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I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of it. It’s not nearly as popular as, say, The Phantom of the Opera or Cats. But it’s an amazing musical, telling the story of Genesis from the creation of the world through the end of the flood.
Hillcrest—my school—put on Children of Eden when I was a senior in high school. It was my last chance to be in a dramatic and musical production, and I was disappointed to only get a part in the chorus. Over time, though, and after going to rehearsal after rehearsal, I fell in love with the musical and even the role of the chorus. As in so many Greek plays, the chorus in Children of Eden are the storytellers, the ones who do the actual narration. They’re a vital part of the story.
But it was Adam and Eve who truly stole the show. That was their purpose, and boy, did they succeed. They evoked tears and laughter, and everyone was blown away by their performance. When I listen to the professional recording, I instead here Bob’s voice as Adam, and Titi as Eve. They brought the characters to life. I still cry when I listen to the song “World without You,” when Adam chooses Eve instead of God.
Although the story is biblical, it’s not exactly Christian. But both the songs and message are poignant and moving. Throw in a hint of comedy with Noah and his family, and the whole production is fantabulous. My favourite memories of high school are from rehearsing that production, coming together with the others in our cast to worship God through music. I’ll never forget going barefoot on stage and mourning the death of Abel, or holding candles to represent the stars coming out after the flood. The very music is inside me, along with all my memories.
If you haven’t ever seen or heard this musical, you must.
24 July 2007
Dear Aaron
I was seven when you were born in Los Angeles, 18 years ago today. You were in the hospital for a few weeks before we got you; you were a drug baby and had several medical issues to be sorted out before you could come to our foster home. You were premature, your kidney had failed, and you had a crack addiction. When we brought you home, you were so small! We had to keep you on an apnoea monitor, especially at night. It was these wire sensors in a long strip that velcroed around your chest. I remember waking up at night several times to the high-pitched scream of your monitor alert. I was so afraid you’d die.
I honestly don’t remember a whole lot about when you were a newborn. You were fragile, so I don’t expect I got to hold you very much since I was so small myself. But then you got older and healthier. You started toddling around. I remember coming back from Astro Camp in second grade and going straight to the hospital to see you after the surgery to correct the skeletal problem in your skull. Your head was all wrapped up in bandages, but you walked to me across the room. I was so glad to see you!!
You loved Patches, our pet cat, and she tolerated you amazingly well. By the time you were two, you’d learned to pet her gently. I think she secretly came to love you.
You were always our entertainment on deputation trips to churches; we’d ask you to make different animal noises. “Aaron, what does a cow say?” You would moo, and we’d all crack up. That would make you laugh, so we’d all be laughing. On one trip, we went out to Baker’s Square for dinner, and someone got a lemon wedge in his iced tea. We gave the lemon wedge to you, and you sucked on it. Oh, the face you made!! We laughed so hard I remember my sides hurt. That just encouraged you, so you sucked on the wedge again, and we all kept laughing. You were the star of the show!
Our favourite game at dinnertime was to knock on the underside of the table with one hand and pretend to knock on our heads with the other hand. It made it seem like our heads were hollow. And when you would knock on your head to make the same sound, sometimes we’d knock on the table, and you’d giggle. But other times we wouldn’t, and we laughed at the surprised look on your face. Where was the noise you wanted? You were so cute.
And then 16 years ago, we said goodbye to you at your mom’s apartment. You were crying. We were crying. We heard later from a church friend who was able to visit you occasionally that whenever you heard an airplane fly overhead, you would point to it, and say, “Mommy! Daddy!” You’d been told that we went on an airplane to Africa.
We got to see you three years later. You had changed so much, grown up in some ways. We visited you at Easter, and it broke my heart to see your mom’s apartment, to see you there. The place reeked of cigarette smoke.
And today you’re 18 years old. You can buy cigarettes. You can join the army. You’re a legal adult. If you got arrested, you wouldn’t be tried in a juvenile court. Where are you? Are you safe? Healthy? Happy? What do you like to do? Are you a basketball player? American football? Soccer? Do you run track? Did you finish high school? What are your plans, your hopes, your dreams for the future? Do you have a girlfriend? Maybe you even have a child. I’m so full of questions, Aaron, and they’re questions that will never be answered.
I have always wondered about you. I have loved you since the moment I laid eyes on you, and I will love you until the day I die. You were the first baby I ever loved, and in the two years we had you, I grew to truly adore you as my baby brother. Our skin may be a different colour, but you’re still my brother. Wherever you are, I wish you a happy birthday, and I lift you up to my Jesus, my God, for He is a loving shepherd and will care for you though I cannot. His arms are tender and loving, and He is God of the downtrodden and brokenhearted. I cannot see you, but He can, and I will trust you to His care.
I remain forever yours.
Lydia’s been gone a week today.
It’s been a hard adjustment. I’ve said goodbye to so many babies over the years–the most painful of which was to Aaron in August 1991–but as I get older, I remember better, I think.
All right, so I clearly remember saying farewell to Aaron 16 years ago. I was nine then, and he had just turned two. It was a Sunday afternoon, if I remember correctly. And when we left the apartment building in which his mother lived, he was wailing. We were all falling apart in one way or another. And on our way home, we got into a car accident. Lisa broke her nose… It was just a bad day. I often wonder how Aaron is these days, if he’s even still alive, if he’s in jail…
Anyway, I’m pretty sure Lydia will do all right with her new family, but we sure miss her. So many times I’ve tried to put into words why and how we miss her, and what in particular we miss. But words fail me, and I just have to sigh. I’ve been a foster sister since 1987. Twenty years. Wow. And soon I’ll be a mom and will not (Lord willing) have to say goodbye to another baby anytime soon! This baby will be mine (on loan from God) for keeps.
Marc’s arriving tomorrow! I haven’t seen him in over two years!
I got to know Marc when I was in eighth grade and he in sixth. His family was/is in my mission, and he’d come over sometimes to play computer games (mostly Myst) with my older brother Jonathan. Sometimes they got together with some other guys and played Diplomacy at Marc’s house. So when Marc started middle school, I decided to keep an eye on him, make sure he was okay (being such a person of rank myself). And somehow over that first semester of eighth grade (fall ’95), Marc and I became fast friends. I wasn’t in his social circle, I guess you might say, but we were friends anyway. I, being the youngest in my family, asked him to be my little brother. He, being the second of three boys in his family, agreed that I could be his big sister. And that was that.
Oh, sure, things have changed over the years as we’ve grown up. We’re hardly that much apart in age, and so now we’re more like friends than siblings. And we don’t write often, hardly ever call…But Marc’s still my little brother in my heart. This year he’s coming out to teach math at our school in town, and I’m so glad! I’m pretty sure he and David will really click, and we’re both eager to learn Chess from a master. So, have a safe trip, Marc, and we’ll see you in a day or two!
There was a slight hitch (aside from our getting lost on the way to the church). Our luggage had been on the first bus to leave Cincinnati, for some reason, and had made it all the way to Charlotte on the Greyhound without us. So not only did we arrive at the church (a half hour late) wearing Thursday’s clothes (jeans and a t-shirt for me), but we also had to figure out how to get our luggage. Marj made a phone call to a friend, who graciously offered to drive all the way to downtown Charlotte—thus missing most of the service—to collect our bags. What a blessing!
The service was a long and emotional one. Hundreds of people from my mission and Hillcrest, and even the greater Jos community, had flocked to this little church in South Carolina to remember Coach. What a testimony that was in itself!
But to me, the next story was the best of all. The Beachams’ middle daughter, Carol, had been planning on marrying in June, but the doctors had highly recommended she move up the wedding, knowing Coach would probably not be around until June. So Carol had rescheduled her wedding for 26th March. Her younger sister Laci, who was finishing her senior year at Hillcrest, staying with family friends, was scheduled to fly into the States the week of the wedding, arriving the 21st. But when she tried to get a booking on the flight, she was informed that it was already overbooked. So her parents decided to fly her out a week earlier. Because her original flight had been booked, Laci arrived two days before her father died. If she had been on that flight, she would never have gotten to say goodbye.
The story doesn’t end there. After Coach died, Laci’s dear friend Micah—the one I mentioned earlier—and his parents decided that he should fly from Nigeria to the States to support the family. He got a seat on the same flight that had been overbooked when Laci had tried to get a seat, getting him to the States in time for the memorial service and Carol’s wedding. Coincidence? I don’t believe it for a minute. How much clearer can God’s orchestration get?
So Micah was part of the Beacham family that weekend, and I was ever so glad to see him. After the service there was a spontaneous reunion dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant. It was a perfect opportunity to visit with friends and “family” and reminisce about Coach and our days at Hillcrest. I found Laura, who was my best friend throughout my nine years at Hillcrest, and she offered to let me share her hotel room with her and her sister. Her brother Daniel had paid the bill, but when I went to give him my reimbursement check the next morning, he ripped it up in my face and refused to let me pay for it!
Carol’s wedding on Saturday was beautiful. Her mom, Aunt Beaj, gave her away and said a few heart-breaking words on Coach’s behalf. Almost everyone who had attended the memorial service stayed in town for the wedding, so we were quite a crowd, and the Beachams were happy. The reception included Nigerian food and group photos of the Hillcrest alumni present. It was fun, relaxed, and beautiful.
I had been hoping to find a ride back to Chicago, so I hadn’t bought a return Greyhound ticket. But no one was returning until several days later—too late for me, since my classes began again on Monday. So in the mid-afternoon, Marj and I got back in her white rental car and drove back to Knoxville, arriving in time to catch the midnight express bus back to Chicago.
Exhausted, we slept most of the way back home, arriving just before noon on Easter Sunday. I hadn’t planned a ride back from the Greyhound station as Marj had, so when her husband came to pick her up, they offered me a ride home. What a blessing! I arrived home in time for my sister’s family to collect me after church on their way to my brother-in-law’s parents’ for Easter dinner (through most of which I slept).
The trip had cost me only two meals (Lisa had given me some food) and a one-way bus ticket from Knoxville to Chicago. (Greyhound had refunded my entire Chicago-Charlotte ticket in Knoxville when we’d been over two hours late.) Marj had not let me pay a cent for the rental car, insisting she would have paid for it anyway if I hadn’t come. And Daniel had paid for my overnight at the hotel. God had saved me over $200 that I could now put toward getting a replacement car.
It was a long trip. There were many unforeseen obstacles. And yet it was crystal clear to me that God had had His hand in everything that happened surrounding Coach’s death—from Laci’s early arrival to my meeting Marj on the Greyhound bus in downtown Chicago! And whenever I doubt God’s goodness, I will remember this story and praise Him for His mighty works and His enduring love.
There I was, sitting on the Greyhound, wiping my eyes and waiting for our departure to Charlotte.
It was Thursday, 24th March, 2005, and I was on my way to a funeral.
I’d gotten the call from my sister Lisa the week before, on St. Patrick’s Day, telling me that our dear friend Steve Beacham had died earlier that morning. Steve “Coach” Beacham was a missionary colleague of our parents (in our mission) and coach/Bible teacher/discipleship-leader at our school, Hillcrest. He’d returned to the States the year before when he’d begun to have medical problems, and he’d been diagnosed with a particularly aggressive type of cancer. Coach had once-upon-a-time taught me to rappel, which came to be one of my favourite things to do in the world. He’d also taught me about Aichan’s sin and the “ripple effect” (in the book of Joshua). The morning of 17th March, he had died suddenly while driving to the doctor’s office from chapel.
I had the next week off school for spring break, so I informed my employers that my “uncle” had died and that I would be attending his funeral. I didn’t have any idea how I’d get there without driving by myself the whole way (15+ hours), so I debated for a few days about going. My parents finally convinced me to go, so I took my car, Annie, in to Midas on Wednesday to get her oil changed and just get checked up.
After his exam, my mechanic said bluntly, “I wouldn’t drive this car back home to Wheaton [20 minutes away], let alone to North Carolina.” Great. Not only did I now have to find another way to Charlotte for the Friday memorial service (plane tickets were over $1000!!), but I had to worry about getting a new car when I got back. I can’t describe the next 24 hours other than to say that I cried a lot.
On Thursday afternoon, I was at my sister’s, crying, when she said, “Okay, Saralynn. Get in the car. We’ll grab some of your clothes from home, and I’m taking you to the bus station downtown. You can just make the last bus to Charlotte if we hurry.”
I was one of the last people on the bus, having packed my bag haphazardly and rushed to Chicago with Lisa and both her kids. I bought my ticket two minutes before the bus was scheduled to leave and ran to my gate. I made it on just in time and sat down, only to cry.
Across the aisle, a woman asked if I’d gone to Wheaton. (I realised I was wearing my Wheaton sweatshirt.) I told her I had. She asked where I was going, and I told her to Charlotte for a funeral. She said she was going there, too, for the same reason. When I asked to whose funeral she was going, she told me Steve Beacham, and so began our adventure together.
She introduced herself as Marj, and she was not only a Wheaton grad living ten minutes from me, but she had also attended Hillcrest and had grown up in my mission! For the next several hours, we chatted about our connections and the Beachams. She told me that my friend Micah (then 18) was flying all the way from Nigeria for the memorial service. That was welcome news, and I became eager to reach Charlotte, if only to be surrounded by my friends and mission family.
In Cincinnati, our connecting bus to Knoxville was delayed. One bus came and got a load of passengers. A second bus came and got another load of passengers. Marj and I were in the next batch. We had waited three hours for a 45-minute layover, experiencing the delights of an urban bus station (for example, the man urinating in the middle of the terminal and being arrested). Ahead of us in line were an older couple and a man who looked to be a late teen. They were traveling separately but had struck up a conversation in line, so we joined in to keep from falling asleep standing up. It turned out that the boy—a student at the Chicago Art Institute—was on his way to his father’s surprise birthday party in Charlotte later that day (this was 3 a.m. Friday). The couple lived near Asheville and were on their way home from visiting their daughter’s family (and her ADHD children).
As we boarded the bus that finally arrived around 03:30, Marj and I were worried. As our original schedule had worked out, we would have just connected to our Charlotte bus in Knoxville; as it was, we were over two hours late. So we brainstormed about what to do and finally agreed on a plan. When we reached Knoxville, Marj would rent a car and drive us the rest of the way to Charlotte. We invited the older couple and the young man to join us if they so desired.
When we reached Knoxville, we all got our tickets refunded at the counter, and Marj called Hertz to pick us up. Within a half hour, all five us had piled into a white sedan and were on our way. Once we got on the road, we introduced ourselves—not having even known our passengers’ names before we’d started out! We dropped off the older couple near Asheville and the young man in central Charlotte, then drove to the South Carolina border, where the memorial service was to take place.
There was a slight hitch (aside from our getting lost on the way to the church).
I can add a new entry to my résumé as of today: Spell Master.
This morning was the annual 4th Grade Spelling Bee at Hillcrest, the school I attended from grades 4 to 12. And since the woman who has been Spell Master for several years is in the U.S. right now, she recommended me to the 4th grade teacher, Rachel.
I’d never been in a spelling bee in my life! Sure, I’d heard about them, and I’ll always remember how to spell “chrysanthemum” from watching Anne of Green Gables a million and one times. I was in a multiplication bee when I was in second grade. But that was just a small affair held in our classroom. (I got second place, and I am still bitter about it because my opponent didn’t have to answer his problem after I solved mine incorrectly!)
But I was flattered and thrilled to be part of the spelling bee. My mom raised me to be an excellent speller (thanks, Mom!), which reminds me that I spelled “bologna” wrong in my post about Mom. Oops. Anyway, I agreed to be the pronouncer at this year’s spelling bee.
There were 24 students at the beginning, 12 from Hillcrest and 12 from a nearby boarding school, Kent Academy. We did two practice rounds, and then we started the real match. It was lovely! I was nervous, but the kids were even more nervous, so we had a good time. Just a few times I had to consult with my judges before announcing “Incorrect,” and that was hard every time because one judge had heard it as correct and three of us had heard it as incorrect.
The weirdest situation was when I pronounced–very clearly, I might add–”parachute” and had both contestants start to spell the word “parakeet,” which was also on their word list. Ha! I wasn’t sure what to do, but both teachers agreed the one contestant had spelled “parakeet” correctly, and so we’d accept the word even though it was the wrong word.
In the end, Kent Academy students placed four out of the top five, with a Hillcrest student coming in fourth place. They really knew their stuff. It was a relief at the end of the bee, but I think we all had a good time, even the many disappointed kids. Now I can say I went to my first spelling bee when I was 25!
When I was in primary school, my mom packed me special lunches—all three of us kids, in fact. Every day my lunch was in a brown paper bag with my name carefully printed on the front in wax crayon or magic marker. Sometimes Mom used block letters, sometimes bubble letters, or calligraphy, or whatever mood she was in. But always, there was “Sara” on my lunchbag. Often, she also added a sticker or two.
I didn’t always like my lunches. They usually included a sandwich, a banana or other fruit, maybe a yogurt cup, and a dessert. Very rarely did I get a juice box with the little straw that always squirted me right in the eye when I stabbed it through the foil circle on the box top. Those were special days. Usually we had peanut-butter and jam. Mom put butter on the bread before the peanut-butter, and that always made it taste richer. Plus it kept the bread from getting soggy from the jam. Once in awhile, I discovered a special sandwich—my favourite: balogna and mayonnaise with alfalfa sprouts. Yum! And the dessert was almost always home-made. None of this Twinkie stuff, or Hostess donuts, or even Oreos. Nope, my mom always gave us fresh cookies, lemon bars, brownies, cake, or whatever she’d happened to bake that week. It irked me sometimes, to watch my friends bite into the store-bought delicacies I never got in my lunch. It also annoyed me that I couldn’t buy lunch in the cafeteria as my friends did. I wanted the pizza, the Mexican taco bake, the lasagna, but especially the chocolate milk.
On Valentine’s Day Mom put a card in my lunchbag, which had extra stickers that day. Usually it was home-made out of construction paper, decorated with markers and stickers; sometimes it was store-bought. But always, it said in her clear printing—and later script, once I could read cursive—“I love you, Sara. You are special to me!” And there would be something special in that lunch, something Mom knew I particularly liked, such as a pear instead of a banana. Birthdays were similar. A little note always accompanied my lunch on special days, and I could always expect a little treat inside.
Now I make my own lunch every day. Some days I don’t even bother and just snack on groundnuts (peanuts) or crackers. Now I buy my own food and know it’s cheaper to make a lunch than to buy one. Now I understand that peanut-butter is nutritious and cheap, while balogna is fatty and more expensive (or in Nigeria, non-existent). And that fresh fruit is healthier and cheaper than those little fruit cups, or applesauce.
And now I understand how much my mommy loves me. Happy Birthday, Mom.
Tonight my mind is somewhere else. To be more specific, it’s on the campus of Wheaton College, in a chapel pew, waiting for a good friend’s senior violin recital to begin. I was at the first performance of his college career and am missing his most important and possibly last. Sometimes it’s hard to be thousands of miles away.
I got to know Erik because – oddly enough – he was my chapel buddy. At Wheaton, chapel three times a week is required, and there’s assigned seating to make sure you’re there. (Yes, they actually have people in the balcony checking seats.) Every semester they change the seating arrangement, but that fall semester, we were arranged by street address. Since Erik’s house is literally a few blocks away from the condo my sister lived in that year, we were neighbours. Erik was a freshman music ed major, I a senior English major. Not a lot in common. But, as it turned, out, he joined a community service group that spent time once a week in a low-income children’s hospital in south Chicago… the same ministry in which I’d participated as a freshman!
We hit it off, I’m not sure why. It’s not like we were ever close buddies, but when our seats changed second semester, we still got together for lunch or coffee occasionally, and Erik still told me in advance about his performances. We hung out in completely different crowds, but we were still friends. Even after I graduated, I showed up for his open recitals (but always had to leave early to get to Chemistry class at a different school).
Last year, when he gave his junior recital, there was no way I could attend. I’d moved to California by then and had just been in Wheaton a month earlier, not knowing when Erik’s recital would be. My friend and former roommate Megan, who was still in Wheaton at the time, knew I was disappointed, So she called me up to surprise me, took her cell phone into the recital, put on the speakerphone, and I was deathly silent while listening to Erik’s violin. It was one of the sweetest things anyone’s every done for me. (Thanks again, Megan!)
But this year, it’s a senior recital, much more glamourous than a junior recital, and I must miss it completely. In fact, I’m going to sleep right through it. And that breaks my heart.
But I’m where God wants me to be, and that will have to be my comfort tonight.
It rained yesterday.And I don’t mean your token April shower, as if God were saying, “I haven’t forgotten you. I know it’s been a very long dry season, but if you wait a few more months, I’ll bring you some real rain.”
It wasn’t like that at all. No, this was a real rain. It poured on and off (mostly on) for four or five hours. And it had even rained the day before. (What?! In April?!?)
I was just resting in my parents’ air-conditioned bedroom, reading (ironically) Love in the Driest Season when I heard the rain begin to patter on the roof. I switched off the AC and relocated to the living room. The sun was still streaming into the room, so I thought about looking for a rainbow, but instead I parked myself on a comfy chair and watched the rain. It was only drizzling at that point, and I loved to see it stream down from the roof. Should I put buckets out to catch the rain?
Then the thunder came rolling through, and flashes of lightning seared the sky. To the outlets! I was trained when I was just nine to unplug everything in a thunderstorm, and since I was the only one home yesterday, I scrambled around the house, unplugging computers, TV, VCR, microwave, the whole shebang. I want to blog about this, about how much I love the rain, but I couldn’t because I didn’t dare turn on a computer. Gusts of wind began to blow the rain through the louvered windows, so my next task was shutting them all. One window just refused to shut, so I took the cushions off the chair beneath it to keep them from getting drenched. I knew the drill.
I watched it rain for almost an hour before I fell asleep on the couch. It lightened at one point, and I thought, Well, that’s it for today, but then it started up again. Ponds developed in the front yard, and when the rain dissipated briefly, they disappeared as quickly as they’d formed, soaked up by the parched soil.
I love the rain. I come from a part of the U.S. that’s pretty dry – southern California – but I don’t remember appreciating the rain until I came here. While my agemates in Los Angeles were spending hot sunny summer days making sand castles at the beach, I was reading Mandie, Bodie Thoene war stories, Nancy Drew mysteries, and eventually Steinbeck and Hemingway, while the rain pounded the red earth outside. Mm, what delicious memories, and what delights to anticipate now, with this summer’s rains just around the corner. It’s like a foretaste of heaven.
I hope it rains today, too.
