Walking for the Cure says I love you

This year on the first weekend in November, 2700 women and men took part in the Dallas-area Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure. Each participant raises at least $2300, funds which go to global breast cancer research and local programs supporting breast cancer education, screening, and treatment. In a commitment beyond fund-raising, they walk 60 miles over the course of three days to raise awareness, support those fighting breast cancer, honor lives lost, and celebrate those who have survived the disease. For one unforgettable weekend, they become a community.

Hundreds of volunteers help at the base camp and the pit stops, give rides to those who need a break, care for medical needs, and much more. The pit stops allow walkers to rest, rehydrate, and have a snack. Pit Stop 4 each day is manned by staff from Komen national headquarters along with volunteers. My daughter Joanna works for Komen, and she persuaded me to volunteer. Once I experienced it, I was hooked.

In 2006 my friend Dianne Horton of Cedar Hill volunteered with me. Our task was to stand on the corner and cheer the walkers as they approached Pit Stop 4. We laughed at the crazy outfits some of them wore, and fought tears when we saw tee-shirt tributes to lives lost. We didn’t know anyone walking, but it didn’t matter - we celebrated as if they were long-lost friends, and told them “Hang in there - you’re nearly done!”

In November 2009, Dianne was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer. During her illness, her daughters Sarah St. Louis, Rachel Edwards, and Rebecca Epperley signed up for the 3-Day to honor their mom. They held a garage sale, hosted a concert fundraiser, and appealed to friends, family and coworkers to support their efforts. Their dad Hank joined the support crew which camps with the walkers. Together the family raised nearly $11,000 for the cause.

Dianne lost her battle with breast cancer on September 11. It would have been understandable for her daughters to decide not to go through with the walk while their grief was so fresh. But they channeled that grief into a determination to follow through, to walk in tribute to the mother they loved so dearly. They know how important it is to hold on to hope for those who still must fight.

Some people say they’re tired of seeing pink ribbons and hearing about breast cancer. But breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death among women across the globe. You may never have breast cancer, but someone you know has it or will have it. Even though individual battles will be lost, we have to believe that the war against breast cancer will ultimately be won. By giving, by loving, by supporting those who fight.

And for Sarah, Rachel, and Rebecca, by walking 60 miles.

11/08/10  Found online at http://neighborsgo.com/stories/62558

For Dianne

God is the composer of the Song of Life and we are all singers of that Song.

When one of us dies, the Song sung here on earth must change; the notes sung by that person are no longer a part of the melody.


But the notes aren’t gone. They have been written into the melody of the Song of Heaven,
the song sung in the presence of the Author of Music.


And that song is a song of such ineffable sweetness and beauty that we mortals cannot bear to hear it - it is the song that bursts forth only when we escape the chains of the flesh, and our spirits soar to our Maker.


It is the melody of the universe.

Maybe I need to walk a mile in someone else's shoes

One of my daughters told me the other day that I was being unkind and judgmental about someone we both know, and that it was not behavior that she expected of me. I wish I could say that my being unkind and judgmental was an aberration; unfortunately, it wasn't. It's an easy trap to fall into, isn't it? A negative comment here, a negative comment there; before you know it, you're hard pressed to find anything nice to say about a person. I read once that each time you point a finger at someone else, there are three fingers pointing back at you. Which I guess is one way of rephrasing the Biblical admonition not to try to remove the speck from another's eye until you get the log out of your own...

One definition of judgment is 'the process of forming an opinion by discerning and comparing' - if I ever stand before a judge or jury, I would sure want them to have all the facts before they make a judgment on my case. So I had to look at my attitude toward the person discussed and accept that I don't know all the circumstances that might be contributing to his actions, and that I need to work on summoning up compassion. I'm not walking in his shoes. If I were, I'd probably have a much better idea of the reason for his behavior.

It was a good conversation. It's pretty wonderful having a secure enough relationship with an adult daughter that she feels safe calling me out when I'm not being nice. She's still looking to me to set the right example even though she's grown. When she was little I might be able to get away with "because I'm your mother, that's why!" but now that she's an adult that won't wash. I can't get away with "Do as I say, not as I do." What I say is what I do; when it's ugly, I have to change it.

So I'm grateful for being scolded, and for second chances.

And for a daughter who challenges me to aim higher.

Where Are You, You SOB?

I was robbed today. Well, actually (according to the nice Red Oak police sergeant) it was a theft. I guess to be absolutely precise, it was a larceny ("the unlawful taking of personal property with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it permanently"); when I talk about it, it's a lot simpler to say "I was robbed" rather than "I was the victim of a theft/larceny."

Our office is in Red Oak. It's a small town, typically a safe town I guess. Our building is the only one on the street, and we're at quite a distance from the cluster of businesses along Ovilla Rd. There are two front doors to our building: The south door leads to the dentist's office, and that door is only unlocked when the dentist's office is open. Our wing, the north wing, holds only two tenants, neither of which business has walk-in visitors. Our exterior entrance is on electronic lock and requires a passcard for admittance.

So for anyone to access the north wing, they either have to have a passcard, knock at our outside door for admittance, or enter at the dentist's side of the building and walk around to our side. Apparently that's what this creep did.

After the dentist had seen the last patient of the day, one of her staff was working at their front desk and saw through their glass office door when a man entered from the south door and walked past their office and headed down the hallway. She even commented "wonder where he's going?" since he used their entrance.

Meanwhile, I was alone in our office. John (my son-in-law boss) is traveling this week. I was working in his office for an hour or so. While sitting at his desk, I heard a sound that appeared to come from my office. I was intent on what I was doing and didn't pick up on it at first. Then I heard another slight sound. I 'knew' no one was in my office, but I had a funny feeling, so I stepped into my office and saw that the door was closed as I had left it. So I assumed the sounds I'd heard had come from the adjoining office.

It wasn't until more than two hours later that I remembered that I hadn't checked the mailbox outside. I went to my purse to get the mailbox key and the passcard that would let me back in the building. That's when I discovered that my wallet was gone.

You know how it goes. When something is supposed to be there, and it's not, you think at first that somehow you're just not seeing it, that by some Twilight Zone sort of trickery that it's just not readily visible. And when that happened, when I rooted frantically through the purse and didn't find the wallet, I thought that somehow I must have carried it into John's office and laid it down, so I ran in there to search. Of course I hadn't done that, there's no reason in the world I would have done that, but I looked anyway. Then I raced out to my truck, thinking it might have fallen out of my purse (!) when I was driving to work. It wasn't in the truck.

In my panic, I had forgotten that in the morning I had made an online payment, printed out the receipt, and put that receipt in my wallet. So the wallet had definitely been in my purse before noon.

So sitting in my truck I called the police. They told me to hang tight, that an officer would be there in a few minutes (if it had been Dallas, I'd still be waiting for the police to show up). I had to knock on the window of the next-door tenant and get them to let me back in the building, since my passcard was in the wallet. Before I could even call the bank to report my debit card stolen, the officer was there to take the report. The dentist's employee pulled up the records of the electronic door and it indicated that there was two exits made at midday, and not again until the time I went out to the truck to search. Midday is when I was in John's office working. So apparently some guy opened my office door quietly, walked in quietly, saw my purse sitting on the floor behind my desk, and took his chance.

Normally I carry a purse that's kind of deep and the wallet tucks down at the bottom. Today I had a purse with a smaller mouth, and after I made the online payment I remember sticking the wallet back in on end (rather than laying flat) because the small opening made it harder to reach down inside. Lucky for the thief: that meant the wallet was plainly visible and easier to grab.

But I am definitely lucky as well. Because I got on the phone and canceled my debit card and my three gasoline cards, and none of them had been used, even though it had probably been three hours since the theft. The police officer said maybe the guy just grabbed the $48 in the wallet and tossed the wallet away. He searched all around the building and in the dumpster, even drove back to where the street deadends at a field, and didn't find it.

If the thief had grabbed the little green bag next to the wallet, he would've gotten my car & house key - and with my driver's license, he had my address. That would have been a nightmare. So all things considered I guess I'm fortunate.

But I don't feel fortunate. I feel damn mad. And I guarantee that I'm keeping the office door locked from now on, even when I'm there.

The Facts of Life

Nowadays you can’t turn the pages of a newspaper or magazine without being met with images of scantily-clad females being used to advertise not just lingerie but also beer, shampoo, or automobiles. Whether on TV or in print, that’s long been the case, and it’s so commonplace that we accept it without thinking much about it, even if we’re not necessarily crazy about it.

But, underwear ads excepted, it’s still not quite as commonplace to see a scantily-clad man in a national publication. Just imagine what uproar there was back in early 1972 when actor Burt Reynolds posed in the nude for the centerfold of Cosmopolitan magazine. Advance word was that Reynolds had a prop placed in a strategic place in the photo, but still…A Hollywood actor? In the nude? In a national magazine? It was absolutely astonishing!

I was 21. I thought Burt Reynolds was pretty cute. So I was one of thousands of temporarily-deranged females scouring the newsstands of American cities to find a copy of Cosmo. I shared the news of my search in a letter to my Uncle Gaither, who was 75. He was taken aback, to say the least.

April, 1972

Dear Peggy,

After reading your last letter I was tempted to lop you off our family free but following days of ruminating, cogitating and praying, I decided to give you another chance. I’m going to try to REHABILITATE you.

I had no idea that you are a pornography addict who would search the city of Dallas for a magazine’s centerfold picture of a nude Homo sapiens male. I am shocked to learn that you and Jack, after four months of marriage, are still concealing from each other the basic physiological differences between male and female. No wonder our educators are pressing so hard for pre-kindergarten sex education! This rehabilitation program may take longer than I figured. There’s a considerable time lag between the day I learned about females and your belated attempt to catch up via the purchase of a Cosmopolitan centerfold. Let me tell you how I learned all about the opposite sex at the age of about four. Ha! How well do I remember that Sunday day of discovery!

Our family lived just across a narrow dirt road from the Methodist preacher’s parsonage, and about 5 Sundays a month my mama would fix a chicken dinner and invite the preacher and family over to eat. Which it did, gobbling all the white meat at first table for the elders and leaving gizzards and necks for us kids at 2nd table.

Then, one Sunday—whether by chance or Divine guidance I’ll never know—we went to the preacher’s house for dinner. The preacher had a daughter about my age and, as usual, we had to wait for 2nd table gizzards and necks.

Lois and I were put in a closet-like cubbyhole adjoining the dining room and told to play. We sat our little butts on the floor, facing each other, but I could see nothing to play with until I noticed that Lois had on a very short dress and that her mama had neglected to supply her with a fig leaf. I then noticed that she seemed to be physiologically different from me. I tried to explain to her that she was some sort of freak, but she wouldn’t believe me until I unbuttoned my pants and showed her what a person ought to look like.

We were still giggling about our discoveries when our mamas opened the closet door, and their faces got as red as our two little bottoms did a few seconds later. Lois and I were never allowed to play together again. Her father was soon sent to harvest the grapes in another vineyard. But right there in that lil old closet waiting for my chicken neck, I learned all that I’ve ever wanted to know about sex that mama hadn’t already taught me…

Love, Unk

I loved Uncle Gaither’s story. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I hadn’t bought the magazine in order to satisfy my physiological curiosity (my brother’s birth when I was nine kicked off my birds-and-bees education), but rather to satisfy my Burt Reynolds curiosity. 

Today, after 35 years of marriage, grown daughters, and grandchildren, I’m asking myself why I’ve hung on to that magazine for so long. It’s been tucked away in my cedar chest, and I haven’t looked at it since shortly after I bought it. What am I saving it for? Who am I saving it for? (Even Burt himself probably hasn’t kept a copy all these years!)

I know why I’ve kept it. One day each of us wakes up and realizes that life has raced along and we’re a lot closer to our old age than we are to our youth. We all need tangible reminders of who we used to be. That magazine represents the 20-year-old that still exists in my heart, in my memory, in my soul. I know full well that my daughters can’t truly imagine what I was like at 20. Maybe I should try more often to give them that glimpse of the “me” that existed before I was Mom, and grandmom, before I had grey hair and reading glasses and middle-age spread. One of these days, I’ll tell them about my search for Burt. I’ll remember for a few minutes what it was like to be 20, and that will be long enough.

And maybe someday I’ll write to a great-niece or a granddaughter, and I’ll say “Let me tell you about the time I searched all over town for a magazine…”