Conversational expression

Yesterday before dawn I lay in bed listening to three men’s voices from the other room. Tim, our son, and our nephew got themselves ready to hike up Spencer Butte, south of town, for a view of Easter sunrise.

This year I didn’t go. I’d imagined myself flinging off covers and emerging to hover and encourage them out the door, but lying there, at rest and very at peace with staying home, I smiled. They were doing fine without me.

After Tim reentered our room for a kiss goodbye, I lay a while longer, thinking. About blogging. The morning we celebrate Christ’s resurrection, the cornerstone of my faith, I had on the brain the question of why I blog.

To blog is to… what?

That’s been my quandary, ever since I first attempted this method of expression, nearly a year ago. I’ve needed to figure out what it is I’m doing and why I want to. I’ve tried on many answers and discarded them. Every week, it seems, I get the urge to push that button in the Settings asking “Delete This Blog?”

But yesterday, in quiet warmth under my covers, I remembered what talking on the phone was like back when we lived east of Coos Bay. Our rented home sat on a hillside, just above Old Wagon Road. I loved walking with toddler Victoria along the lane. Wind in the treetops, a goat munching our neighbor’s field, roosters making sure we knew it was daytime long after 6:00 a.m.

Out there, the only affordable phone service was a party line. No, the receiver didn’t use a hand crank on the wall, but that would have fit the quaintness. And while it was supposed to be an upgraded shared service, with no one really able to listen in on anothers’ calls, you knew it had to be possible. Someone down the road could pick up when you were talking to your best friend about life’s ups and downs. A stranger might be listening.

While the possibility didn’t keep me from talking, I was glad upon moving to town to get private phone service again. Normal for me has not been sharing my life with a large group, whether or not I know each member of it. And yet, my need for conversation in the country remained greater than a desire for privacy. It does now, too, even when I hear worried rumors of “big brother”-type phone monitoring.

My conclusion about blogging, in the wee hours of Easter morning, was, “Yep. It’s a conversation.” This time I’d signed up for the party line on purpose. I wanted people to “hear” me conversing about my life. The medium, writing, drew me. It always does. I wanted to be here, to see what was going on, and I discovered it is a written conversation.

Other bloggers have kept me active and prevented my pushing the delete button just yet. I enjoyed their conversations, even when their much more brilliant expressions caused me inner despair. Like the wallflower I’ve always been, I don’t know the moves. Sniff.

But when I read back over my blog, I like it. And sometimes a post has touched another person. It even looks like a few bloggers share my ambivalent, delete-button pushing mood swings. We keep going, for now, trying out this latest expansion in the history of conversation.

I did arise on Easter morning, showered, ironed my prettiest dress, and ate a banana. Then the guys returned, their effort a success on a clear-skied pinnacle. At church we sang and listened to an amazing message, and consumed mass quantities of food. And all day long, my friends and family and I conversed the old-fashioned way.