An Interesting Newsletter from the New Haven Frahms (posted with permission)

25 February 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

Please accept our long overdue newsletter update. We hope that you are well and happy, and send you our best wishes!

Jennifer

I am still working at the Yale School of Medicine in the Office of Education as a coordinator for educational strategic planning. I enjoy the research and have a wonderful boss. Every Sunday, I work for two hours in the nursery with 8-10 two-year-olds, and one good-humored woman in her early fifties and love every minute of it — except the clean-up song with Barney. Otherwise, I spend time visiting other women from church, cleaning the house, paying bills, scheduling furnace and well servicings, and reading books and newspapers. Once in a while, I pull out Walker’s guitar or dust off the piano and lose touch with reality.

As for Walker and me, we have been living in North Haven for about 6 weeks now in a quaint New England home with blue siding, white trim, and an old, uneven brick pathway sprouting grass and moss and ending at our doorstep. The late-nineteenth century home lies on a long road gently winding around the base of Sleeping Giant State Park and Mt. Carmel — a tall hill, not a peak. A craggy creek full of boulders and tangled tree roots lies just to the North; and to the South, visible from our upstairs window, sit the remains of an old stone wall. 

Inside the house, most small spaces are painted a muted teal green and larger spaces are wallpapered. The floors are old, dark wood, and many of the windows are small rectangular panes that make the view outside ripple if one moves while gazing out through them. There are no doorknobs — only a handle with a thumb latch connecting to a small lever on the other side of the door, allowing it to be latched shut neatly from either side. The kitchen, originally built on a foundation of newspapers, but since renovated, has plenty of counter space and a dishwasher, clothes washer, and dryer. But the most alluring feature is the breakfast nook — really just a round table with two chairs in the northeast corner of the kitchen, where the morning sun floods through the windows.

It wasn’t until a couple weeks ago that we really knew the lay of the land, when the snow and ice covering every crevice finally melted. The house sits on the top of a slight slope and is surrounded on the west and east by front and back yards, a long lawn sloping down to the north, and to the south a flat plot of land bordered by trees. My jogs and walks along the narrow, windy roads in our area always present fresh, though mostly frozen, landscapes. There are a few barns and pastures, a very few large homes on hilltops, but mostly, there are many wood-sided homes of distinct character sitting along the road, or set back off the road in the woods.

Although it takes 20 minutes to drive to New Haven, and I sometimes wish I could just stroll over to the church or to campus or to work, my memories of this home are already fond and plentiful. We have invited friends to eat dinner (on the antique, imported French table, of course) and enjoy the home and surroundings. We have gone on snowy hikes along Sleeping Giant trails, savored Saturday-morning Belgian waffles while basking in the sun or scrutinizing the thick gray clouds while feeling cozy inside, and spent many wintry evenings listening to books on tape or watching movies.

I have also spent a good part of my time in our first home feeling sick. Fortunately, this was mostly a good kind of sickness, and has been primarily physical in nature. Perhaps more than any other experience in this home, I will remember mornings and nights spent thinking about the future and then making a mad dash for the bathroom. Repeat. Repeat. But the bitter is already turning sweet, and my fresh memories of these days, sometimes still reluctant to leave, have softened, tempered by the hopeful possibilities of the future.

Walker

For my part, when I am not doing a crosswork puzzle or listening to one of my audiobooks from the library, I manage to keep myself plenty busy with school, seminary, and scholarship applications.

On the school front, I am taking courses in Russian, Poverty Alleviation, Global Health, and Macroeconomics. The combination of having interesting courses and electing to take my econ course Credit/D/Fail has made for a fun and somewhat stress-free semester so far.

Seminary, meanwhile, continues to be one of the more difficult and rewarding aspects of my life these days. It has been great fun to see the class grow with the addition of two recently-baptised seminary-aged young men in the past few months. Considering that attendance hovered around zero for most of last year, I am very grateful to have the 7-8 students who regularly make it to the church by 6AM to study this year’s topic: the New Testament. Tired I may consistently be, but I truly am thankful for the chance to learn the teachings of Christ more in depth and to have the privilege of relaying these precious truths to a good group of semi-conscious teens every morning.

At first, I thought that the extra fifteen minutes of drive time would be a major inconvenience when it came to seminary, in particular. Although it has, indeed, forced us to make a trip to the pump about 5 times as often as when we lived within a few blocks of campus and work, there have been some surprising benefits to living farther away.

First, it has allowed me to more easily pick up three of my seminary students who were struggling to get rides to – and wake up for – class. Now, we have a system whereby I call each of them and wake them up as soon as I leave our home at 5:30. This gives them just enough time to get ready for me to get them and get to class by 6:00. If they fall back asleep by the time I arrive, which happens on occasion, I never hesitate to help them in their efforts to get ready by banging on their bedroom window. They love me for this!

Another great blessing of having a twenty minute drive to Seminary is that, after the first ten minutes or so I am wide awake. It is only then that the heater in our car begins to blow hot air. It turns out, you can only shiver for so long and still be tired, even at 5:30 in the morning. I am, therefore, totally energized and well-prepared to sing, play, and chuck erasers at drowsy pupils by the time I get to class.

The final activity in which I have been earnestly engaged of late is that of seeking funding for my research abroad this summer. A mere three months and just a few thousand smackeroos is all that stands between me and my research trip to Moldova. The plan is for me to stay there for June and July, during which time I will be conducting a study into the willingness of Moldovan women to engage in illicit services when working abroad. This is actually a really important question when it comes to designing initiatives to counter the trafficking of women, and I hope to use this research in my senior paper on the subject of human trafficking from Moldova.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been working with two of my professors and emailing various organizations in Moldova in preparing my research. At the same time that I am trying to better flesh my project out, I have also been applying for funding to various fellowships. I had one interview last week, and hopefully I will start to hear back from others over the course of the next month, or so.

Hopefully, I will get a couple of these fellowships, as how much money I get may determine whether or not Jenn can come with me. On the other hand, there are other concerns about Jenn coming to Moldova that may take precedence.

What concerns, you might ask?

Well, although Jenn has been feeling strong and generally in good health, she does have occassional episodes that might be hard to deal with in Moldova – her random cravings for America-specific foods, for instance. I don’t know what we would do if she started craving Kraft macaroni and cheese and/or a chocolate cake donut while we were working in Moldova. The hopelessness of the situation might be the end of her.

And, of course, there is no telling how Kiwi will be doing at that point.

KiWi

I thought mom and dad were joking when they said we were moving to North Haven. Why would I want to be away from all the fun and excitement of the city, stuck with my boring parents — well, mostly, my boring mom? She gets up, goes to work, eats dry, boring food, takes bitter pills, won’t give me enough chocolate, falls asleep before we can have any fun at night, and she even makes me go to the doctor all the time! By the way, I don’t think she would appreciate someone taking pictures of her without any clothes on, but she seems fine letting anyone take pictures of me, as long as they have one of those echo imaging thingies.

Yes, I know she tries to make the house sound charming and the area so picturesque, but, believe me, it’s really drafty, which makes mommy shiver and me, too. And the constant little noises in the house drive me batty! If I could see that there wasn’t a prowler ready to attack, I might be reassured, but mommy has gotten so used to the sounds, she doesn’t even get up to look and tell me it’s okay. Ever since we moved here, she is really just so boring. No early-morning frolicking or running, no late-night movies, and — I am a deprived child! — no chocolate!

But, mommy promises me that when early September comes, she will let me play more, and will even let me sleep by myself. I have a plan all ready to go, just in case she forgets, which seems to happen more and more often. In about 6 weeks, I will kick her just hard enough that she can feel it — not too hard, but enough to get her attention. Then, I’ll start waking up earlier than her and running in place to remind her I still enjoy early morning jogs. That should do it. Except for one last thing. I have to get my hands on some chocolate! I’ll do whatever it takes: run mommy ragged, kick and hiccup, jog in place, anything so that she will, in desperation, reach for the one thing she knows I want most – that dark, sweet ambrosia. Chocolate!

They may call me Kiwi for now, but just because I’m temporarily named for a fruit doesn’t mean I don’t have a sweet tooth!