December 17: Wake Up Daughter, Dance Lesson, "Onward Christian Soldier"

In a few minutes, I have to go wake up my daughter.  She has a dance lesson in about an hour.  I'm not really sure what kind of mood she's going to be in.  If she's already awake when I get home, it will be a good morning.  Easy.  If I have to enter the cave of her room, it will be like poking a hibernating grizzly.

I wrote a poem about poking the bear a while ago.  Just came up with a new title for it . . .

Onward Christian Soldier

by:  Martin Achatz


My daughter is angry with me,
Has stomped around all day,
Tears always near
The surface, Mississippi waters
After three days of rain,
Barely held in check
By piled sandbags.
I watch her in white robe,
Marching back-and-forth
Across the altar, lighting
Candles, arranging chalice,
Patin, cloths the way I
Slam dishes in the kitchen sink
When I lose my temper,
Hoping a plate or bowl
Shatters, makes me bleed.
I don't know what I've done
To drive her to such fury,
Whether I've ignored some
Unseen wound,
A cardiac contusion
On her heart caused
From a classmate,
Or a slow leak, an aneurysm
In her mind from something
I said weeks ago, a joke
About the boy who shows up
At our door every day,
Asks if my daughter can
Come out to play basketball
Or touch football, some sport
That involves much physical contact.
What I do know is this:
She storms around the front
Of church like a Roman centurion
On the prowl for a Christian
To martyr, not genuflecting
In front of the tabernacle,
Looking God straight in the eyes,
Daring Him to say anything,
Anything at all.


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June 18: Sleeping Bag, Picking Up Daughter, Bible Camp

I made a sandwich, filled a canteen, and slipped a palm-sized flashlight into my pocket.  Then all I had to do was grab a thin foam pad and my sleeping bag, walk down the road, over the eroded clay hill where the mantis laid her eggs, along the creek downstream to the motorbike woods, and through the woods' bike trail to the dam.

Dillard is going camping.  She's got everything she needs to spend a night in the wild--water, sleeping bag and mat, flashlight.  In her list of camping necessities, she doesn't mention Cheetos or Hershey bars or even beef jerky.  Just water.  Obviously, Dillard's idea of roughing it is very different from my idea of roughing it.  My idea of rustic camping is staying at a hotel without room service.

I mention these facts because, in a few hours, I will be picking my daughter up from Bible camp.  She has been there almost a full week.  The accommodations at this camp are not quite as bare bones as Dillard's.  There are cabins and flush toilets and showers.  Oh, and a chapel for worship.  It's a great place in the middle of the woods, right by a beautiful little lake.

I'm not sure which daughter I will be picking up:  the moody, tired teenager or the funny, happy-go-lucky girl who sings along with the radio.  I'm betting on the former, simply because she has probably not had a whole lot of sleep these last six days.  Usually, the conversation when I pick her up from Bible camp goes something like this:

Me:  So how was your week?

Her:  Fine.

Me:  Make any new friends?

Her:  (incomprehensible mumble)

Me:  What?

Her:  NO!!  GOD!!

Me:  Did you go swimming?

Her:  No.

Me:  Why not?

Her:  (incomprehensible mumble)

Me:  What?

Her:  Could you just please NOT?!!!

You get the idea.  After spending a week with her friends, reading the Bible, going to worship, inviting Jesus into her life, my daughter will be tired, in need of a shower, and demonically possessed.

Saint Marty can't wait to see her. 

August 4: Martha, Picking Up Daughter, New Cartoon

"Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking around.

"Not coming," said Mrs. Cratchit.

"Not coming!" said Bob, with a sudden declension in his high spirits; for he had been Tim's blood horse all the way from church, and had come home rampant.  "Not coming upon Christmas Day!"

Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only in joke; so she came out prematurely from behind the closet door, and ran into his arms, while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house, that he might hear the pudding singing in the copper.

Martha, Bob Cratchit's daughter, is prominent in only this scene of the novel.  She is obviously the oldest of his children, since she works outside the Cratchit household.  She is participating in a joke on Bob here, but simply can't stand to upset her father.  It is a homecoming scene, Bob relishing the return of his daughter on Christmas Day.

This morning, I'm going to pick my daughter up from summer camp.  She's been gone a whole week, and, while I enjoyed the quiet for the first few days, I have missed her a great deal.  I know she's going to be exhausted today.  She's a kid that needs her sleep, and summer camp is not a place where you rest very much.  Her giggling cabin mates have probably driven her crazy at night.  Thus, I'm prepared to have a very crabby little girl at home for the next few days.

It's getting near the time to leave.  It takes about a half hour to get there.  It's located on the shores of a beautiful inland lake.  On Monday, I have to go back to the camp to play with Underground Praise, the band I'm a part of.  I'm hoping the rain will hold off today until I get my daughter in the car.  Then it can pour as far as I'm concerned.

Saint Marty is ready to collect his Martha.

Confessions of Saint Marty