Mountains

Native Texan that I am, I will always love Texas and be somewhat biased when comparing it to other states. There is something unique about the beauty and culture of Texas that will always pull at my heart strings. It's rugged and rusty and dusty and I love it.

I have never seen anything to equal a Texan sunrise or sunset, or a pasture blooming in the spring, or the intensity of a fall thunderstorm. But nothing at home could have prepared me for this:

I am silenced by the forests and mountains of Utah. Their majesty and proximity completely take my breath away. When I returned to Texas for Thanksgiving last year, I was beyond glad to be home, but I distinctly remember thinking, "...Where are the mountains?" Much of the Texan landscape stretches out to the horizon for miles and miles without a break in sight. The wide-open space is a characteristic I have loved about Texas. But now I know I cannot live without mountains. I miss them when I go home.

And they are in full glory right now. The leaves have turned, painting the mountains' faces with flaming gold and orange and crimson. Looking at them isn't enough for me. I want to explore every rocky crevasse until the sight of them is captured in my memory.

Last Sunday three of my roommates and I drove up into the mountains, when the trees were just beginning to don their fall dress. I wish this photo could convey the immense depth and space that I felt surrounding me at that moment, and how minuscule I felt in comparison.

It struck me as strange that the earth is of a definite, measurable size. Astronauts have seen the earth in its entirety from space, yet it holds so much, and parts of it remain remote and untouched. As I stood on that mountain, I was overwhelmed by a sense of the age of the earth, of its distinctness from us as wild and untamed, primitive and intimidating.

How grateful I am for the beauty and diversity of this place we call home.

Holidays and Cell Phones

A rather healthy ego often leads me to resist anything that makes me seem too much like everyone else (in highschool I refused to learn Spanish and opted instead for Japanese. Any bets how long it lasted?). But since coming to school it has become more and more difficult to keep in touch with people at home. Fortunately both my sisters started their own blogs, making it a little easier to stay connected with their lives. So I gave in. I joined the ranks of millions of homo sapiens with blogs. Having done so, I find it necessary to set myself apart by periodically offering a little more about "me". I'll start with my family, where it all began.

Here I am with my beautiful sisters, Eamers (right) and Liz (center), on Liz's wedding day.

Liz is almost three years older than me. She is one of those people you come across who is just "good". She is funny and silly and loves to laugh. Especially at me (I make it easy). She has been married for more than two years and now has a little boy. I look up to her a lot, probably more than she realizes.

Eamers is my younger sister by five years. Liz and I had spent so many years pulling each others' hair that we were really excited when she finally came along. She has got to be one of the coolest people I know. She's easy-going and extremely goofy. If I ever need a good laugh, she's the one I go to. I look up to her, too. She's about three inches taller than me.

This on the right is Dad, standing next to one of his favorite collectibles. That was Liz's first car, which I "helped" him drive home from California. The goofy gene in our family definitely came from him. He likes to make up funny songs and tell jokes. He is very creative and is almost solely responsible for the crazier adventures of my youth.
Here I am with Mom at a special mom and daughter activity at church. If I remember correctly, it was all about health and beauty and in this photo I am actually painting her fingernails bright blue.

My mom is irreplaceable. She fills a role no one else could. She is the glue that holds everything together. I can always look to her if I am ever unsure what I should do. She is steady and strong and beautiful and smart, and I couldn't live without her.
Here we are all together at Christmas two years ago. FYI, the strapping young lad in the front is my brother-in-law, Bill. He is a walking wikipedia. He seems to have collected a giant bank of random knowledge that can come in very handy. We've talked for hours about everything from boys to black holes. He's the brother I never had.

Another interesting note—in the previous photo Liz is about five months away from having this guy:
This is a photo of my nephew, Bobby, that I stole from Liz's blog. He is now almost a year-and-a-half old, and we are all hopelessly in love with him. He is incredibly bright and shows signs of inheriting Liz's facial agility. One of the things I hate most about being so far from my family is not being able to watch him grow up. Every time I see him he has changed.

So that is my family. They are all wonderful and goofy and infuriating and hilarious and loving all at the same time. And I wouldn't have them any other way. I never knew how much I depended on them until I left for school. I'm sure my mother knows. I call her almost every day without a single practical reason for doing so. Sometimes it is just good to hear their voices and know that I didn't imagine them.

Thank goodness for holidays and cell phones.

Who/what/where/when/why

Sometimes I forget how old I am. I feel as though I have frozen at seventeen and never aged since, so I am often surprised, when asked, at the digit that pops out of my mouth. "I'm twenty," I told my new roommates recently. One of them (I'll call her Ky) smiled sweetly. "I'm eighteen," she said. Her roommate, Runner, chimed in, "I'm nineteen." "Me too," added Jordan.

Now, I realize that all these numbers are so close to mine that it would be absurd to lose sleep over my age. However, it hit me quite suddenly at that moment that I am, supposedly, growing up. It is a concept I often find quite difficult to grasp. This chronic youth is perhaps perpetuated by the frequency with which my age has been mistaken.

On my eighteenth birthday I had a doctor's appointment ("Happy birthday to me..."). The doctor was very friendly and asked how old I was, where I went to school, etc. When I answered, "I'm eighteen today", he blinked and did a double take. "You're eighteen? Wow, I..." he stumbled. "Well, that means you haven't been baking in the sun. You have a very...youthful face. Happy birthday!"

I also had the great fortune to get braces (for the third time) shortly before I turned eighteen. The first Sunday after they'd been put on, an older sister at church stopped dead when I smiled at her. "You got braces again!" she said. "They make you look even younger!"

This summer I worked as a day camp counselor for children anywhere from six years old to the terrible teens. I cannot tell you the number of times someone grabbed me, asked why I wasn't with my counselor, then noticed the gaggle of eight-year-olds following behind me and mumbled, "Oh. I'm sorry...I thought you were a camper."

I have always felt younger than I am, and younger than all my peers—regardless of their age—and this sensation of perpetual youth gives me a strange feeling that I never quite belong anywhere. Though I know I can handle the challenges of attending a university, I feel somewhat out of my league among other college students. More than a year of attending young single-adult church meetings at home and at school has yet to feel familiar. Conversely, I certainly don't feel like a highschool student anymore. The life and concerns of the average sixteen-year-old seem foreign to me.

And so I am stuck in limbo, in a strange in-between state, and I'm not quite sure what to do with myself. How do I bridge the gap? One often hears that these years are some of the most important in a person's life. So many decisions determining so many different futures all rest on this topsy-turvy sliver of time. Such a realization makes me feel yet younger, less mature, less equipped. What crazy person decided to trust someone like me with these decisions?!? I can only hope that my decisions are the right ones. And so I embark to bridge the gap, to figure out who/what/where/when/why I want to be.

I am Holly. Holly Something.