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Esta Doutrich

Esta Doutrich

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Green Olive Soup? Me?

20 Thursday Jan 2011

Posted by Esta in creating, family, laughter

≈ 5 Comments

“I can’t pucker my lips”, Benny wails, lips stretching and twitching in his attempt

“Benny!” declares Davy, “If you can’t pucker your lips you’re not going to be able to get a girlfriend!”

For the record I did not teach them that. And Benny will not have any problems getting a girlfriend, despite not being able to make kissing noises to save his life.

Because he eats anything a girl puts before him.

Even green olive soup.

And Benny hates olives.

———————————————————————-

I first tasted green olive soup on a cold, snow driven night in Minnesota, sitting across from my friend, Charissa.

 

 

 

 

 

The window let in the glow of the street lamps and we talked about how life is messy and drank tea. We also had cups filled with green olive soup and I decided to fall in love with it, since it gave me warm fuzzy feelings and tasted delicious.

I used to hate olives.

And then one day I said to myself,

 “Esta, stop this childish nonsense”

That year I forced olives into my mouth whenever I could and told myself they were good.

And finally I started to believe myself. Which is fortunate, since otherwise I would have never ordered green olive soup and would have missed falling in love.

Well today, I took a large test, which is supposed to tell me if I have any chance at passing the national nursing exam after graduation. It was mildly stressful.

Afterword, as a way to celebrate, I decided to make my own Green Olive Soup.

 Lydia helped me.

It turned out just right, creamy and olivey, and I was to tickled.

I served it for supper since the parents were gone. I found out brothers don’t like green olive soup like sisters do. But they all ate it like men, which is to say they finished their bowels with only moderate nose wiggles and gagging. Robert even said it was good.

I feel so artsy and domestic.

 I mean, I just made Green Olive Soup.

Me, the girl whose favorite food is fried potatoes over a camp fire, the more charcoal the better.

 Either I’m becoming city-fied or I’m growing up.

Mr Gary

08 Wednesday Dec 2010

Posted by Esta in family, friends, life dirt, unreasonable hope

≈ 7 Comments

A year ago I sat in a cold classroom, early for my first class. In the half light of the dawn, I lay my head down on the desk and cried. I felt if one more thing thwacked my heart I was going to shattered and then Gary Troyer  died and part of the floor felt like it dropped out of my world.

And for a long, long time I never wrote about how much his life meant, or how much I was changed, or how deep I grieved him leaving. I was afraid no one would understand, or think it just a surface response to his death.

In reality, if it wouldn’t have been for the life of Gary Troyer, much of me would still be hiding in the corner I used to always run to.

He saw the awkward 18 year old mission kid that I was and convinced me that I had something to offer, despite the fact that I felt like a hippo in a butterfly conservatory.

He became so much more than just a mentor to me—more like a friend.

And once, while we sat and talked late into the evening, I felt my frustration understood through his blinked back tears, and two cups of tea got cold, and I never guessed that would be the last time I would see him.

He watched his young people, and knew more, I think, about ourselves than we did sometimes.

 Mr Gary, as his students called him, had this uncanny way of sticking his finger right at the spot where your anger boiled the deepest, making it come. As I learned to know him more, I realized that he did it with full intentions, hoping you would notice, and look deeper. Sometimes it was almost uncanny.

Yes, Mr Gary made me angry. Once, a few months before he died,  he made me so furious I felt like throwing things, until I realized he was right, and then had to let the anger go in place of overflowing gratitude. He cared enough, I realized, to step in places other people where afraid too, and point out the canyon that I didn’t yet see.

In that way, Mr Gary was a rare man.

 He was passionate enough to step on toes and brilliant ideas and petty little beliefs.

One of my friends, and a fellow student of Mr Gary, describes this in her memories of his life.

I don’t think that I can, or have, properly put into words the impact Mr. Gary had on my life. I don’t think I even realized it until a year ago.

My first memory of Mr. Gary is probably one of my favorite as well, although it left me quite rattled at first. I remember sitting the cafeteria … one of the guys called Gary over to our table. ..he sat down and talked with us. I remember Gary just asking us questions, hard questions… The questions kept getting more and more personal until, what I considered ‘out of the blue’, he turned to me and said “So what are you doing with your life?” I filled him in on my school plans and life plans and he just looked at me and said “what are you doing NOW with your life?”……he got me thinking, and that is what Gary did best—he made me think. And I remember coming away from class or discussions with him frustrated. But not frustrated at him, frustrated at his questions. Questions I didn’t want to face or even think about, even though those questions needed answers.

Yes he made us frustrated, he made us think, and he taught us well.

As she says at the end….

Overall, I think Gary was successful in inspiring us to expect more of ourselves and of those around us. And, best of all, he put all these aspects to practice in his own life. I incorporated the following quote into my first ever assignment for Gary—I applied it to a high school teacher, BUT I think that it more aptly is applicable to Gary: “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” (William Arthur Ward) And Gary was a great teacher.  ~Lara W.

  

 

 I miss him. We miss him. Us who felt the impact of his life and sometimes wonder what we will do without his wisdom and encouraging hand. But we will be okay, as this–another testimony, from another good friend and fellow student of our Mr Gary–gives evidence.

When I think of Mr. Gary, I always think of heaven.  I will never forget the chapel service he held one morning at EBI.  He talked about how we so often underestimate God, and that we have not because we ask not.  He then asked us to imagine what it would be like when we stand in heaven and see Jesus for the first time, while he played the song “I can only imagine” by MercyMe.  At the same time, he placed an artists’ rendition of what heaven might be like on the overhead.  I have never seen a group of restless kids so quiet and reverent, as we all thought of how big our God is, and tried to imagine what it would be like.  That day, Mr. Gary created a moment that will forever stay with me, and today made all the more special because I know he is experiencing what he could only imagine before.

Mr. Gary changed my life, and the lives of many others.  He had a heart of love and compassion, an intimacy with Jesus, and a passion for the lost that was inspiring to everyone he met…I know that he would not want us to mourn him.  If he could speak to us now, I believe he would say to us to keep on, that it is all worth it; the sorrow and heartache, loneliness and tears, pain and sadness. 

It will all be worth it when we get our first glimpse of home.  Home, where the sorrows of this world will melt away into an unspeakable joy.  Where we will once again be reunited with friends and loved ones.  Home, where we can finally see Jesus, face to face, too live forever more in worship of our savior.  And with this knowledge, I can let go, because I have a vibrant, living hope that death is not the end.  And somehow, when I think of heaven, just like Mr. Gary asked us to, it seems even sweeter than before.

And I echo his words,

 “with this knowledge I can let go”.

 

(photo credits : various EBI staff and students)

Paddles and bull moose

30 Thursday Sep 2010

Posted by Esta in canoeing, family, laughter, sleeping, the wilderness

≈ 6 Comments

“Remind me why I do these kinds of things with you?”

And he laughed and said it was in my blood.

 He wanted a weekend in the wild, paddling a canoe, and invited me along. If there is wilderness and canoes I go. So I went.

We drove three hours north, chasing the water and the Canadian shield, with a disposable camera and a trunk full of gear. We tied the canoe on the roof, realizing we had forgotten half of our tie-on equipment at home, and laughed, since the September wind was already blowing strong. “Hope it stays on”, he said. “It better”, I say, and my speedometer quivers at 120 kl./hr. We choose a lake three hours north and had a rough map, drawn by one of the local men, showing snow machine trails and old railroad tracks.

It was late by the time we pulled into the clearing and saw the bay below, still calm. 6:30 pm. Less than three hours until dark and it had started to rain. We raced the western clouds and the wind, flipping the canoe down and me piling gear out of the trunk while he packed it, tightly, filling in all the corners. We watched the clouds and winced as they rolled closer.

I climbed into the front, he shoved us off, and the water swirled behind our furious haste. The lake was nine miles long and we wanted to get away from the few seasonal cottages that the road access had brought to desecrate the otherwise lonely shores.

“We have to hurry”, he said and I smiled as the canoe leapt with our synchronized stokes and marveled at the blessing of my life and the way we both speak canoe.

We crossed to the middle and turned down the wide channel that stretched as far as the mist would reveal. An hour later the clouds opened and the waves fought our progress and the darkness rolled in around the pines.

Finally, we knew we had to find camp and so followed the bank for the next thirty minutes until, though the rain, we found a tiny bay and pulled the canoe up the rocks.

The ground was too uneven down by the water so he walked to the top of the ridge and found a spot just big enough to fit the tent. While the darkness came steady, he snapped brush and leveled ground and I carried the sleeping bags  and the tarp and the backpacks up the ridge and hung the food bucket in the tree away from the bears.

Throwing rope, tied around large rocks, over tree branches in the dark is one of the more finer of my skills. I came very close to knocking myself completely unconscious.

By the time everything was set up it was pitch black and the rain was soaking even the dry undersides of the pines. So we decided against a fire and, instead, climbed into our tent for the rest of the night.  We sat, wet, cold, and laughing under the light of our lantern, that swung and sent eerie glows across the vinyl roof. He changed out of his wet clothes, but I was too hungry and so decided to wait until after I ate. We ate our supper/midnight snack and laughed and talked the way you do when there is only miles of empty bush surrounding you and everything is dark. It have been a successful first day, we reasoned.

And as we sat the night matured, and the supper was almost done, with just the last Mars bar to go, when, from the darkness a few feet behind our tiny tent came noise.

 Crashing.

And then loud, right in our ears, “NEAAAAARRRRUUUUH UH UH.”

We looked at each other, eyes meeting, as it came again.

 “NEAAAAARRRRUUUUH UH UH.”

  Right up close. Right there. We looked at each other and out of both mouths, simultaneously, came a gasped “Moose!”

And we didn’t need to say anything else, really. We both had lived in the north, both been raised by a moose hunter and his stories, and we both knew that September was the heat of the rut and that moose in the rut are no pretty tourist sight.

 But that was a cow. With a bull in the rut, any noise can be taken as a threat and we had heard stories from our parents and heard of them jumping in a canoe to escape when the noise had caused a bull to come fast and angry. But that was a cow and cows are fine. Unless of course a bull is with her, Dad said. So we turned out the lights and sat, silent in the darkness. The snapping brush came closer and we could hear her breathing, hot and heavy, in the night. She crashed and grunted her way, slowly, so slow around the tent. And we sat, with two layers of plastic between us and her 800lb aliveness. After an half and hour she moved off enough that the snapping brush was more distant and we could whisper.

I climbed in to my sleeping bag, still in my wet clothes, not daring to wake the forest by digging in my garbage bag-lined pack. Still we could hear crashing and was that more than one animal? We couldn’t tell.

 There was no point in thinking of our canoe as an escape if a bull did come, like Dad advised. It was too far down the ridge to be any use.

Finally, I decided, I needed to relax. Daniel will listen and Daniel will pray. I’m just going to plug my ears and go to sleep. The cold ground wrapped around my sopping clothes and I smiled at how nature never fails to give me a buzz.

A hour or so later Daniel awoke in the icy blackness and this time he knew it wasn’t a cow. If you have never heard and large bull moose “work out”, rent a National Geographic from the library or something and you’ll remember.

What Daniel heard and recognized was the THUNK of logs as they get picked up by a bull moose’s rack and throw like chopsticks, the SNAP of branched and trees being crushed by body and antler, the THUMP as the bush floor is churned and dug by hoofs and antlers, and the trademark THRASH, THRASH of antlers being rubbed up and down tree trunks, stripping the branches. Bless Daniels heart, he didn’t wake me, knowing how terrified I would be.

The bull came closer and closer and Daniel lay still and prayed. Finally it came too close and suddenly saw us, letting out a large “UUUUUURRRRRRAAA”.

“We’re dead”, Daniel though to himself.

But, after crashing and blowing for a while he slowly moved off. And that’s when I woke up.

As soon as I heard him my heart sank. He had his cow and now any noise we made was dangerous, not just slightly risky.I lay, cold and wet, and scared out of my mind, and Daniel patted me in comfort. Finally the crashing grew more distant and I again made the choice to sleep rather than to worry.

Two hours later he was back and this time both Daniel and I were wide awake, staring at the outline of the moon on the roof as we heard him come again, loud, closer and closer. He came and still came and when he snapped branches 15 feet away I thought my heart might stop altogether. I had to cough and the tarp beneath us crackled with every movement. I could hear his grunts and heavy breaths and once again two sheets of plastic stood between me and an animal who weights anywhere from 900-1500 pounds and carries rack of antlers twice his width.

I knew that all the trees around were poplar and had no branches until 15 feet up, but I remembered that my grandmother, Clara, had climbed a smooth tree with no branches once, when she was lone in the wilderness, and she thought a moose was coming. Grandpa was gone with the gun and when he came back he didn’t believe she had actually climbed that smooth, branchless tree. “Well, if Grandma could climb a smooth tree to get away from a moose, so could I.” I reasoned.

Somehow that didn’t really reassure me.

 Dad used a stump to hide from an angry bull moose, I remembered. But that held to comfort since I knew there were no stumps within 100 yard. Dad and Mom had used a canoe to escape a bull, even though he had swam out into the water. But, again, I remembered that the distance between the breathing beast behind me and my canoe was vastly unproportioned. Daniel had pepper spray along but we both knew that would be like trying to stop a train with a toothpick.

 So I let Daniel pray in a whisper and reminded myself that I loved adventures like laying, wet and cold, in the wilderness with bull moose standing 15 feet behind me.

Again, slowly he moved off, and the rest of the night is a blur. Every time I woke up I could hear something crashing, but most of the time it was farther off and I was too exhausted to care about being trampled or gorged anymore to stay awake. I woke up at 700 am and could still hear the bull in the distance, doing his little bush work-out.

I woke up Daniel at 730, when the crashing was almost silent, and we, as silent and hurried as we have ever done such, carried everything down to the canoe. Once it was all off the ridge and in safe distance of the canoe we packed it all up and pushed off into the mist. We wanted to, right before we left, smash brush and take our paddles against the trees like Dad taught us moose hunting, to bring him running, but we decided we had enough bull moose for the time being and so just slipped away silently.

 

 We canoed the swamps and creek-like fingers the rest of the morning and found enough moose sign to tell us we were not dreaming. (the third picture below is what the ground looks like after in encounters a bull moose)

We ate a wonderful breakfast on the rocks, and built a fire, and looked at the fall colors  and talked, and explored,  and generally did things that one normally does on a canoe trip to make up for the bizarre night.

 

And when we came home we had a great story, and Dad couldn’t get over how lucky we were, and Mom reminded us how much danger we really were in,  and I had spent the next two days with a sore throat and achy, fevered bones from my cold, wet night.

But it was all wonderfully worth it and I would do it all again in a flash. Even though I probably will never sent up my tent so far from my canoe in the middle of September.

 

 

Homesick for sarcasm

11 Saturday Sep 2010

Posted by Esta in books, family, laughter

≈ 5 Comments

Most of the time they do stuff like stand on logs and then hit each other with big sticks. I missed that.

 

And I missed their sarcasm.

I’ve heard people say that sarcasm is an unhealthy form of humor—hurtful, they say. That is purely a case of  situational ethics. Because sarcasm, its like a love language around my house. And I missed it more than anything this summer. So much so that I went back and read  journal entries just to be reminded that it still existed somewhere, in the after supper conversations of my strangely wonderful brothers.

One evening I read this entry, written before I left…..

This. This is what I missed when I thought of my brothers.

03-04-10

Daniel was bored tonight. It is a rare thing for him, really. All evening the six foot, 150 pound teen boy slouched around the house, his arms dragging behind him like those apes you see at the zoo. A long trail of mumbled sarcastic comments flowed from his mouth as he stalked up and down. Finally, finding the monotony overpowering, he came to the dinning room to seek help. 

I walked in about five minutes after he got there. Just in time to hear the tail end of his sob story.

It was something along the lines of, “There nothing to do in this house. I want to do something. Isn’t there anything I can do? I’m sick of not doing anything. I need something do!”

Naturally, loving him and all, every family member present jumped to his aid.

Dad, eyes alight: “ You want something to do with   your evening?”

Daniel, catching on to his excitement: “Yes!”

Dad: “What about changing the print cartridges in all the printers?!!!”

Daniel: “Why don’t I just go jump off a cliff?”

This conversation is followed by Dad imitating, in a high squeaky voice, us children calling for his help every time the printers break down.

Which sparked a debate as to why he is grumbling when he was the one to choose to get married and have so many kids anyways. This little rabbit trail continues for a few heated moments, but soon Daniel once again starts up his wail of wanting to “do something”

Esta: “ I know! You could start a blog!”

Daniel, rolling eyes: “What would I do with a blog? I hardly even go on Facebook.”

Esta: “ A blog is different. You write about stuff.”

Daniel: “Stuff? Like girls…..”

The conversation ended there. And we turn to Mom, who always has something to say, hoping she will offer sage advice.

“Why don’t you just take that thing and put it on your ear and see how long you can stand the pain?”

The “thing”, which was in Daniels hand, happened to be a large spring-loaded clamp/tool thing used to pinch wood together while glue is drying. We all laugh of course, but Daniel seems to think that was the best idea yet, even though he doesn’t actually try it.

“Well whatever you do, Daniel”, I say, putting a hand on his shoulder, “don’t play computer games.”

“Oh, but that’s what I want to do!”, he wails

Ah! This sparks a debate all its own that revolves around the hypothesis that video games destroy a child’s creativity. So went the next few minutes of conversation.

Still Daniel remained unoccupied. Mom remembers he hadn’t done his seven minutes of kitchen chores and reminds him.

“Make me”, replies the sarcastic teenager.

To which Mom reminds him, gentle like, that she already did, about sixteen years ago. Daniel blinks stupidly for a few seconds while he untangles the joke and then, smirking, admits defeat.While he is washing dishes, suggestions on how to occupy his time are thrown around the room like darts.

What about  Dad turns the stairs into a giant treadmill so he can “just run and run”?!!

 Or a punching bag. That would be cool. No?

What about weights? Snap.

Reading? Apparently he had already read every book in the whole house. 

Mom, despairing: “Have you read The Harvester? The one about the guy that has the dream about the woman?”

Daniel: “Excuse me?!?!?!”

Mom: “You know, he has a dream about this lady and then he meets her in real life”

Daniel: “Wow, I should try that…. ‘ Hey, you, I dreamed about you….sooooooo…’”

No luck with the book suggestion. Ranting continues.

Mom suggests taking a glass jar outside and dropping it on the cement just to see it shatter.

“You did that once when you were small.”

Daniel reminds her he was punished for that small incident.

Mom states he must feel trapped.

“Well I live with a bunch of lunatics”. 

He then starts a little chant/round song about going crazy, which has the potential to drive us all insane in seconds.

I race upstairs and rack my bookshelf for something, anything to help him. Lugging a stack of books I reentered the dining room and plopped them in front of him. He flipped through them, commenting on each.

“Read that one.”

” Wait, this I borrowed from so and so like five years ago.”

” Eww, this looks mushy.”

” Any good fights in this one?”

Finally, picking up a paperback, “Oh, I’ve never read this one. It looks cool”

Just like that, would you believe it, he sits down on the coach without another word and starts reading. Boom. No more complaining or wining. Amazing.

I rest my case, if I had one. That being that there is nothing like a good book to feed the mind.Later, as I was walking out of the dining room, I commented to someone how our past can always be redeemed.

Daniel looked up just long enough to take one last sarcastic stab. 

“Well, Esta, may my past, wasted by playing horrible, brain killing video games somehow, somehow be someday redeemed.”

I do hope so Daniel, I really do.

 

And now I’m back!

 Back, smack dab in the middle of crazy supper table converstaions and sarcastic brothers, who get it genetically from both sides. 

These days will not last forever and so I savor  one more winter of being a part of it all, and laughing.

25 years later

02 Wednesday Jun 2010

Posted by Esta in family, the wilderness

≈ 3 Comments

 

June 1st, 1985, he left.

 A blonde Ohio welder,

 

driving a big blue Dodge far into the Northern Canadian bush.

He was 23.

 

With a passion for Jesus and a heart for people.

                  And that was the beginning.

 

 

 

 

 Today marks 25 years of ministry in the north.

 I just think that is pretty cool.

 

kissing boring men and hot pink aliens

14 Friday May 2010

Posted by Esta in family, laughter, outrageous love, silly fears

≈ 4 Comments

“ I just think it would be the greatest tragedy to have to kiss a boring man” 

I almost did clumsy nose dive into the sink of dirty dishes I was washing. Its not every day you hear a close friend utter such a mind-boggling statement. She was quite serious too.

 Despite that fact, I laughed.

And laughed.

And laughed until I was bent over, trying to breathe in the air that wasn’t there anymore.

 The statement had come popping out in the middle of an frustrated rant on God’s inevitable choice of her future partner.

Most likely He would choose someone solid and good. Someone entirely lacking in color. Besides, she reasoned, those were the only guys that would ever fall for her anyways.

I laughed, wheezed, and ran to write down the quote in my journal. And our chat continued as we finished the supper dishes.

While I do think she might need to reevaluate her definition of “the greatest tragedy”, I heard her. No, I don’t worry about kissing boring men—never have, and, hopefully, never will need too. Other things keep me awake at night. But they follow the same thought pattern.

At times, at least to me,  life seems far too much like one of those big toy machines at the mall. The big square plastic boxes filled with stuffed animals. They were the big thing when I was a kid.

You would put  two dollars in the slot and then attempt to maneuver the long arm inside the box, trying to snag the cute stuffed bear at the back. Those things are dream killers for a five year old.

For some reason it always grabs the sick looking, hot pink toy alien at the front and plops it neatly down the slot into your waiting arms. I hate those things. At least with a gum ball machine you know your going to get your gum.

Sometimes, just like a five year old, we dare to dream and our eyes sparkle with the possibilities.

Then, plut, ploop, smash……

….. life comes with its big clumsy arm and grabs an hideous looking situation and plops it down—squishing our silly hopes to nothing.  So we learn, like I did, to stay away from those big toy machines. Don’t even look at them, cause you know that those cute little teddies are only there to entice you into giving up another two dollars.

So we trade in our dreams for what we call reality.

And we become afraid that we will only get to kiss boring men
and be stuck with hot pink aliens for the rest of our lives.

tragic…

 

 “There is no fear in love: but perfect love casts out fear: because fear is agony….God is love and he that abides in love abides in God….……casting all your cares upon him, for you are his charge…..and he fed them according to the integrity of his heart; and guided them by the skillfulness of his hands. ….And the Lord direct your hearts in the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ …..For this God is our God for ever and ever; He will be our guide even unto death

  Thess 3:5,  Isa 42:16, 1 John 4:18, Psa 48:14, Psa 78:7

 

I'm Esta

/Canadian nurse living in Oregon/ Occasionally I write about depression, womanhood, faith, and other super abstract ideas, while trying not to take myself too seriously.

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