Wondering

“The brain...is a wondrous thing we know very little about.” 

I just read this sentence in my physics textbook. Never in the entire book has it called anything wondrous, and never before has it admitted it couldn’t explain something. This reminds me of how people in the past must have thought about other organs like the heart that are so easily explained now. In their absence of understanding, the organs were wondrous; now that we understand them, we have no time to waste on wonder. Couldn’t people understand things and still find them wondrous? But then, you might say, wonder is the lack of understanding. You don’t wonder about something if you understand it.

Thank You, Nurse Ames

I didn’t mean to start reading her. Really, the books are about a girl going to nursing school—how girly can you get? But I didn’t plan on the conspiracy.

It started out when my sisters got a Cherry Ames box set for Christmas. Those four books, each sporting Cherry’s florid, smiling face, looked innocent enough, but somehow they kept popping up everywhere, like on our coffee table, the back seat of our car, or our kitchen counter.

Then, every night when I was diligently working on my physics homework, I could hear Cherry’s cheerful voice in the background... Well, not really. I’m not crazy yet. I could actually hear Mater reading Cherry’s books aloud to my younger sisters. Every night Mater reads them a story before bed, and as their bedroom is right next to mine I can just hear the calm rhythm of her voice through the wall, but not discern the actual words. Usually Indigo and I, the older siblings, have already read the book they’re on, so tuning it out isn’t a problem, but as I’ve already said, I would not have picked up a...nurse book...of my own accord.

Indigo started reading Cherry Ames too. Now that every other girl in my family was in Cherry’s gasp, they kept finding references to her everywhere. This relative’s comment was just like one Cherry made; that dish was one Cherry ate in the army; this person had the same name as Cherry’s crush. There seemed to be no relief from her, and I never had a clue what they were talking about. Every silly Cherry reference flew right over my head, while they all giggled like members of a kindergarteners’ secret club.

February dragged on. I had scorned Cherry for two months. The sky seemed eternally grey, the snow banks were melting into black curds, and I was neck deep in homework. The only books I had read all month were texts full of electronegativity and actinides and relative velocity. Summer seemed years away. But still, in a distant corner of the weary world, those cheeks so akin to Santa’s nose burned merrily.

I caved.

Yes, she was a nurse, whose idea of excitement was feeding grumpy patients or dancing with handsome doctors, but I couldn’t help but like her. The Cherry Ames books are so different from most books written now. Eighteen-year-old girls of modern fiction all seem to be contemplating suicide or mooning after vampires, so even in a world of antiseptic and starchy aprons, Cherry is like a breath of fresh air. She is just so optimistic. I can’t agree with her that a stone and steel medical laboratory is the best place in the world, but whether she is faced with third degree burns or giant rubber dolls or Snape-esque doctors, she forges on with a smile and squared shoulders. Plus she has lots of funny phrases you never hear any more, like “buck up” and “darnedest.” So she has about twenty books in which she works as everything from a “chief nurse” to a “jungle nurse,” and she’s never short of a handsome young intern to back her up, and every patient loves her...but so what. Her dauntless enthusiasm is just what I needed to see me through this glum February and its reams of physics homework. Cherry can cheer up orphaned children and wounded soldiers, so I should have realized I would pose no challenge to her.

Cherry Ames and covers are © 1944 by Grosset & Dunlap, Inc./2006 by Harriet Schulman Foreman

Don't Read and Drive

Courses have taken over my life in the last few months, but in some of my spare time I’ve been learning to drive. I never even thought about what it would be like to drive until I turned sixteen and everyone began asking me when I was going to learn, and even then the idea wasn’t exactly appealing. Now I’ve finally put more effort into it and earned my learner’s licence, if only to keep up with everyone else.

My province issues a driver’s handbook which is required reading for the test. Most of the book was mind-numbing, but there were a few lines that I enjoyed, like this one: “Parents and grandparents must always use an approved child car seat...” The sentence ended with “when transporting children” so that made it a bit clearer, but I still like the way they decided to word it. My favourite line out of the whole book however, is definitely this one: “Keep books in the trunk while driving so that you aren’t tempted to read.” Sure, they say, you can have your alcohol and drugs and cell phone on the seat beside you as long as you don’t use them, but books are in a class of their own. Maybe they decided to add that line after they saw me walking down the street from the library and reading at the same time. Well, at least I can rest assured that the government is vigilant about minimizing safety hazards on our roads.

Ten Ways to Stay Warm on a Winter Day

The temperature here is falling fast now, and to my delight we actually have a blanket of snow. In past years this hasn’t happened until nearly the beginning of January, so it makes a wonderful surprise. The world has such a magical quality when everything is white and sparkling, and I love the way big snowflakes don’t fall straight down, but spiral and dart up and around like little fireflies dancing together. The only downside of this snow is that it is freezing cold, even inside our house with the fire blazing. Here are my strategies for dealing with cold weather.

1.     Wear thick wool socks to bed. Even if the floor is like ice in the morning, a pair of hand knitted socks will keep your toes warm.

2.     Stack your clothes on top of a heating vent or radiator for a couple minutes before you put them on. Make sure you keep an eye on them though, and move them quickly if they start to smoke.

3.     Layer a wool sweater on top of everything else, and put on wool fingerless gloves as well. That way you can keep your hands warm without limiting your typing ability.

4.     Stand right in front of a fire for several minutes until your clothes feel like they’ve just come out of the dryer. Then go sit down with your legs folded tightly under you to decrease the surface area of your body and lock in heat.

5.     Sit on a rug in front of a fire, because there will be a large dog there with warm fur to pet.

6.     Use a laptop. When it starts to heat up it will keep your lap toasty, and as a bonus it also has a built in computer. For full effect, hold your hands over the fan at the side to have warm air blown on them.

7.     This sounds counterintuitive, but when you get the chance, bundle up and go out in the snow. Bring the dog from the rug and chase her around for half an hour. You can come back inside when your face stings and your fingers and toes are numb. You will return with a new appreciation for how warm and cozy your house is.

8.     Make your meals as hot as possible, and hold the plate or bowl in both hands to warm your fingers until the food is cool enough to eat without burning yourself. It’s okay to have more food than usual, because you burn so many calories these days trying to maintain your body heat.

9.     Move your laptop into your bed an hour or so before you go to sleep. You can keep it company under the covers if you like. This way the bed will be deliciously warm for you to fall asleep in.

10. If all else fails, turn the furnace up a degree.

Brand New

I know I should resist, but I can’t. The urge to try something new, blogging in this instance, is irresistible. Never mind all the other pursuits I could be putting time into. Actually, it would be more honest to admit that those other pursuits are the precise reason the new and unexplored looks so tantalizing. Whenever I am writing a story, it hardly seems that I get the first five pages down before a new, brilliant idea gallops across my mind: you should write about a girl trying to save her mother from cancer! Or, you should go research the world’s oldest trees! Or, you should go start a blog! My writing time isn’t the only victim of my fickle mind. There are countless things I’ve begun, like my quest to become a gymnast or read every book in my house, that are simply ridiculous. Others, like become flexible enough to do the splits or read every book on one shelf, might be attainable if I tried for more than a week, and if a week weren’t such amble time for a new inclination to strike. By now, after being slapped by so many of those impulses, shouldn’t I have developed at least a sliver of immunity to them? I am constantly telling myself that I have to learn discipline and stamina and develop the willpower to resist all the sparkly things the world dangles before my eyes if I ever want to get anything done.

Resisting is so difficult, but isn’t that what makes something worthwhile? I won’t give up. I’m going to focus from now on. I’m going to work hard to achieve my goals. And at the end of the day, I’m going to give myself a half hour to chase the wildest pursuit that catches my fancy, just to see where I end up.