you stretched out your hands, there were little shadow bumps between your fingers.

But this time, the shadows were barely weird at all. Just a bit of blurriness around the edges. I kept stretching out my hands to see those bumps between the fingers, but they weren’t there, and Eileen thought I was crazy. 

I’m not sure if the problem was the clouds, the fact that there were no trees or slabs of concrete near us, or something else. But I was disappointed. I would have liked to share the weird-shadow joy with the first-time eclipse viewers around me. 

Ever since the eclipse, I’ve been reflecting on how miraculous it seems, even though it’s really a simple concept: Just like a tree, a cloud, or your own hand, the moon casts a shadow on the earth when it passes in front of the sun. 

But in my opinion, the truly miraculous part is that the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun but also 400 times closer, so that they seem, to the naked eye, to be exactly the same size. This means the moon blocks the sun but allows us to see the sun’s corona. Which is wild. 

Many people, religious and non-religious alike, feel a spiritual awe when viewing the total solar eclipse. And I think God did that on purpose. As much as we marvel at willow trees and puppies, mangos and wisteria vines, these things grow common over time, and we forget how much of the universe was created specifically to ignite our sense of wonder.

And then we travel 300 miles to see the eclipse, and we remember.

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This April Blogging Challenge has been a real challenge in the sense that when you’re traveling to see eclipses and such, you may find yourself crouched in the bathroom of your friend’s studio hurriedly trying to finish a blog and post it with no Wi-Fi and only one bar of service on your phone.

Needless to say, I haven’t been the best at linking to the other blogs in the challenge, so I’m going to fix that here.

Here are all the posts we’ve done so far this year. (I recommend reading Phoebe’s post if you’d like a life update!)

April Blogging Challenge (And the End of the Christmas Quest) (written by me)Belize–Touches of Familiar in a Foreign Place (written by mom)Amy’s Update from Thailand (guest post written by Amy)The Trip to Belize (written by me)What’s Going On With Phoebe and Matt (written by Phoebe)Notes on Poetry Workshop (guest post written by Hudson Kropf)

The next post will be written by mom and coming out on Monday, April 15!

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Latest Patreon Posts:

In Search of BelongingBut What Do You Actually Want?The Wealthy Mennonites of Belize and Beyond

Order my book:
Print Version
Kindle Version

Follow me on:
Instagram: @emilytheduchess
Twitter: @emilysmucker
Facebook: facebook.com/emilysmuckerblog
YouTube: youtube.com/emilysmucker
Patreon: patreon.com/emilysmucker (This is where I post bonus blog posts, about more personal/controversial subjects, for a subscription fee of $1 a month [or more if you’re feeling generous]. I try to post twice a month.)