I scuttled about in the late afternoon chill trying to get everything done and put away before the sun went down.
I had to straighten up the tack room, be sure all the saddles and bridles were in their correct places and accounted for and all grooming implements put away.
The floors were cleanly swept.
To the west, a cold, gray bank of the marine layer climbed up and pushed its way through the Conejo Pass. I had groomed and put up the last horse and checked to see that everyone had been fed.
If I didn’t have it all finished and get up to the dorm before 5:00, I’d be in big trouble with Mrs. Nicholas, the girl’s dean.
She’d be watching for me, I knew. She always did on late Friday afternoons, like clockwork.
I hated the short days of autumn, with the chilly evening darkness; the night ominously creeping in earlier and earlier every day.
It had been a huge shock to this island girl whose days had all been the same length year round back home, where the sun always went down around 7:00 and could be counted on to be predictable.
But in California, not so. And in the Seventh-day Adventist world, I found, that made a big difference on Friday afternoons when the Sabbath began. This often got me in trouble with the girls' dean as I tried to scurry about and finish all my duties faster than the sun fell.
The short, portly woman with gray curls piled on her head was formidable. Many a time I’d brought the wrath of Mrs. Nicholas down on me.
Either by trying to sneak out of the dorm with a dress that was shorter than the dictated 2” above the knee, or some other unintentional infraction.
It’s not that I was the type of girl to wear provocative clothing. It’s just that I continued to grow six inches throughout high school.
Clothes that started out the year the proper length never stayed that way as I grew taller and taller.
So my friends often helped me slip out of the dorm undetected.
Either we would wait around the corner from the lobby waiting for Mrs. Nicholas to go back into her office – or better yet, her apartment – then slip quickly out of the dorm.
Or if she kept close to the front desk, we would often walk through the lobby and out the front door in packs.
Like a herd of zebras swinging clear of a watching lion, we put our most vulnerable member in the middle or on the far side, away from danger.
Whoever had the shortest skirt would either walk in the middle if it was a large enough group, or on the far side of a smaller group, screened from casual glance.
Unless the dean stood intently on guard, it often worked.
With the Sabbath beginning at sundown Friday night, I would be expected to be in the dorm before the early setting of the autumn sun. All the week’s work must be done and put away.
After dinner in the cafeteria, we’d all scurry back to the dorm to ready for Friday night vespers.
This required even closer scrutiny by Mrs. Nicholas. There was no sneaking by her on Friday nights.
She stood by the front desk, hands on hips, and inspected each and every girl that walked by, her lips firmly pursed in a scowl.
(Although when someone dared Sonia Matar to go to vespers in nothing but a raincoat one Friday night my freshman year, she missed that one!)
What was I going to do? I fretted as I mucked out the last of the stalls in the barn.
I’d poked a hole in my last pair of nylons as I put them on earlier that week.
In a flash, I had my bottle of clear nail polish ready; a trick I learned from the girls in the dorm.
If the hole is small enough and you catch it quickly enough, you can prevent the hole from turning into a run with a dab of nail polish.
So you always prayed that if you were to poke a hole in them, it was at least above the hemline and hidden from view.
But the hole I’d poked eventually turned into a small run, and then into a large run the girls referred to as a “ladder.”
We’d also learned that if you ran one leg, you could cut it off and save the remaining portion for when you ruined your next pair of nylons.
Then you’d just cut the offending leg off the second pair of pantyhose and pull on each of the one-legged pair of nylons.
You’d have two run-less legs, but two pantyhose tops squeezing you tightly. We were industrious if nothing else!
But I’d gone past the two separate legged nylons stage, and ruined even those when they caught on a loose rivet in a cafeteria chair.
And besides being out of nylons, I also was out of shampoo.
I usually tried to get babysitting jobs to pay for essentials, since all of the money I made at my job on campus automatically went straight toward my school bill.
But now I was not only out of shampoo and nylons but out of cash. I could borrow shampoo from one of the girls, but there was no way to solve the other problem at this late date.
As the sun dropped lower into the cold marine layer of clouds that crept inland, panic began to squeeze tighter ‘round my heart.
It may seem silly to be so fearful in hindsight. But in the helplessness of my teenage mind, it loomed as an insurmountable and fearsome problem. I felt like a lamb on its way toward the sacrificial altar.
Fearing the inevitable, I stayed down at the stables until the last minute.
I knew if I waited too long, Mrs. Nicholas would be there shaking her finger and glowering at me.
But I somehow felt as though I could avoid the confrontation that I knew would come when I tried to sneak out without those required nylons.
As the last fingers of sunlight shot up from the sun being swallowed by those dark clouds on the horizon, I hurried up the hill, across the road and up the steps.
No Mrs. Nicholas! I crossed the lobby and took the stairs three at a time.
“Liz? Is that you?” the monitor called after me, coming out from the inner office to the front desk.
I stopped just short of the first landing. “Yes…”
“There’s something here for you,” she called.
“What is it?” I called, really not wanting to go down to the desk.
“Just a package here with your name on it.”
My brain tried to process that. I just didn’t get packages in the mail. Ever! And in any case, the mail would have been in by noon.
How did I manage to have a package at the desk?
Slowly I clunked down the stairs one at a time, my boots announcing my descent.
“Where did the package come from?” I asked the monitor who stood behind the desk.
“It’s not really a package. It’s just a bag with your name on it.”
“Where did it come from,” I asked again.
“I don’t know,” she said, sounding puzzled. “I’ve been here the whole time.
"I just turned around and there it was. I didn’t see anybody bring it in.” She held up a small, brown, paper bag.
Hesitantly, I approached the desk and reached out for the bag.
“It’s not going to bite you!” she laughed.
I smiled in embarrassment, not realizing I had been approaching the mystery bag like it was a bomb. I took the bag from her and found it heavier than I’d expected.
I looked at the front. Sure enough; there was my name in block letters. Not a hand I recognized.
“You expecting something?” the girl asked me.
“Uh…no,” I said, slowly unfolding the top of the bag to peek in. I stood there stunned.
“What is it?” the girl asked, then looked at the tears welling up in my eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, excusing herself and heading back into the inner office.
“No, it’s okay,” I said, smiling up at her through my teary eyes.
“So what is it?”
“Just some shampoo and nylons,” I said, smiling.
She looked at me in puzzlement, not understanding why someone would get all teary-eyed over a bottle of shampoo and pair of nylons.
Then she quickly ducked back into the inner office, taking a second to peek back out at me, still standing there in the lobby, looking into the bag in amazement.
I had told no one about my nylon dilemma – nor my lack of shampoo. Nobody.
And though the dorm monitor had been right there at the office and desk the whole time, nobody saw anyone drop off a package for me.
Yet there it was – the answer to my unspoken prayers. One bottle of shampoo and one pair of nylons.
That evening, after shampooing the horse smell out of my long hair, I pulled on my brand new nylons.
I looked at myself in the mirror – my clean, blow-dried hair, my knee-length blue dress, and my suntan, sandal foot nylons.
I turned all the way around in front of the full-length mirror and smiled.
Then I walked down the stairs with my group of friends on my way to vespers.
Only this time when we crossed the lobby, I walked on the inside of the pack, closest to the desk, and proudly sheltered someone else for a change.
Mrs. Nicholas was so busy commenting snidely on my knee-length dress and nylons that the whole population of the dorm could have stormed through in hot pants and halter tops and she wouldn’t have noticed.
The point is not that I feared the short, rotund Mrs. Nicholas and her apparent pleasure at scolding me for anything she could.
The point is that Someone was looking out for me when I thought I was alone and afraid. That sometimes when we think we are most alone, He is there watching over us even though we can’t see him. He really does have even the smallest of details under control, and when He says He has counted the hairs on your head, He forgot to say He can also deliver shampoo when you are desperately in need for said hair!
Liz Carson Rosas
29 January 2010
The LORD will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
the LORD will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.
Psalm 121:7,8
BILOXI, Miss. — Five years after wandering away in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, a gray and white cat named Scrub has been reunited with his Mississippi family.
Softly and tenderly 
Come home! 
Why should we tarry 
Come home! 
Softly and tenderly 
