What could motivate someone to be a missionary?

 

Many people, when they think of missionaries, picture something like this: hairy, dirty people who live in huts, wear outdated clothes, and eat things no one in his right mind would eat.

 

And because of that, before moving to Lomalinda, I had little interest in missionaries. I mean—they seemed so strange.

 

“Admit it, you’ve looked at missionaries speaking in your church and thought, ‘Hmmm . . . kind of . . . well, weird.’ No one wants to say it out loud, but it’s true.” (Bremers in Bolivia)

 

But I must confess:

Eventually, living and working

alongside missionaries in Lomalinda

would turn out to be a highlight of my life.

 

Those missionaries’ work was not for wimps—it was a mighty challenging vocation in numerous ways.

 

What motivated those Lomalindians to carry out that work? What should every missionary’s inspiration be?

 

Should they hope to earn their salvation?

 

No. Nobody earns salvation.

 

Should their motivation be appeasing God and averting His wrath?

 

No.

 

Do they need to impress God?

 

No.

 

Do they want to impress others? Do they want to make a holier-than-thou statement?

 

No.

 

Should missionaries’ motivation be adventure?

 

No—although life on the mission field can include amazing adventures.

 

Should their incentive be to help backward cultures become more like us—civilized?

 

No, no, no!

 

If you were to ask someone—a trainee or a new recruit—why he wants to be a missionary, he might answer:

 

• I want to teach missionary kids, or
• I want to evangelize, or
• I want to be a church planter, or
• I want to serve as a doctor, nurse, or pilot, or
• I want to be a Bible translator or literacy specialist.

 

But those are not core reasons to become a missionary.

 

So what’s the most important reason for people to go to the mission field?

 

The answers could fill—and have filled—many books.

 

Ministers preach sermons, people pen articles and host podcasts, and authors craft devotionals, blog posts, and websites to inspire Christians to work on the mission field. Entire corporations exist to recruit personnel for the mission field.

 

But we need to sift through all those books and sermons and articles and podcasts and devotionals and blog posts and websites and organizations and find the starting point—the core reason to go to the mission field.

 

Can you think what it is?

 

Jesus stated the correct reason—the basis, the motivation, the springboard that propels people into all the other reasons—and many others—to work on the mission field.

 

 What do you think it is?

 

Come back next week and we’ll continue to explore this topic.

Even if you’ll never work as a missionary,

the message applies to you and your everyday life, too—

to your very reason for being.

See you next week!

 

A treat for you: A visit to Lomalinda, thanks to a video!

 

May 8 is Global Big Day. (Click on that link to learn all about it.) While you can participate in Global Big Day in your own location, others around the world will be doing the same.

 

AND, thanks to a Facebook video, you can make a brief trip to Lomalinda for Global Big Day. (If you’ve read Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir, you know Lomalinda is an out-of-the-way spot in vast open plains in central Colombia, South America, where Dave and I and our two small children lived for three years.)

 

Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology planned the Global Big Day international competition and last year, 2020, Colombia won the global birding contest for the fourth year in a row as birdwatchers recorded 1,440 species! (Other sources say Colombia has more than 1,958 species of birds, more than any other country.)

 

According to the video, more than 160 species of birds live in that little cluster of hills known as Lomalinda (“pretty hill” in Spanish).

 

Why did we live and work in Lomalinda? It was the home base for extensively trained linguists who worked for many years among illiterate indigenous people groups and put into writing educational, medical, agricultural, and religious materials to benefit those groups. And it took place in an especially lovely place—lovely birds, flowers, trees, scenery, animals, insects, fish . . . on and on.

 

You’ll enjoy another short video about birds throughout the departamento (state) of Meta, where Lomalinda is located. Click on “Meta Colombia is the new hotspot for birding.”)

 

In that video, in addition to seeing the area’s beautiful birds, you’ll experience:

• the geography and plantlife of the area and,
• the llanero music in the background—especially enjoyable!—and,
• what it’s like to listen to someone communicating with you in Spanish.

 

What fun! Enjoy these videos!

 

Finding value in taking baby steps in the right direction

 

Yes indeed, God had wheedled me out of my comfort zone and, it seemed, He enjoyed introducing me to altogether new ways of living.

 

Me—the protected and comfortable suburbanite, the straitlaced and genteel young lady.

 

The one who had stayed far away from wildlife and slimy-slippery stuff and anything that even hinted at danger. (Click on If you see red eyes above the waterline . . .)

 

And yet God was succeeding in introducing me to new and good things that were far from all I was accustomed to in suburban Seattle—partly through the exciting and diverse natural environment my son Matt was discovering with his new friends (see recent posts), and partly through Lomalinda’s good people.

 

Yes, I was gradually becoming more accepting of Lomalinda’s lifestyle, but I still faced a handful of challenges.

 

One of them was how to feed my family well from what was—or what was not—available at the commissary.

 

It was a low-lying building painted sky blue. The first time I stepped inside, I was struck by how dark and cramped it was, the size of two rooms in a small house. It smelled of laundry detergent, bleach, insect spray, powdered juice drink, burlap, and bread.

 

Hand-crafted wooden shelves housed canned food—things like tuna and vegetables—but limited supplies shocked me. I found one loaf of bread, a small tin of rolled oats, and coffee, rice, flour, and powdered milk in small plastic bags.

 

That first day, I found no produce or fresh meat, and I despaired. How could I feed my kids well enough? How did people make decent meals?

 

On other days, in the future, I found a few more items, including chunks of local meat, and little by little my refrigerator and kitchen cupboards began to look a little less bare.

 

I’d never been a fancy cook—we came from humble middle-class families and were accustomed to eating humble middle-class food. I wasn’t hoping to provide epicurean meals—I just longed to feed my family nutritious meals. But the items on the commissary shelves didn’t give me much hope.

 

But then. . . . But then. . . . !

 

Ron and Lois Metzger invited us to their home for dinner. Stepping into their red brick house, I could not believe what I saw on the dinner table—it looked like a Thanksgiving feast.

 

But I’d seen the skimpy supplies in the commissary.

 

Dumbfounded, I asked Lois, “Where did you find all this food?”

 

“At the commissary,” she said, smiling.

 

Bless her heart, she had learned to be creative, and I was impressed. (from Chapter 10, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go:A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir.)

 

I’ve always remembered that meal and the inspiration Lois offered me.

 

She was one of those dear ones I told you about before: In Lomalinda, I was like a baby bird learning to fly. God blessed me with a number of “mama birds,” lovely people who gently showed me how to do life there in that out-of-the-way place—and Lois was one of them.

 

The day would soon come when, inspired by Lois, I would take on the challenge of making attractive, tasty meals from limited supplies in the commissary.

 

It would require resourcefulness and work, but I would thrive on the challenge.

 

But in the beginning, only a few days into Lomalinda life, I was still in transition, and transition can be messy—stumbling through unknowns and waiting for elusive answers. It’s a vulnerable time, a time of letting go and rethinking and stretching.

 

I was slogging through one of those proverbial “one step forward and two steps back” stages of my life.

 

Hooray for one-step-forward days!

 

Even baby steps in the right direction

can make a big difference.

 

As Thomas Merton said,

“You do not need to know precisely

what is happening, or exactly where it is all going.

What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges

offered by the present moment,

and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.”

 

If you see red eyes above the water line . . .

 

Sometimes God makes me chuckle—like now, when I think back to what a prim and proper young lady I was when I landed in Lomalinda. And when I recall what a protected, comfortable suburban life I’d led until then. And how God sent me there, planning to awaken me to altogether new ways of thinking and living.

 

I think back to what God seemed to say when He finally—finally!—convinced me to move to Lomalinda.

 

You see, a lot of people, especially my mother, had expected me to color within life’s lines—and that had been my plan, too.

 

But instead, I sensed God saying, with a big grin, “Color outside the lines, and don’t even think about using pastel colors. Use exotic, pulsing, dancing colors, shimmering, out-of-this-world colors.” (Chapter 2, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

Getting acquainted with Lomalinda’s wildlife—and the people who enjoyed those creatures—offered me opportunities to color outside the lines. Believe me, there was nothing like it in Seattle!

 

I’ve already told you about bulls that roamed through Lomalinda, coming right up to my kitchen window and eating my hibiscus, and about the parrots that shared our neighborhood with us.

 

I’ve told you about swimming with stingrays—and with piranhas. And with anacondas.

 

And I’ve told you a story you won’t soon forget about my friend Mardty and a boa constrictor. And another story about a boa constrictor’s smile.

 

Today I want to tell you how we humans also shared our territory with caimans, related to both alligators and crocodiles.

 

Caimans open their jaws “aggressively,” and “seize their prey and drag it underwater to drown it” (Wikipedia).

 

Lomalindians hunted caimans in the lake,

its outlet, and swampy areas.

And what stories they could tell!

 

We heard that one of the men brought home a baby caiman late at night and put it in the bathtub—much to his wife’s dismay when she got up in the night to use the bathroom.

 

Another young man invited a girl to go caiman-hunting on their first date and, believe it or not, she later married him.

 

Sometimes Lomalindians initiated newcomers by taking them on a caiman hunt and telling them tall tales—exaggerating a bit to terrify them.

 

While a few adults hunted caiman, teens had more wild-eyed stories to tell, and they now admit their mothers would’ve had a conniption if they’d known what their kids had been up to.

 

It seemed that the teens went hunting after dark when their parents thought they were doing homework with friends. Others confess they snuck out after bedtime.

 

Sometimes they set out in a canoe, but other times they waded into the water, often barefooted--! Their tools of the trade were a .22 rifle, or sometimes a machete or bow and arrow, as well as a flashlight, which helped spot the caiman’s red eyes above the waterline. When the kids saw the red, they aimed and shot between the eyes.

 

Russ Meehan tells a story about wading through a swamp when he and his friends spotted a caiman nearly four feet long. Russ wrote,

 

“I was getting up my nerve to hack it with a machete when Rick yelled, ‘No, wait!’ He wanted to grab it by the neck.

 

“I watched as he began clearing debris away. Then he plunged his hand down on the neck and pulled up. The caiman began thrashing, and it was too much for Rick, who had to let go.

 

Russ continued, “It landed in the water and began running on top of the pond with Rick chasing it from behind.

 

“Then Benny, who had a pistol with him, began firing at the fleeing caiman!

 

“Later I heard Benny say, ‘That boy is crazy, chasing a caiman like that,’ and I heard Rick say, ‘That guy is crazy, shooting a gun like that; he could have killed me!’”

 

Jim Wheeler, one of my husband’s students, still talks about a friend who brought home a baby caiman—which his mom flushed down the toilet. A few months later when the family had plumbing problems, they dug up the septic tank and found a five-foot-long caiman.

 

Jim also tells this story of hunting with a .22 rifle and flashlight, shining it over the water, searching for red eyes, the wider the gap between them the bigger the caiman.

 

Jim says, “David Mansen and I were at one of the marshy ponds at night. We spotted red eyes that looked at least four inches apart—so it was a big one.

 

“David fired the rifle. We heard a splash, then quiet. Now what?”

 

While you keep reading, below, keep in mind that caimans “may observe a potential prey, swim away, submerge, and return to attack” (Wikipedia).

 

“David, you shot it,” I said. “You go find it.” He waded into the knee-deep water while I stayed about ten feet behind, holding the flashlight.

 

“Several feet before the place we’d seen the caiman, David started slicing his machete through the murky water to locate the hopefully dead beast. After several minutes, he connected with his trophy—a sixteen-inch baby caiman.

 

“After getting over our disappointment, neither of us said much.

 

“This isn’t the one we saw earlier.

This is just a baby.

Big mama is still around somewhere. 

Let’s get out of here!”

 

Swimming with anacondas: they eat monkeys, dogs, cats, calves—and sometimes people

 

. . . And then there were anacondas, also called water boas, which live on land and in water—including our lake at Lomalinda.

 

Anacondas eat monkeys, dogs, cats, calves, and sometimes people.

 

They can grow to thirty feet long and weigh over five hundred pounds and, like boa constrictors, they squeeze their victims to death, open wide, and swallow their prey whole. (See photo below.)

 

Lomalindians admitted to fearing anacondas, but they went swimming anyway.

 

(Are you noticing a pattern here?!?  . . .

If you missed recent posts, click on

Swimming with stingrays and piranhas

and

Our lake: A place for high adventure.)

 

At night, if anyone on the lake or swamp spotted green eyes glowing in the dark, they were looking at an anaconda—which meant they’d better turn and run.

 

People liked to tell the story of workers at a nearby farm who, hearing a pig squeal, ran to investigate. By the time they arrived, they found an anaconda with a pig-shaped bulge so big that the snake couldn’t slither through the pen’s slats.

One day a friend of mine, driving her Honda 90 motorbike to the lake for a swim, came upon an anaconda stretched across the road, so long she couldn’t see its head in the grass on one side of the road or its tail on the other.

 

Knowing she couldn’t stop in time, she drove right over it.

 

The snake probably wasn’t even fazed. My friend was, though, and suddenly she wasn’t all that interested in swimming.

 

I just couldn’t understand it—I mean, swimming with stingrays, pirañas, and anacondas? That was just too much adventure for me.

 

We lived in the llanos, a vast low expanse of steaming plains with an azure sky stretching to eternity, clean and searing and clear. It’s one of the world’s most lush tropical grasslands, an immense savanna in the Orinoco River basin.

 

The llanos hosts “an alluring combination of pristine biodiversity and traditional ranching culture seemingly lost in time.

 

“Anacondas, howler monkeys, capybaras and crocodiles live alongside ranchers, farmers, and thousands of cattle. . . ” (You can kiss your cell phone service goodbye).

 

You don’t want to miss my story about

boa constrictors.

Next week!

It’s a story you won’t soon forget!

Anaconda photo by Tim Lambright (used by permission)

 

Our lake: A place for high adventure, pranks, romance, and even tragedy

 

Last week I promised to tell you more awesome (and sometimes scary) stories about living in South America’s wild open territory in the middle of nowhere.

 

Today we’ll take a brief walk from our house, through a low jungle area, to el lago, the lake. (See photos below.) Countless escapades happened there. Renowned as the venue for high adventure, pranks, romance, and sometimes fear—my, oh, my, if that lake could talk, what stories it would tell!

 

El lago, the site of swimming, sailing, water skiing, and washing the dog.

 

A place of canoeing and hunting for orchids and monkeys, a place for fishermen to reel in pirañas (piranhas), dogfish, and silver dollars.

 

A backdrop for sunrises and sunsets in bronze, pink, gold, and purple.

 

A setting for skinny dipping in the moonlight.

 

At el lago, howler monkeys yowled high in palm trees and frightened little boys and girls. And full-grown boys and girls, too. Howlers let out eerie, loud calls, and their bulging eyes spooked a lot of people. For most of us, howler monkeys were unseen creatures that woke us up at sunrise. They didn’t live near our house, but we could hear their calls which, in the distance, sounded breathy, breezy, whooshy.

 

The lakeshore hosted birthday parties, picnics, campouts, school parties, baptisms, and glittering Easter sunrise services.

 

It was a place of sunburns and mud fights

and rope swings, of squawking parrots

and chirping frogs and singing birds

and palm fronds clattering in the breeze

and symphonies played by countless insects.

The lakeshore would one day witness a murder, but it would also witness a wedding for a lovely bride and one of Lomalinda’s young men, all grown up.

 

Matt, Karen, Dave, and everyone—except for me—cooled off in the lake despite the stingrays that lived there. Yes, stingrays. Big stingrays.

 

Before entering the water, swimmers slapped the lake’s surface with a board or tree branch to drive the critters away.

 

But if humans forgot and invaded their territory, those monsters defended themselves with their stingers—slashing a swimmer’s feet, leaving him writhing in pain while someone pulled out the venomous knife-like barb.

 

Deep, long gashes became infected quickly in Lomalinda’s heat and required a thorough cleaning, pain meds, and antibiotics. Sometimes patients had to fly to Bogotá for medical treatment. Recovery could take months, always painful and slow.

 

People admitted their fear of stingrays,

but they went swimming anyway.

 

I don’t understand it—

that’s just too much adventure for me—

but then again, you already know I'm a foot-dragger.

But a lot of people went swimming,

and they’re still alive to tell about it.

 

C’mon back next week for more adventure stories!

 

Christmas at the end of the road in the middle of nowhere

 

Since childhood, I’d listened to Christmas music by the hour, so in Lomalinda I felt blue about having to do without it. But our radio lab guys came to the rescue. They broadcast Christmas music throughout our center, which we picked up on the radio at home by wrapping our phone cord around our radio antenna. Ingenious.

 

My sweet mother-in-law had mailed us felt-and-sequin Christmas stocking kits for me to make for the kids. What fun! We had no other decorations—we’d made tough decisions about what to squeeze into our luggage—so I asked my mom to send a small piece of green felt which I planned to craft into some kind of Christmas tree. I imagined it would turn out sad, even pathetic, but it was the best I could do.

 

Then one day Marge Krikorian—bless her heart!—arrived at our back door with a few Christmas decorations and an artificial tree, twenty-four inches tall. My heart soared. Friends, relatives, and supporters from back home in Seattle sent us tiny gifts to put under the tree for our first Christmas separated from loved ones.

 

Lomalinda’s people knew loneliness and isolation. They knew how it felt to say goodbye to family for years at a time, to leave homeland and traditions and familiar culture, and to spend holidays and birthdays far from home. And that’s why Marge helped us. I’ve always remembered her thoughtfulness so many years ago.

 

December 21, 1976

Dear Mom and Dad,

Saturday Dave borrowed a motorbike and drove the two of us to the nearest town, Puerto Lleras. I’d heard things about it that led me to expect the worst, but it turned out to be better than I imagined. The place wasn’t a Northgate shopping mall—selection was minimal, as was quality—but it was more than I’d seen in four months. I bought a piece of fabric for Dave to give me for Christmas, and Dave bought a gold felt hat for the kids to give him. That’s the way we’re shopping this year.

Art Florer, one of Dave’s fellow teachers, joined us for Christmas Eve dinner and then we walked to the auditorium for a cantata performed by Wes and Mary Ann Syverson’s group. They had created elaborate decorations and lighting, and we enjoyed the professional sound of those talented men and women.

Afterward, we walked to Howie and Shirley Bowman’s home for a small gathering. Howie asked each of us to share memories of a special Christmas from the past. His question made me homesick, yet I knew that in the future if someone asked about a special Christmas from my past, I’d tell them about our evening with the Bowmans and our Lomalinda “family.”

Gladys and Rich Janssen invited us to join their family for dinner on Christmas Day and asked me to bring a gelatin salad. The thermometer in the cool end of our house read 104 degrees. We lived close to the Janssens, only around the corner, but even so, that salad started melting before we arrived.

That Christmas was different from all others, yet friends surrounded our young family. In the years since then, I’ve recognized that no matter where we are, whether it’s a “white Christmas” or a blistering one, whether with family or not, we can still celebrate it. (from chapter 16, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

Dreaming of a black Christmas

 

Lomalinda was into the dry season. Daytime temperatures soared to over a hundred degrees in the shade—cruel, withering.

 

The green scent of rainy season had given way to the spicy fragrance of sun-dried grasses. Immense stretches of emerald disappeared, leaving the grasslands stiff and bleached and simmering under unrelenting equatorial sun.

 

From sunrise to sundown, a stiff wind blew across the llanos (plains), a gift from God because the parched wind gave us a break from the profuse sweating we endured in rainy season so, in that way, it was a friend, but it could also be a foe.

 

One blistering afternoon, Dr. Altig hollered through our screen door, “Call for help! We have a fire!” Across the road, at Ruth’s house, flames leaped and smoke billowed.

 

I dialed the emergency number, told my little Karen to stay home, grabbed a bucket, filled it with water, and ran to Ruth’s yard, dousing flames closest to her house.

 

A few buckets later, my heart sank. Wind had whipped the fire out of control. The situation looked hopeless until I noticed that, by God’s grace, the wind blew the flames away from Ruth’s house, toward an unpopulated valley. Rich and Gladys Janssen’s home stood at the top of the low hill beyond.

 

I heard a siren, and soon an antiquated fire truck roared over the brink of the hill. Behind it streamed a line of motorbikes bringing men and boys, shovels, buckets, and blankets.

 

School had dismissed, offices had closed, and every able man and boy took on the role of a fireman, forming a line through the valley. Shovels in hand, they worked toward Janssens’ house, turning over soil, creating a fire line, fighting to keep the blazes from turning back on them. Someone hosed the Janssens’ side yard while flames neared.

 

In Lomalinda, only four degrees from the equator, the afternoon sun alone had potential to sicken a person from even mild exertion, but those men and boys gave their all, surrounded by flames, often without masks. They wore no protective gear as our firefighters do nowadays—they had only the clothes they wore to the office or school that morning. Their sweat-soaked shirts clung to them. Ash and dust coated their faces.

 

The guys succeeded in keeping the fire from the Janssen home, but it raced up a hill near the Kinch home. Wind whipped flames against their brick house.

 

A high school boy, Tim Goring, remembers:

 

“I tried to start a backfire but only had time to drop a match or two, and then the fire roared up the hill toward me. It got so hot I couldn't breathe. I lay down in a ditch for a minute until the fire burned out, then got up to check the house. The fire had melted the window screens and warmed up the propane tanks, but otherwise, no harm was done.”

 

From there the inferno changed its course, beyond Lomalinda, and continued to burn for hours, incinerating grasses and palm trees in its path. By the time the sun hung low in the west, the immediate danger had passed.

 

A couple of miles of grasslands lay between us and our farm, Finca Bonaire, and the staff had plowed a fire line. Before long the sky turned dark, but in the distance toward the farm, red glowing fingers reached into the night sky. By morning the fire had burned itself out.

 

A few days later, I walked a sun-cracked track while that celestial fireball cooked my skin and the smell of charred grassland swirled in the breeze. The school principal, Pris Bartram, puttered up to me on her red motorbike. “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!”

 

Pris watched me for a few seconds and then laughed—my face had betrayed my thoughts. I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying, “This looks like Christmas? You’ve got to be kidding!”

 

To me, Christmas looks like frost-covered evergreens, and snowflakes, and frozen puddles. Heavy coats, scarves, mittens, boots. Runny noses. Sledding. Ice skating. Swags of cedar and pine and holly tied with red ribbons.

 

I learned a lesson that hot, dry December day. “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” means different things to different people.

 

To most Lomalindians, especially kids, Christmas looked like a bleached landscape, charred fields, hot wind, and a whiff of ashes in the air. Folks enjoyed saying, “I’m dreaming of a black Christmas.” (from Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go:  A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir, Chapter 16)

 

December: Dust on our necks and in our armpits and up our noses

 

We turned the calendar page and entered December. We’d lived in Lomalinda for three and a half months.

 

Back home, Seattle would be a place of swollen clouds and rain, and frost once in a while. People would be wearing rain boots and raincoats and stocking caps and gloves.

 

Family and friends would have recently gathered for Thanksgiving, a squally season when tempests stirred up wild seas and sent ferry boats bobbing and careening, when windstorms downed trees throughout the Puget Sound region, caused widespread power outages, left half-baked turkeys and pumpkin pies in cold ovens, and drew people together around fireplaces in homes perfumed by wood smoke.

 

But Lomalinda had just transitioned out of her hot rainy season and was into her hotter dry season. We were enjoying clean cerulean skies and hardly a wisp of a cloud.

 

Daytime temperatures rose to over a hundred degrees in the shade—cruel, withering. The green scent of rainy season had given way to the spicy fragrance of sun-dried grasses. Immense stretches of emerald disappeared, leaving grasslands stiff and simmering under unrelenting sun.

 

Muddy paths and single-lane tracks turned rock-hard and, with use, changed to dust. Yards and airstrips and open fields turned to dust, too.

 

From sunrise to sundown, a strong wind blew across the llanos, a gift from God because it offered a little relief from the heat. On the other hand, we had to use rocks and paperweights and other heavy objects to keep papers from blowing away.

 

Dust blew through slatted windows and into homes and offices and settled on our counters and furniture and in cracks and crannies and on our necks and in our armpits and up our noses.

 

The Ariari River ran low and people in the nearby town, Puerto Lleras, caught caiman, butchered it, and sold it to our commissary.

 

Some people hauled in catfish, ten feet long and longer, which they hacked into chunks and sold in our commissary or served in the dining hall.

 

During rainy season, sometimes laundry took days to dry in our screened-in porch, but in dry season I hung laundry outside and, after pegging up the last garment in the laundry basket, I took down the first pieces I’d hung—the hot wind had already dried them. (From Chapter 16, Please, God, Don’t Make Me  Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

Esther Gross photo