(Our Rose of Sharon is beginning to bloom.)
This week was short and sweet, thanks to the gloriously long and relaxing Memorial Day weekend. The boys ended their school year with Splash Day on Tuesday, and we are gearing up for a fun summer! Here are a few things that caught my attention this week.
Adorable twin giraffes were born in Central Texas recently.
An open call for True Texans. The bigger, the better.
The actress behind Lucille Bluth shares her own experiences with acting.
Lao Textiles, a company that empowers women in Cambodia, is currently featured in an exhibit at the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C.
And finally, I was contacted this week by a designer starting a new line of fair trade clothing that will debut this fall. Please check out Passion Lilie’s Facebook page for more information.
Have a wonderful weekend!
(A public domain image via Vintage Printable.)
I’ll be 35 in July, and this year, my driver’s license is up for renewal. I qualified for online renewal last time around, so this time, I have to make an actual appearance at the Department of Public Safety. I don’t know about you, but the minute the notice arrives, months in advance, I’m filled with dread. I hate going to the DPS office, and I always have.
I was not an eager driver as a teenager, and though my mom enrolled me in a summer driver’s education program the very minute I turned 15, I was scared to death to get behind the wheel of a car. I had my learner’s permit but never took the driving portion, so I continued to renew my permit all through high school and even into college, barely practicing my driving skills at all. In fact, both of my sisters, who are four and five years younger than me, got their driver’s licenses before I did, and I didn’t even care. That’s how big a wimp I really was.
Both of my parents spent time patiently practicing with me, but I never really wanted to learn. It took Ryan, and the promise of an engagement ring in another city, to really motivate me to get my license. Well, that and the fact that I had to actually drive to my student teaching assignment if I wanted to find a job after college. Eventually, I did learn to drive for real and finally earned my actual license, right around the time I turned 21. The next year, I bought my first car and drove it to Austin a month later, where I’ve lived ever since. That car, a Saturn, was my very own, and my first real taste of responsibility and freedom. We traded it in for a larger car when I was pregnant with Rhys, and I still miss it all the time.
Needless to say, my previous visits to the DPS were all extremely unnerving, and I had never been by myself. My most recent license picture was taken mere weeks after my wedding (when I needed to change my name and address), and I still looked like an innocent young bride. I even wore my hair pinned back in the style I chose for the ceremony. I’ve carried that picture for 11 years now, and it was definitely time for a change.
So this week, I braved the new DPS “Mega Center” near my house, and ventured inside to renew my license, all by myself. And you know what? It was painless.
I took advantage of the new “Get in Line Online” feature, so by the time I arrived, I had to wait exactly three minutes before my number was called. The staff was actually friendly and courteous, and the woman who assisted me was beyond sweet, a trait I’ve never encountered at the driver’s license office before. She even called me Sweetie and complimented my blouse and purse, so I joked that I’m going to come back every year.
My new photo isn’t as beautiful as my first, but I’m quite a bit older, and wiser, too. I’m no longer that bright young thing literally staring my future in the face. I’m a bit heavier, a bit rounder, a bit greyer, and a little softer around the edges. It’s a realistic picture, and it will last me at least another 11 years.
Because the best part of this whole experience is that, next time, I get to renew online.
(My copies of the Call the Midwife series of memoirs.)
Season two of “Call the Midwife” ended recently, and my Sunday nights are a bit less dramatic these days. There’s a third season in the works, but until it airs in the U.S., I’m pouring over Jennifer Worth’s memoirs, which were the inspiration for the entire series. There are three books in all, and though I’m only halfway through the first, I can barely put it down.
If you watched the show, then you know it recounts the experiences of young midwives and nuns living and working in London’s East End during the early 1950s. The patients of the main characters often lived in abject poverty, sometimes as many as ten or twelve family members in a two-room flat, with no running water or toilet facilities. This made things incredibly difficult for the midwives, as the majority of babies were delivered at home, and Worth describes her experiences with honesty and compassion.
The PBS show did an excellent job re-telling the experiences, and because the books are Worth’s memories, the show’s writers had to delegate some of the stories to the other characters. Still, Chummy, Sister Bernadette, Sister Julienne, Fred, and all the other wonderful characters are mentioned in the books, and I love knowing that they truly did exist, in some form or another.
One of my favorite moments in the first book, which is also shown in the series, involves poor Chummy learning to ride a bike. At over six feet tall, she was the laughing stock of the East End, and one young boy named Jack took it upon himself to become her protector. When Jack was with Chummy, the jeering children ran away, and he was responsible for teaching her to ride a bike to visit her patients. As Worth explains, twenty-five years later, grown-up Jack worked again as a protector, “still practicising the skills he had acquired in childhood, looking after his lady.” This time, Jack was guarding the young Lady Diana Spencer, after her engagement to Prince Charles.
Details like that give me chills, and Worth’s memoirs are filled with special moments and little side notes, as well as plenty of medical jargon, too.
I’m thoroughly enjoying the books, and I can’t wait to see what else is in store for the PBS series.
