Dungeons and Dragons – A Timeline of D&D in My Life.

1983-1984. My older sister Leslie starts playing D&D. I know nothing about it except that it’s some sort of role-playing game that she really enjoys. Her character is an elf that she named Druella, and typical of Leslie, she keeps a journal written on Druella’s behalf in the first person. She sends me copies of this journal periodically as she writes more pages. I put them all together and stick them in a file cabinet, too busy to read them and frankly, too uninterested.

1985. D&D starts to get some bad PR. There were some kids that were getting too immersed and were becoming mentally unhinged. My husband and I are engaged to be married and I am living in a house with several apartments, one of which is occupied by a young man who is very deep into D&D. I chat with him a bit about it and am alarmed at what now seems like a rather dark game. He is quiet, socially awkward, and seems to fit the stereotype blooming in my mind of the kind of person who should not be into D&D. I offer up some cautions to him, but don’t really know him well enough to go further.

1987. Leslie passes away. I still haven’t read or responded to the Druella Journals. I forget about them.

2013 or so. Our older sons started getting interested in D&D. Definitely had mixed feelings about it and not sure if it’s a good idea.

2014-2018 By now, our four older boys are all out at the same college out West. They are starting to become part of D&D groups, some of them even taking turns at being Dungeon Masters. I tell my oldest son about the bad PR from 1985 and he pooh-poohs it, telling me that he was aware of it and that D&D didn’t create the mental problems that anyone might have had. He tells me more about the game. It’s kind of intriguing. Plus, it’s a game that requires actual people doing creative things together, face to face. As opposed to video games. And it’s been a great bonding experience for the boys. I give it a tentative thumbs up in my mind.

2018. Suddenly, I remember my sister’s Druella journals. Why didn’t I ever read them? I had this wonderful part of her life just sitting there and I never bothered to read it. Leslie was a very creative person and a great writer – it will be like unearthing new treasure from her life. I race down to the file cabinet to get the journals out. They aren’t there. I look in other files. Nope. Did I give them to her son, my nephew? That seems vaguely possible. I call him. He thinks I gave them to him many years ago and will look for them. Phew! But he calls back. He can’t find them and wonders if they got lost when he moved. I asked him to look again, but he lives in a small apartment and it seems unlikely that they’ll turn up. They don’t. Every so often I look again in my files, but it’s all been in vain. This brings a surprising amount of grief.

2021. One of my sons offers to set up a short D&D game for me to try it when our family gets together in the summer. I forget to reply to the text and he assumes I’m not interested, so the opportunity passes. I’m wishing I had tried it.

2022. I find a set of 100 postcards depicting D&D art from over the years and decide to buy it to send one per week to my two oldest sons – it’s actually two identical sets of 50 postcards. The artwork is interesting and often fantastical. As I send them out, I still think I’d like to try playing the game at some point. Maybe it will happen in 2022!

Thus concludes my D&D Timeline, which was no doubt very tedious to those of you who care nothing about Dungeons and Dragons. Thank you for hanging in there.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning after looking for the Druella Journals one more time. Maybe there’s a place I haven’t checked yet!

It was my first day at the University of Minnesota. In elementary school, we had only one classroom to go to for the whole year, and had just one teacher. Then came junior high and high school, where each subject was taught in a different room with a different teacher, but we were all still in just one building with a relatively small student population. There was probably some form of registration for classes in high school, but I don’t remember it, so it must have been painless and uncomplicated. By comparison, the University of Minnesota was a huge, sprawling campus with probably around 50,000 students the year I was a freshman there. The registration process had to be done ahead of time and was fraught with confusion and frustration. But somehow I had made it through this gauntlet and the great day had come. I had entered into the great halls of learning and had even found the building for my first class, English Composition. I sank into my chair with a sigh of relief.

The teacher asked for our registration cards, which we dutifully handed in. She looked them over and remarked that one of them didn’t have a name on it, so she asked us which one of us had turned in a card without a name. Silence. She sighed and said, “Well, I guess I’m going to have to read out the name on each card to find out which one of your names is missing.” She began reading out the names and the guy sitting next to me looked at me, rolled his eyes and said with scorn, “Freshmen!” I laughed, as if in agreement, but was acutely aware that I was one of those reviled beings. The parade of names continued and I began to wonder if it was possible that mine was the card in question. Weren’t our names already printed on the card? I hadn’t looked at mine very carefully. The names went on and mine still wasn’t called. I was filled with a sudden dread. It was mine, it had to be mine. She finished. I raised my hand to claim the card. All eyes were on me, particularly that guy next to me, who rolled his eyes again and smirked. That was how I found out that we were expected to put our names on our registration cards. That was how my college career began with a moment of public mortification.

Me: I think I’m supposed to delete this in the morning.
Readers: *eye roll* *smirk*

I think photographs can be as eloquent as words, capturing a moment that causes us to pause and think. These are some of my latest, all taken within a 5 minute period. Here’s a thought experiment: if each of these photos graced the cover of a book, what would the book title be? What would the story be about? In case some of you are inspired to reply in the comments section with your suggestions, I’ll number these so you can refer to them that way. I’d love to see what you come up with!

For photo number 4, I choose the book title: I’ll Probably Delete This In The Morning. Now it’s your turn!

If you’ve followed my blog for at least a year, you’ve seen me post about the Michael and Betty planters that I “inherited” when my mom moved into a small apartment. Betty was my mother’s sister and Michael was Betty’s husband. When Mom got those planters she named them right away, so they’ve always been Michael and Betty to me. I enjoy giving them different “hair” every year.

Allow me to introduce you to the real Michael and Betty:

Michael’s given name was Robert/Bob, but he took the name Michael when he entered the Screen Actor’s Guild. He did some acting (he played a guest role on Kojak one time!), but eventually made his mark in NYC by starting his own acting studio. Betty, meanwhile, taught voice lessons.

My sister and I went to NYC in 1982 to visit them and our cousins – a story that could be entitled “Country Mice Visit Their City Mice Relatives.” They lived in a brownstone filled with all sorts of eclectic stuff they’d accumulated over the years, a fascinating place. We went to a restaurant one night and one of Michael’s students joined us – an actress we knew from a soap opera that we were watching. Her character was going to get killed off, so we got the scoop ahead of time. Very heady stuff!

They’ve both passed on now, but I think of them often…especially in the summer. 😉

This post will probably exit Stage Left in the morning.

My True Story – Part 4.

It’s been so long since I wrote Part 3, that I need to remind you where I was at the end of it. I was in college, starting to divest myself of any sort of faith and coming to an enlightened sense of who God is: namely, whoever I wanted Him or Her to be. This was quite a comfortable place to be, but in God’s mercy, He didn’t leave me there.

In the summer after my second year of college, I met a man, not much older than I was. He was worldly where I was still innocent. He was married and in the process of getting a divorce, while my experience with the opposite sex was limited and fairly chaste. He was a recovering alcoholic – 9 months sober; I didn’t drink much and certainly had never even been drunk. I think it was my innocence and lack of experience that attracted him. He got my number and called me at 10 p.m. and we talked until 5 a.m. After that, we were never far apart. My involvement with him was instrumental in bringing about estrangement with some of my best friends, who thought he was not right for me. They didn’t know him like I did – they didn’t understand!

I learned a lot about Alcoholics Anonymous while dating this man, whom I’ll call “SD.” The more SD talked about his addictive relationship with alcohol, the more I began to see it mirrored in my addictive relationship with food. I’d always been rather compulsive with food and obsessed about my weight and had a distorted body image. It’s only by God’s grace that I didn’t become bulemic. I tried once, but just couldn’t do it. SD encouraged me to check out Overeater’s Anonymous, so I did. I even read the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, written by Bill W. I was a little irritated by his references to faith in Christ (references that I believe were taken out of future editions), but in general, it made some sense to me. I joined an OA group and started working through the steps, one of which entailed acknowledging that we have no control over ourselves and must look to a Higher Power for help, however we define that Higher Power.

Now this may not seem like much of an improvement on my Desiderata god (see Part 3). I was still in the position of being able to define God however I wanted to. However, this time, I was going to a Higher Power from a position of great need. I was truly anguished over my compulsive overeating, even though I was really not overweight. It seemed that it should be very simple to resist the temptation to overeat, but in fact, the more I tried, the worse it got. I began binging food in a way that I had never done before. I started writing prayers of a sort in my journal, beseeching this Higher Power to help me. I learned the Serenity Prayer and turned to it often. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

And yet, the AA model is to label these behaviors as manifestations of a “disease,” rather than as sin. You could no more stop being an alcoholic than you could stop being a diabetic. Accordingly, I looked upon my own eating issues as a disease and sought to live clean and sober, which for us in OA meant getting a sponsor, submitting eating plans to her, and cutting out most foods with white flour and white sugar. Meetings were just like the AA model – you went around the room and introduced yourselves each time: “Hi, I’m Lynn, and I’m a compulsive overeater.” I didn’t like having a sponsor, I didn’t like submitting eating plans to someone, and I didn’t like going to the meetings. But I tried for awhile, thinking it was my only hope.

Meanwhile, my relationship with SD was experiencing its own stresses and strains. A man who’s been married isn’t going to be content with not being involved sexually. I convinced myself that this was a good thing, that I loved him, that I was ready. But I wasn’t ready, and I got pregnant. I gave SD no choice in the matter – I was not going to have a baby. He came with me to the abortion and although we tried to move on like nothing had happened, things were never the same. I wish this weren’t part of my story, but facts are stubborn things. Truth can’t be erased to ease our consciences. I sacrificed a life without a shred of guilt on my conscience at the time, but I was guilty, nonetheless.

We limped along for another year, but while I was fully committed despite our problems, SD was becoming relationally distant and I was in denial. To be fair, we were both in denial – he wanted to believe things would get better, too. He made plans to move to another city to go to college and we decided that if we were serious about trying to make things work between us, I should move there with him. I quit school, quit my job, said my goodbyes, packed up my belongings, and on January 1 of that year left the only home I’d ever known to start this new life. Eight days later, SD broke up with me and my world came crashing down.

I’ll probably delete this cliffhanger of a post in the morning…or not. Stay tuned!

My Story Part 1
My Story Part 2
My Story Part 3
My Story Part 5
My Story Part 6
My Story Part 7
My Story Part 8
My Story Part 9
My Story Part 10

Many years ago, my mother came to join us for Thanksgiving and brought along a DVD that she thought we might enjoy watching. It was a 90-minute documentary about an unknown nature artist – probably a no-go with six kids ages 5-15. We are a polite tribe, though, and didn’t want to disappoint, so we all settled down to watch “Rivers and Tides” about Andy Goldsworthy, prepared to stifle some yawns. And just like that, we were all hooked.

Goldsworthy creates transitory art pieces with things he finds in nature, recognizing that these works of art will be gone with the next tide, or the next rainstorm, or the next strong wind. It was beautiful and fascinating, sometimes even haunting. Sadly, Goldsworthy didn’t acknowledge or give praise to the Creator of all the things he found and transformed, but the works themselves gave God glory. We’ve seen the documentary several times and have tried to share it with others, but so far haven’t snagged anyone else to be part of the AG Fan Club.

A few members of our family have been known to do the “Andy Goldsworthy” thing when we’ve gone camping or been out in the wilderness – some of these pieces admittedly much more droll than AG would have done.

When we were in Grand Marais a couple weeks ago, I kept up the tradition.

We went back to that beach the next morning and to my surprise it was still there. I imagine by now it has been reduced back to its constituent driftwood and pebbles. The passage of time tends to do that with everything that we make sooner or later. It’s humbling.

I’ll probably not even need to delete this in the morning – the passage of time will erode it away.

The Lantana wakes up and considers getting out of bed.

The Lantana begins to yawn.

Oy! Is it time to get up? I’ll open one bloom just to see how it goes.

So far, so good. Time to stretch and start catching some rays.

A cup of sunshine ought to get me over the hump. I’ve got a few more blossoms in me, I’m sure of it.

Almost there…almost there…
All blossoms have officially opened! Yes!
This is what God made me for.

Praise God from whom all blossoms grow
Praise Him all seedlings here below
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
Amen.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning before the Lantana begins yawning.

A few photos from our recent canoe trip:

Come on over and I’ll tell you all the stories, too.

Sunset on the blog post; portage in the morning.

What you see in that photo is a frustrated mosquito. We were up in the lakes during a time of a Great Mosquito Gathering. They had assembled in large numbers and were primarily interested in my blood. I’m one of those people that mosquitos love. My husband’s theory is that my blood is too sweet and that I need to drink bitter ales and unsweetened coffee in order to have the kind of natural immunity that he seems to possess. I told him I would pay real money if someone could develop a kind of fabric that mosquitos couldn’t pierce. In my experience, they bite through socks, jeans, long-sleeved shirts, anything. The amount of mosquito spray I use seems irrelevant to them. It seemed to be my fate to act as mosquito bait.

Then it rained. I put on the new rain suit that Kris insisted on buying for me for the canoe trip, the suit I told him I probably didn’t need. As soon as I donned it, I realized that this wonderful, marvelous suit was perfect for keeping the mosquitos from biting me. It was made of fabric that their devilish stingers couldn’t pierce. Hallelujah! The rain stopped, but I kept the suit on. In fact, I told my husband I’d probably sleep in it. He thought I was joking. I wasn’t, but as it turned out, I didn’t really need it in the tent. But for the rest of our time in the campground, I wore it constantly, even with the hood up to keep them off my neck.

I don’t think mosquitos were part of the Garden of Eden. It’s hard to imagine God putting Adam and Eve in this perfect paradise and then saying, “Oh, just one thing – watch out for the blood-sucking insects! Ta Ta!” No, I think it’s just as my friend Temple once told me, that mosquitos rode into Eden on Satan’s back.

King David wasn’t referring to mosquitos when he wrote about his foes in the psalms, but some of the verses certainly fit the bill for me and my battle with mosquitos.

LORD, how they have increased who trouble me!
Many are they who rise up against me.
Psalm 3:1

Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity!
For the LORD has heard the voice of my weeping.
The LORD has heard my supplication;
The LORD will receive my prayer.
Let all my enemies be ashamed and greatly troubled,
Let them turn back and be ashamed suddenly.
Psalm 6:8-10

Yes, what you see in that first photo is not only a frustrated mosquito, but one who is ashamed, who is troubled, and who will turn back. The LORD heard my supplication. Amen!

I’ll probably spray some Repel on this blog post in the morning.

Once again, we’ve been gallivanting off on adventures, this time in the lake-filled part of northern Minnesota that we call the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Some officious people (on some dreadful committee, no doubt) decided that the title wasn’t quite long enough and came to the conclusion that the word “Wilderness” would make it complete. So now it’s BWCAW. When I was young, cool people just called it the “B-Dub.”

My first time in the Boundary Waters was when my Dad took my two sisters and me back in 1974. It was love at first sight for me. I didn’t even mind the portaging. I learned how to steer a canoe using the C-stroke and the J-stroke and felt rather athletic, which wasn’t the norm for me.

When my husband and I were courting, his eyebrows went up in decided approval when he found out that I not only enjoyed paddling a canoe, but also had experience in the BWCA, where he’d spent quite a few summers on canoe trips. My experience paled before his, of course, but qualified me for some respect from him.

When we got engaged, we decided in a gush of enthusiasm that a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters would make a wonderful honeymoon. Who wouldn’t want to spend their honeymoon sleeping in a small tent on the ground? Thankfully, sanity prevailed and we put the canoe trip off until a year later in 1986.

Then we had six children. (That escalated quickly, didn’t it?) What with one thing and another, our paddles didn’t dip into the waters of the B-Dub again until Kris took the four older boys in 2007. I sat that one out with the two youngest of our tribe.

But it didn’t seem right that the two youngest should miss this grand experience, so we went up, the four of us in 2015. By this time, I was nearly 30 years older than the last time I’d gone. I was a little nervous about my ability to paddle, portage and sleep on the ground in a tent. All of it was like riding a bike, although the sleeping on the ground was more like falling off a bike. And frankly, the portaging was made a lot easier because we had two young people to take up my slack. Everyone knew I was the weak link.

That brings us to the present. The two of us just came back from a 3-day sojourn in the Boundary Waters. I was considerably more nervous this time, being the ripe old age of 63 and sadly out of shape. The success of our trip was solely because of my husband’s preparations and planning, and – it must be said – his muscles. We had a couple mishaps and scaled back our plans somewhat, but we both loved being back on the lakes, paddles working together, moving through the water and being completely off the grid. We read our Psalms morning and evening and made a joyful noise unto the Lord.

But we both agreed that the rough camping was getting a little too challenging. And I’m now officially on Biffy Strike. No more outdoor Biffies for me!

Be it ever so humble…there’s no place like home.

Thus, the blog returneth. And perhaps will be deleteth in the morning.