Tomlinson-van Wunnik World

Genetic, or learned behavior, it's still dumb

2011-10-20T23:37:00.000-05:00

Last week my dad fell and cut his hand. The nurse at the retirement home bandaged it but thought he probably needed stitches. So Mom loaded up both walkers into the car, and drove the couple of miles to the VA Hospital, where they had to wait nearly five hours for treatment (stitching and bandaging - turns out he broke a couple of bones). In all that time all they had to eat was a bag of popcorn and a bottle of Sprite. By the time they were done it was dark and her valet-parked car was nowhere to be found. A sympathetic security officer took her keys, found the car, and brought it to them. The idea of my 80-year-old mom, stomach growling, wandering around a parking lot in the dark looking for her car really made me unhappy.

And I didn't know about any of this until late the next day, when I learned of it by the email she sent to several family members.

No matter how many times I tell her "call me and I'll come help you," she never wants to bother me, especially when I'm working, so I don't find out until afterward. Even for the follow-up visit this week, she turned down Aunt Suzie's offer of a ride. That's my mom to a T: independent and unwilling to bother anyone else.

And it wasn't until just a few moments ago that I realized I've been doing the same thing for much of my life.

For years I've wrestled with a deep-seated insecurity that made me feel that I wasn't worth imposing on someone else's time. That really is what has kept me so darn stubborn for so many years, only asking for help when I absolutely had to. I just always thought people would resent having to help me, or at least be very annoyed. And that's really stupid, if I'd only taken the time to analyze it. Because if someone asks me for help, I don't resent it, or get annoyed (at least not usually...) Instead, I'm nearly always glad to do what I can when I can. So why shouldn't I allow others the same response? I'm not talking about the kind of uber-neediness that some folks display, always wanting this favor or that favor, but surely a broken-bone-have-to-get-to-the-hospital kind of need justifies asking for (and accepting) a helping hand.

If I'm really, truly brutally honest, I wonder if my stubborn independence is actually a bit selfish with just a tinge of martyrdom. "I don't need help. This is my responsibility. I'll just have to gut it up and do it myself. (Sigh)."

I'm gonna think about this some more. But I'm also going to try to ask for help when I need it, and accept it when it's offered.

And I'm gonna tell my mom that if she doesn't call me next time, I'll kick her butt.

Walking for the Cure says I love you

2010-11-19T09:24:00.001-06:00

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

2010-09-15T22:47:00.005-05:00

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

2010-08-28T00:36:00.000-05:00

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?

2010-03-11T18:22:00.000-06:00

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

2010-02-20T21:30:00.001-06:00

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…”

Other Drivers

2009-08-23T23:35:00.002-05:00

I used to be a bit of a hothead when I drove, impatient at the carelessness or selfishness of other drivers. If someone cut me off or changed lanes without signaling, I would usually respond aloud with an insult of some sort.
It was my young daughter's innocent question one day that made me realize I needed to change my ways.

"Mom," she asked, "are all the other drivers morons?"

Ouch.

Since Webster's gives one definition for moron as "a very stupid person," I'll go out on a limb and say that there are a lot of morons on the road. But that didn't make it right for me to call them that - and certainly not within earshot of my children.

Too many of us drive around angry these days. There's no doubt that many of us feel shortchanged when it comes to time. I've seen gals putting on makeup while steering one-handed. It's commonplace for folks to talk on their cellphones as they drive, and I am guilty of that. How many of us eat a meal while driving? And not just fast-food - once I saw a guy driving down a Dallas highway with a big pan of spaghetti propped on the steering wheel. My jaw dropped in amazement as I watched him scooping the strands of pasta into his mouth.

I can multi-task with the best of them, but I've come to realize that doing too many tasks at once can be dangerous. Juggling too many tasks can certainly be stressful, and when we take that stress behind the wheel, we are more prone to anger. And when we are angry, we put ourselves and others at risk.

Once as I entered the overpass from Interstate 35E to the Dallas North Tollway, the clutch cable broke, and my car wouldn't move. Passing drivers honked and screamed at me for partially blocking their way. There were numerous rude hand gestures. With my toddler and infant daughters in the car, I was terrified to get out in the heavy traffic. Fortunately an angel in the form of a truck driver came and pushed me to the tollbooth so I could exit. I have never forgotten the feeling of being the victim of so much hostility, so much anger over something that I could not help.

A few years ago, in a RoadRagers.com survey, more than 11,000 folks answered questions about their actions behind the wheel, some of which could be considered aspects of road rage. "I try to be a polite and courteous driver," said 76.9 percent of the respondents, but 69.8 percent said "I tailgate another driver to encourage them to speed up and go faster." I wasn't a math whiz in school, but those sets of numbers don't compute. Somebody's fudging.

One stress expert says that we set ourselves up for trouble when we don't allow ourselves enough time to do the things we need to do, then try to make up for lost time on the road. When we do that, everything that interferes with our attempt to gain that lost time adds to our frustration level, and has the potential to erupt as road rage.

We can control whether we let the stress in our lives become anger that we direct toward others. I have learned that if I allow myself enough time, drive courteously and safely, and don't take the bad driving of others personally, I stay a lot calmer. So nowadays when I see other drivers do stupid things, I try to remember that there are circumstances of which I'm unaware. I say a prayer that they'll realize that their carelessness behind the wheel could be dangerous, and I hope that they'll do better next time. And I try not to call them morons (at least not out loud).

Unless they're texting. Then they're morons.
(Dallas Morning News Community Voices 8-23-09)

A Community of Believers - So Why Don't I Feel Welcome?

2009-07-12T17:42:00.000-05:00

Some years ago I visited churches in connection with my job. One day I stopped by a church to leave some information. The secretary glanced at me as I approached her door, but when I saw that she was on the phone, I stepped away to give her privacy. I waited. And waited, while she chatted away on what was clearly a happy personal call.

After nearly 15 minutes a man working outside, seeing through the glass door that I was still waiting, came in and apologized profusely, and took the brochure from me. I was there on business, but I remember wondering, "What if I were looking for a new church?" The rude behavior of that secretary – the first point of contact for a stranger – dissuaded me from wanting to return for any reason.

In the 46 years since I became a Christian, I have been a member of two Dallas churches, the first one for more than 30 years. In 1996, we moved our membership to a church of another denomination. We were happy there for a long time. But a couple of years ago, I felt drawn to find a church nearer home and decided to visit Protestant churches in the southern suburbs. I had two primary criteria: The church had to recognize my infant baptism, and it had to be one where I felt a real welcome.

Ah – there was the rub.

I had thought my experience with the unwelcoming secretary was an aberration. When I began my hunt for a new church home, my daughter and young grandsons came along one Sunday. We followed the "Nursery" sign arrow to find an empty room. After several minutes of waiting in the hallway, wondering what to do, a young woman walking by said, "Oh, sometimes the nursery lady just doesn't show up. Somebody will probably be here soon," and away she went.

At another church we visited, where our family made five of the 40 or so in attendance at the early informal service, not one single person spoke to us, not when we entered, not during the time allotted for greeting, and not as we exited.

But that wasn't the worst experience. One summer Sunday my husband and I visited a church for the first time; we were the only newcomers in the small congregation. In fact, the minister commented on it: "It's easy to see who our visitors are today!" We were greeted warmly by several folks and stayed after the service to talk with the pastor for about five minutes. Two days later we received a "welcome visitor" letter that said, "Sorry I didn't get a chance to meet you. I hope you'll come to visit again so that I can meet you and get acquainted."

We talked to the man. We were the only visitors that day. And he sent us a form letter that apparently he didn't even read before he signed it.

A Christian church is a community of believers in Christ. Christ taught us that God is love and that we are to love one another. Unfortunately, in some churches that love appears to be reserved for those who are already "in the group."

Don't get me wrong; we visited other churches where we were definitely made to feel welcome and were invited back. I'm already a Christian, and I'm a persistent person who kept looking even after some negative experiences. But I can't help but wonder: What if I had been a nonbeliever who was searching for Christ, and the secretary wouldn't give me the time of day, or none of the people around said hello, or the pastor couldn't remember talking to me two days after the fact?

So maybe we need to take a hard look at how we show that love. Starting at home.

(Dallas Morning News 7-12-09)

The Child Obesity Challege

2009-06-21T23:01:00.000-05:00

An elementary school held a Physical Fitness Challenge day earlier this spring. Kids were assessed for their fitness, and were weighed and measured for height. Many of these kids – all of them under the age of 12 – weighed in at 150 pounds or more. What used to be the average weight of a 16- or 17-year-old boy is fast becoming standard for grade-school kids.

Until the time I graduated from high school, I could not have counted ten grossly overweight kids in all of my school years put together. Now I can count ten obese children in five minutes of walking through a mall.

It’s pretty much the norm that adults gain weight as they age. Probably most of us had parents or grandparents who were a bit overweight. But when we were children, it was almost unheard of to have friends who were obese. What has happened?

The U.S. didn’t even collect data on obesity until the 1980s. Back then, the prevalence of obesity (for all ages) was less than 14% nationally. By 2006, there were states that exceeded 30% obesity in their populations. These percentages are not people who are slightly overweight, these are people who are obese. And far too many of them are children.

In the past 20 years, the prevalence of obesity among children ages 6-11 more than doubled, to 17%. For adolescents between 12 and 19, the rate more than tripled. Type 2 diabetes mellitus was formerly an adult condition; now it is being diagnosed with alarming frequency in children. An estimated 6% of obese young people have at least one additional risk factor for heart disease, such as high cholesterol or high blood pressure. A generation ago, these types of medical concerns were barely conceivable in relation to children.

If we agree that obesity is usually the result of an improper balance between the calories we consume and the energy we expend (the calories we burn up), then we have to ask how it is that these thousands of children are burning up so many fewer calories than they are consuming. There’s no doubt that, for multiple reasons, many kids today get less exercise than kids of previous generations. Fortunately many school districts are revamping their curricula to once again require more physical activity. But if kids have P.E. at school a couple of times a week, but when at home sit for hours in front of the TV or computer, that little bit of exercise may be negated.

Studies point to the impact of food marketing on children, but the bottom line is that for most children, the food they consume is not food they buy for themselves. It’s food provided by their parents. Fast food. Junk food. Lazy food.

I don’t for a minute believe that parents set out deliberately to sabotage their children’s health. Every one of us has dealt with kids crying for a Happy Meal, or candy, or soft drinks, and sometimes we give in, in spite of knowing that we shouldn’t. But when we give in over and over again, when we throw in the towel and rationalize and make excuses, when we fill our refrigerators and our pantries with junk food because it’s too much trouble to take the time and make the effort to feed our families healthily, then we’re sliding rapidly down the slippery slope of irresponsible behavior.

And we’re killing our children in the process.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website contains links to thousands of publications that address the problem of childhood obesity. The U.S. Department of Health and the National Institute of Health have instituted programs aimed at enhancing children’s activity and good nutrition efforts in order to fight the problem. Dr. Matthew Miller writing in TimesBulletin.com says that if we don’t take drastic measures to curb childhood obesity, kids of this generation are at risk of having a shorter life expectancy than their parents. Shouldn’t we all be appalled by that prediction?

This is a problem that we have created. This is a problem we must eliminate. Our children’s lives may depend on it.

(Dallas Morning News Opinion Page June 19, 2009)

Rounding Those Corners

2009-05-18T15:45:00.000-05:00

When I was a teenager I mowed my grandfather’s lawn as a way to earn money. It was a big yard, and it took an hour to cut the grass. Granddaddy taught me how to save myself time and effort on such a job. He called his technique “rounding the corners.”

Instead of mowing in a rectangular shape, with corners of 90 degrees, he would cut a row diagonally across each corner. That way he did not have to stop and turn the mower when he got to the end of each row; he just slowed down a bit and followed the angle around. The lawn looks great afterward, and you haven’t worked as hard as if you made those right-angle turns.

We recently had our air conditioner compressor repaired again. The builder-installed unit has been a recurring problem since we built the house. Every repairman has told us that the unit was poor quality. Same goes for the stove, the light fixtures, the plumbing. … In ways that were not immediately obvious, our builder cut corners, saving himself money, and leaving us with long-term headaches.

Cutting corners. Is that so different from my grandfather’s rounding of corners? I asked some friends and family members. A few folks defined it as saving precious time. One friend, who loves finding bargains at thrift stores, says you might call it cutting corners when you buy used instead of new in order to save money. But most respondents considered the term as a negative, with descriptions including “leaving something out of the equation,” “getting the job done quickly by doing it cheaply but not necessarily thoroughly,” “not doing something to the best of my ability,’ and “the lazy way to do something.”

My daughter, a former police officer, pointed out that if you drive across a corner parking lot at a traffic light or stop sign, it is considered “cutting a corner to disregard a traffic control device” and is a ticketable offense. “How can that be a good thing?” she asked. I agree. I’ve always felt that cutting corners meant giving less than my all to the task, omitting something that should be there.

A student copies someone else’s work and passes it off as his own. A company replaces customer service personnel with an automated telephone system that adds layers of complexity to the attempt to obtain assistance. An auto repairman installs a used part and charges for a new one. Aren’t these all forms of cutting corners? In each case, someone is shortchanged.

The student takes credit for another’s effort and doesn’t learn what he ought to. The customer is frustrated at the difficulty in reaching a live person to handle his problem. The car owner may be put at risk by driving a vehicle containing an unsafe part. All because someone decided to cut corners.

If I cut corners in what I do, I might save myself some time and effort, but I might cause extra work or problems for someone else. On the other hand, if I round the corners in my work, I find a way to do the same good job more efficiently. The phrases may sound similar, but their meanings are very different. So I try never to cut corners.

But I’ll round them when it’s OK. I’m the one mowing in circles.

(Dallas Morning News 5-16-09)

Genealogy for fun and intrigue

2009-04-08T19:32:00.000-05:00

Look up ‘genealogy’ in the dictionary and you’ll read something along the lines of “an account of the descent of a person, family or group from an ancestor” or “the study of family pedigrees.” Sounds a little ho-hum, doesn’t it?

But Google the phrase ‘genealogy research’ and you’ll get more than 1,600,000 hits. That’s an awful lot of listings; maybe genealogy isn’t so ho-hum after all.

My high school Civics teacher, who taught a genealogy class at night at El Centro College, gave the class an extra credit assignment to draw up our family trees. I discovered that I knew little about my father’s family. That wasn’t unusual, since my parents divorced when I was very young and my dad lived in another city, but what surprised me was that neither he nor his father could tell me much about their ancestors. I started researching to see what I could discover.

I began at the Dallas Public Library’s genealogical division downtown. It was a tremendous resource, and I spent countless hours scrolling through microfilmed census records. Until it happens to you, you might not understand the thrill of seeing the name of an ancestor written in the spidery handwriting of a census taker. Even when you can’t find a name you’re looking for, it’s still interesting to look at those old records. Once I found an address where numerous women shared the same residence, and the occupation of each was shown as “Bawd.”

Genealogy can increase your vocabulary.

Before the advent of the Internet, unless one could afford to travel, research was often limited to the local library, court, cemetery or church records, correspondence, and stories from relatives for information.

For many years the LDS (Latter Day Saints) church has shared its vast collection of genealogy records through inter-library loans and now on the Internet. These days literally millions of records are online and available with a keystroke. Unfortunately, there are lots of those resources that are full of errors and careless assumptions made by those who are less than diligent in their research, and it’s important to be cautious in what you take as true.

There are legitimate professionals who will research for a fee, but there are also some who, for a price, are miraculously always able to discover that you are related to British royalty, or the Kennedys, or President Barack Obama.

Let’s face it, most of us are descended from just plain folks. But those folks might have had interesting lives. I was astonished when I learned that my family lore held that a great-great-grandfather had killed a man over a poker game, and that another ancestor was a sharpshooter in the Civil War.

My favorite story was of my own great-grandfather John Tomlinson, whose wife died at age 35 (probably of exhaustion) after bearing him nine children. With five of those children being under the age of ten, that practical gentleman headed off to Tennessee to “court an old maid” he knew about.

On the way he stopped off in Arkansas to visit a cousin. Lou Ella Shofner, age 24, was in Arkansas visiting her sister, who introduced her to the rich widower. John embarked on a whirlwind courtship, married Lou Ella and brought her home to Texas.

And then he told her about the nine children.

I’ve tried to picture the moment of the great revelation, without much success. “Oh, Lou Ella, I KNEW there was something I forgot to tell you…”

But I got the story straight from her daughter’s mouth. Aunt Birdie told me “If Mama had known what she was getting into, she wouldn’t have done it.” In 1890, a woman couldn’t easily divorce her husband, so Lou Ella, only seven years older than her oldest stepdaughter, stayed with it and gave her husband seven more children, the youngest being my grandfather.

Who needs celebrity ancestors? There’s enough excitement and intrigue in some ordinary-folks' stories to rival any current reality TV show. But the only way you’ll ever know that is if you start looking into your own family history, asking questions and seeking out the stories. Your local genealogical society or Public Library will be glad to help you get started.

(Dallas Morning News online 4-08-09)

Who are you?

2009-03-08T14:28:00.000-05:00

The class period was nearly over.

“Pop quiz,” announced the teacher. The entire class groaned in unison. It was ten minutes until the bell on a Friday afternoon!

“The test has only three questions.” Three questions? Miss one question and you’ve failed! This is crazy!

“I won’t be collecting the test. It is for your own information only. Take out a sheet of paper and a pencil.” I looked at a classmate in puzzlement. What was going on?

“Question 1: Who are you?”

I wrote my name, assuming that my classmates did the same.

“Question 2: Who are you?”

I heard someone snicker behind me. I wasn’t sure anything was funny, I just thought it was weird. “I am a high school student,” I wrote.

After another pause:

“Question 3: Who are you?”

We all looked at each other in confusion. I think I wrote that I was a daughter, sister, and granddaughter. I was very glad that the papers weren’t to be turned in.

We put down our pencils. The teacher rose from his chair and moved in front of his desk. “I know you’re confused by these questions,” he said. “But I’ve asked them for an important reason. In a couple of years you will leave this building for the last time to make your way in the world. Some of you will go to college, some will go to work. Your lives may go in very different directions. The one thing you all have in common, the one way in which you are all alike, is the need to discover who you are.”

Every eye was on him.

“Is your name who you are? Is it your athletic ability? Your grades? Your popularity? Is it your occupation? If you are a Christian, did you say so?

“Only you can answer the question, ‘Who are you?’ But it’s a question that you must answer. If you don’t know who you are, you run the risk that someone else will define you, and wrongly. It’s not too soon to figure it out. Who are you?”

As if on cue, the bell rang. “Dismissed,” the teacher said.

We walked out of the room into the crowded hallway. I didn’t talk to any of my classmates about what had happened. I was embarrassed that, although I had been a Christian for several years, I hadn’t written that down.

A teacher in the public school system today would probably be fired for mentioning Christ in the context of such a quiz. But the question, “If you’re a Christian, did you say so?’” haunted me for years. At the time, I had made a profession of faith in Christ, but had not even thought of that when asked “Who are you?”

We spend years developing external identifiers. I am now a daughter, wife, mother, friend, volunteer, musician, employee, organization member, citizen, and more. Those are all important aspects of who I am. But external identifiers can change or even disappear. If my self-definition is completely linked to those, I am on shaky ground. The world is a fickle place. Families evolve, jobs end, friendships fizzle, glory days fade into the distant past. But my connection to God, and to his Son Jesus, is unbreakable. So I want my identity to be grounded in that.

During the season of Lent, Christians are encouraged to engage in a time of meditation, reminding ourselves of our need of God’s grace as we move toward the Easter celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. In my meditating, I think about that long-ago teacher and his pop quiz. That question set me on the journey to discovering just who I really was.

So ask me ‘Who are you?’ and I’ll tell you: I’m a child of God, and a follower of Christ. You won’t have to ask me three times.

(Dallas Morning News 3-08-09)

First, take care of yourself

2009-03-08T14:21:00.000-05:00

Recently while surfing the Internet, I learned about Ambush Makeover, wherein selected fans of the Today Show receive new hairdos, makeup and updated outfits. As I scrolled online through the photos of women who have received makeovers, I was delighted to see the transformations from "before" to "after." But one thing struck me: a lot of the "before" pictures were of women who looked tired. Really tired.

It was easy to guess why. A common denominator in the descriptions of many of the makeover subjects is that they are women who are so busy caring for the others in their lives that they neglect themselves.

Most mothers can relate to that. During the years that I was a stay-at-home mom, my focus was on my family’s physical, spiritual, and emotional care, often to the detriment of my own needs. In addition, I volunteered in schools, at church, and in the community. When you’re reaching out in so many directions, taking time for yourself is often the last thing on your mind. It is much easier to throw on any old clothes, apply minimal makeup and run a brush through your hair so that you can get busy doing things for others.

Similarly, though they probably spend more time on makeup and wardrobe, moms who work outside the home and then come home to care for their families and handle other obligations are often so exhausted that they don’t take the time to nurture themselves emotionally, much less worry about updating their appearance. Those of us who are caregivers for aging parents are often in the same boat.

We don’t want to let others down. There are so many people and endeavors that clamor for our time and talents. We usually don’t devote much time to thinking about how we look.

So how do we look? We look tired.

Remember that perfume commercial from the 1970s where the business-suited woman sang that she could "bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan, and never ever let you forget you’re a man"? Wow! If the song had gone on, it might have described how she helped the kids with their homework, got them fed, bathed and into bed, organized their supplies for the next school day, did a couple of loads of laundry, cleaned the kitchen, and paid some bills. By the time that woman did all that, I guarantee she had no energy left for herself.

Not to provoke argument, but I think there’s a good chance that women really are wired as caregivers, that it is in our very nature to want — perhaps even to need — to nurture and care for those around us. Humans need nurturing, so the desire to nurture is a good thing, a necessary behavior. But we women sometimes feel selfish if we stop to re-charge, to take care of ourselves. And that’s a bad thing. Because while we’re so busy taking care of others, we often find, to our dismay, that there’s no one taking care of us.

Maybe that’s why I like makeover shows on TV. It’s OK to stop for a makeover, even if it’s just a psychological one. That may mean going to bed earlier at night in order to get more rest, asking a family member to take on extra responsibilities (even if the results are not quite up to our standards!), and learning to say no (and mean it!) to burdensome requests. It could mean regularly taking time to exercise, to read a book, to walk through the park, or hang out with a friend.
Or maybe even spending a little extra on a haircut without feeling guilty.

A lot of us seem to be afraid that the world will stop spinning if we don’t always do everything that everybody wants us to do. It won’t. Letting go of that burden might be a makeover in itself.

(Dallas Morning News online 1-30-09)

Fighting the ironing wars

2009-03-08T14:18:00.001-05:00

When I was about 14 my grandmother hired me to do her ironing. I was thrilled, for at that age there are few ways to earn money. The price was the same, no matter the garment, so I was happy when there were lots of Granddaddy’s handkerchiefs to press.

I really did enjoy ironing. There’s something very satisfying about taking something all wrinkly and making it smooth and crisp. Using a big glass bottle with a spray head on a cork stopper, I would sprinkle the clothes and then roll them up and set them aside. If there wasn’t time to finish them all, we’d sometimes put the rolled-up garments in the freezer until the next time. I can still remember the delightful shock of holding a stiff frozen shirt, straight from the freezer, to my cheek.

Grandmother’s iron was a monster. With a shiny chrome finish, it was huge and very heavy. Once when I complained about its weight, Grandmother described what a chore it was when she was my age, having to use a flat iron heated on the stove. She considered the electric iron a great invention, and told me to count my blessings.

When I moved into an apartment, I was excited to buy my very own iron. (yes, I realize how pitiful that sounds). I don’t remember what brand it was, but I know this for a certainty: that iron was the standard bearer for a battle that I’ve waged ever since. It’s a battle I’ve yet to win.

It’s me vs. the irons.

Irons. Plural. Many irons. My grandmother had the same iron for as long as I can remember. (Back then, there was no such thing as planned obsolescence). In my 37 years of marriage I’ve probably owned 15 irons. Cheap irons, expensive irons, stainless steel irons, Teflon and plastic irons, it doesn’t matter: they’re all out to get me, and I hate them all.

I’ve had bare-bones irons that were basically Steam-No Steam. I’ve had fancy irons with multiple buttons that allowed choices between Cotton/Wool/Silk/Poly/Steam/Burst of Steam/Power Spray/Wash and Wax Your Car. I’ve followed the manufacturer’s instructions precisely. Irons used to require distilled water. Tap water might be okay for us to drink, but it wasn’t good enough for the iron. So I bought distilled water (is that even bottled anymore?) and was careful never to overfill the reservoir.

The iron’s instructions would mandate “Pour out all water when you are done - DO NOT LEAVE WATER SITTING IN IRON!” Not certain that the Minor Appliance Police weren’t peeping in my window to evaluate my trustworthiness, I dutifully poured out the water after each ironing session. If it said never to wrap the cord around the iron, I never did. If it said to leave the iron standing up until cool, I stood it up. I bought iron rests to make the irons’ lives easier. I bought a wall mount receptacle so that the iron wouldn’t have to rest on the laundry room shelf.

And none of it mattered. Because no matter what I do, or which iron I buy, they always defeat me. They quit working, they quit steaming, they leave water spots on my rayon or silk clothes, they refuse to heat up.

Once my iron died on me halfway through my husband’s dress shirt. Nicely-pressed collar, front and back, wrinkled sleeves. I had to go out and buy a new iron. Then I bought a back-up iron, in case the first one quit to spite me. Now the newer one -less than a year old- has quit steaming. The mister button still works, so I can spray the clothes as I iron them, but the steam feature has disappeared. And it occasionally spits out something brown (always when I’m ironing a white dress shirt) even though I use the self-clean feature and empty the water as directed.

So it’s back to the no-tech days of my grandmother’s youth. Next time I’m at an antique mall, I’ll be searching for an old flatiron. No steam, no electric cord, just a hot stove top and a pot holder, and I’m good to go.

(Dallas Morning News 1-11-09)

Being a Christmas baby puts it all in perspective

2009-03-08T14:09:00.000-05:00

Before the days of debit cards, when I carried my checkbook for retail transactions, there were four words I could be absolutely certain of hearing as I handed over my driver’s license and the cashier saw the birth date:

“Oh! A Christmas baby!”

The next words would nearly always be something along the lines of either “How wonderful!” or, more often, “You poor thing!”

Both of those sentiments were correct.

As a first-born child, and the first grandchild on both sides of the family, my birth was already eagerly anticipated. When I arrived on Christmas Day, there was jubilation. My granddaddy joked that I came in a Christmas stocking, and always told me I was the best present he ever got. My Uncle Larry told me that when he saw the nurse carrying me, he thought I was the prettiest baby he’d ever seen.

I later learned that he was 12 at the time. I was the only baby he’d ever seen.

When I was young I thought being born on December 25 was terrific. By elementary school days, I realized that a Christmas birthday is definitely a mixed blessing. My friends got birthday cakes on their birthdays. If I ever had one when I was young, I sure can’t remember it. Milk and cookies were set out on Christmas Eve, but they were gone by the time I awoke on Christmas morning (no matter how early), so I don’t think they were for me.

And how many parents want to take their kids to a classmate’s birthday party on Christmas Day? (Answer: none).

Many cashiers over the years asked me, “Wasn’t it tough only getting one present a year?” What kind of stingy relatives did they have? I was always quick to defend my family. They were never so chinchy as to give one combination birthday-Christmas gift. There was always a separate birthday present.

It was just that it was often wrapped in holiday paper.

There were definitely pluses to being a Christmas baby. I never once had to go to school on my birthday. In fact, I didn’t have to go back to school until the new year! When I was old enough to have a job, I never once had to work on my birthday. For weeks before, houses and stores were gaily decorated, folks were generally happy, there was lots of good food, and there was beautiful music at church.

But the Christmas that I turned 16, the only person who told me happy birthday was the boy down the street. Not a single person in my family remembered to say it. I did feel rather sorry for myself that year.

When Kyle Rote, Jr. played for the Dallas Tornado soccer team, a news article about him mentioned that his birthday was Christmas Day. A revelation! There were other people who were Christmas babies! I had never met another person born on December 25. And, wonder of wonders, he was born in the same year that I was. Kyle might never know me, but we were connected.

I wondered if he got birthday cakes.

I considered organizing a support group. “Born on Christmas Day? Tired of being overlooked in the hustle and bustle of the season? Join Christmas Babies Anonymous (since we might as well be…)”
Kyle and I could be charter members.

Over the years my perspective has changed, and I appreciate my Christmas birthday more than ever. I feel blessed to have been born on the day that Christians everywhere celebrate the birth of Jesus. I can’t imagine a more wonderful way to begin my birthday than to be in church, singing “Joy to the World” with people I love.

I recently asked Uncle Larry if he could remember anything else about the day of my birth. “I do remember that it was a great Christmas,” he responded. “I got a catcher’s mitt (YEEE-HAAA).” I asked my mom the same question. “I don’t really remember much about it. After all, it was nearly 60 years ago.”

Birthday or not, you can always count on your family to keep you grounded.

(Dallas Morning News online 1-05-09)

Nice skirt, nice blouse...but oh, those shoes!

2009-02-26T21:46:00.000-06:00

When my daughter Joanna, at age 9, was getting ready for church one day, she put on a white denim skirt and a print blouse. To complete the casual look, she got out her tennis shoes but discovered that they looked a little dingy.

She grabbed the sneaker polish and brightened one shoe, then the polish ran out. She had one bright white shoe and one that looked pretty drab in comparison. Completely frustrated, she muttered to herself, "I can hear the compliments now: 'Nice skirt, nice blouse - dreadful shoes!'"

Poor Jo. I sympathized completely. Because I love shoes. For the first half of my marriage, as a stay-at-home mom trying to be a good steward of one income, I focused more on my daughters and didn't buy many pairs of shoes for myself. When the girls grew up and left home, I looked at my feet and thought, "Your time has come."

On the shelves in my closet now are clear plastic boxes neatly labeled as Loafers, Patent Heels, Patent Sandals, Mary Janes, Pumps, Slides, Stretch Denim, Criss-Cross Strap Heels, Oxfords and Flower-trim Sandals.

And those are just the black shoes.

My husband Jack can't comprehend how I can have so many shoes. But my black patent heels that are killer with a suit would look silly with a cotton summer skirt. The pale blue slide that looks great with jeans doesn't work with business wear. Is this so hard to understand?

I have so many shoes and purses that I have to rotate them by season, because I can't fit them all on the shelves at the same time.

OK, maybe that's a little crazy. But I'm certainly not alone.

I took an informal survey of some women family and friends to find out how they feel about shoes and how many shoes they own, and the results were interesting.

Janet said that she can put on an ordinary outfit, then add a gorgeous pair of shoes to make her feel like a million bucks. Sarah is petite and sometimes has trouble finding stylish clothes to fit, so she makes up for it with adorable shoes that make her feel beautiful - and she'll wear them even if they kill her feet.

Donna confesses to owning many dozens of shoes, even though she only wears a few of them regularly. Julia feels that the right shoe is essential to an outfit.

The women who responded to my survey own an average 28 pairs of shoes. Most said that they generally buy shoes only when they need them - but, of course, 'need' is pretty subjective, isn't it?

Only three respondents said that they seldom think about what they wear on their feet. Joanna wasn't among that group - she doesn't allow herself to be seen in 'dreadful' shoes anymore.

Spying her in a new pair recently, I exclaimed, "How cute! Are they comfortable?"

She grinned and replied, "Let's just leave it at 'they're cute.' "

She has company. The majority of the gals I surveyed said that they'd suffer in uncomfortable shoes for a good reason - to complete an outfit or for a special occasion.

Judging by the number of stores selling women's shoes, my respondents and I are not alone in our love of footwear.

I can't explain why women are generally so much fonder of shoes than men are, but I know one thing for sure: There are a lot of sole sisters out there.

(Dallas Morning News Neighbors 02-16-08)

Churches aren't exempt from customer service

2009-02-24T20:49:00.000-06:00

In a previous employment, one of the tasks of my job was to visit churches in order to convey information about area services to senior citizens.

In that capacity, the first thing I noticed is that, with regard to signage, many churches aren’t very welcoming to strangers. It’s surprising how many churches don’t identify the location of the church office, or post signs showing the office hours. Many churches built in recent years aren’t of traditional architecture, and don’t have “typical” Sanctuaries. You can’t always tell which part of the building is the Sanctuary, and its entrance may not be much different from the entrance to the office. Why don’t churches make it easier on visitors who don’t know where to go? On Sunday morning, do visitors just have to follow the flow in order to find anything?

But the more serious concern is how many churches just aren’t welcoming to strangers. In each case I was visiting in order to provide information, not to solicit a handout, and yet too many times the secretary or other person of first contact treated me as if I were begging for something.

A few days before Easter this year I visited a church in DeSoto. The secretary’s office was right off the entrance, and I stepped towards her door only to observe that she was on the telephone. She glanced at me but didn’t otherwise acknowledge my presence, so I stepped away to give her some privacy. And I waited. After I’d stood there about five minutes, a man planting flowers right outside the building stuck his head in and asked me “Does she know you’re here?” “Yes, thank you, “I replied. He went back outside, and I waited some more. Although I was several feet away from the secretary’s office door, I couldn’t avoid overhearing the conversation, and it was obvious that it was a personal one, all chatty and friendly. After about six more minutes, the gentleman outside who had been keeping an eye on me through the front door stuck his head back inside. “Hasn’t she helped you yet?” “No,” I answered, “she’s still on the phone.” He came into the building, walked into her office and said something to the secretary. I couldn’t hear what he said, but I heard her brusque response very clearly: “Find out what she wants.”

The man came out into the hallway. He was very obviously embarrassed, and said, “I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can help you with?” I thanked him and left some literature.

On my drive back to the office I thought about the experience. Suppose I had been looking for a church home? Or wanting to inquire about the Easter service? Or needing to talk to a pastor? I was neatly dressed, polite, and undemanding. But in the twelve minutes that I stood there, the secretary couldn’t find it in her heart to put her caller on hold for even a moment and ask if she could help me.

Every job I’ve had has been in some sort of service field, where it was important to acknowledge visitors or clients and extend them courtesy. At a church, which is supposed to be the visible presence of Christ in the world, I was treated with absolute indifference by the guardian of the gate. If I am ever looking for another church home, it’s a certainty that I won’t look there.

So I urge pastors and members of congregations to look with a critical eye at what their building, signage, and office personnel are saying to those outside the walls. Is a person welcome only if he’s already a member of the club?

(DeSoto Today 9-22-05)

Three-day walk provides clarity for charity

2009-02-22T22:58:00.000-06:00

Our daughter Joanna works for Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Komen is a beneficiary of the Breast Cancer 3-Day, the annual 60-mile walk that honors lives lost, celebrates survivors, and promotes breast cancer research. Last year's event started at Texas Stadium and took walkers through Irving, Grand Prairie and Arlington to the Fort Worth Stockyards.

Jo and her husband Trey were working with a pit crew for the event, and Jo asked if I'd like to help. Already that month I'd worked a fundraiser golf tournament and a community garage sale, so I hesitated. But this was my daughter, and the cause was a good one. My friend Dianne agreed to join us. So that Saturday in October, we headed to Randol Mill Park in Arlington for a three-hour shift at Pit Stop No. 4.

The pit stops give walkers a chance to go to the restroom, have a snack, and get hydrated. Our stop was the last break of the day. It served as a cheering point, where friends and family members waited to offer encouragement. I spoke with one older woman waiting to see her niece. She was crying even before spotting her: "I'm just so proud of her!"

Volunteers and supporters waited at each corner with balloons and signs. As each group of walkers appeared, the volunteers clapped and cheered and squirted them with water pistols to cool them off. After helpers arrived to relieve us, Dianne and I joined the cheering squad on the corner. We were having such a good time that we worked longer than scheduled.

Learning that the pit crew could use help again on Sunday, this time I didn't hesitate. I arrived at 9:30 a.m. to help set up the snack tent. We were located by a stretch of walking trail along the Trinity River. It was a peaceful place, and we visited with several horseback riders as we waited for the walkers to arrive.

Pit Stop No. 4 was only 1.7 miles from the end of the journey. As the first walkers arrived at our stop, some were so anxious to finish that they barely paused for a restroom break or water refill. More walkers arrived, in trickles and then in droves. Some were exhausted and needed to rest before continuing. Many, tired as they were, were just not quite ready for it to be over. These were women and men who had walked togeter, eaten together and camped together for a concentrated period of time. They were there because their lives had been touched in one way or another by breast cancer. Maybe they'd battled it personally, maybe they'd watched a loved one fight it. Some of them had trained for months, some of them were not in good shape. But they were alike in the desire to beat an enemy that still claims too many lives. I looked at the walkers, tired, sweaty, completely unconcerned with the trivialities of makeup or hair, and I could hardly imagine a more beautiful group of people.

I wound up staying until 3:30 p.m., and sat down only once. When I got home I was exhausted, and my feet were killing me. But I figured if more than 2,000 people could walk for three days, I could stand for six hours.

Would I do it again? Absolutely.

(DeSoto Today 10-04-07)

Killer Mom

2009-02-22T22:41:00.000-06:00

A cold snap was threatening, and I had just brought one potted plant indoors when Jack yelled, "There's a bird in the house!" All of a sudden, a second sparrow flew from the pot, where apparently the couple had been building a nest.

I waved the broom at the first bird and it flew outside. The second bird was scared, flying around in circles. Spotting its reflection in a mirror, it flew straight into the glass, not once, but three times. The third time stunned it, and I was able to grab it, wrap it in a dish towel, and carry it outside.

"Wow, that was wild," I said.

"When you grabbed the broom, I thought you were gonna kill the bird," Jack replied.

I was aghast. "Why would you think that? I was just trying to get him out of the room."

"Well," he said, "you do have a history."

It's unfair that an unfortunate reputation can attach itself to a nice person. Yes, I have killed a number of animals. In case case, it was accidental, I swear.

Once our rescued cat, pregnant before we obtained her, gave birth to a litter of kittens that liked to play in the driveway. How could I have known that three of them had climbed onto the van's back tire on the passenger side where I couldn't see them? When I backed down the driveway - well, you get the picture.

We found someone's pet rabbit in our backyard. Late for an appointment, I put the rabbit in our tender trap cage, on the unshaded patio. While we were away, the sun climbed to its zenith. When we returned home, the rabbit was barely breathing and died before our eyes. Of heatstroke, no doubt.

Once two baby birds fell out of their nest and I couldn't figure out how to get them back into the nest up so high. I took a small margarine tub, filled it with grass and dryer lint for a makeshift nest, and nailed it as high up on the tree as I could reach by climbing up on the ladder. I picked up the babies with a soft cloth and placed them in the tub, hoping that their mom would find them.

It never occurred to me to poke holes in the bottom of the tub. It rained that night. When Jill climbed up the next day to check on the birds, she found them drowned.

Then there was Purdy, a mockingbird we rescued when Jill was about 10. She fed Purdy with an eye dropper and he grew and thrived, until it was obvious that he needed to be set free.

Jill held Purdy to her cheek one last time. At the door, she held out her hand and released the bird, calling, "Bye, Purdy - I love you!"

And our cat came out of nowhere, leapt up and snatched the bird in midair.

"Purdy!" Jill screamed. Then she turned and gave me The Look - the How Could You Do This To Me, You Horrible Parent look.

I don't see why I should've been held responsible for each of those unfortunate accidents. But I was present each time, I did have some connection to each death, so now I am the official family animal killer.

That's a reputation that's hard to erase from your kids' memory banks. So after the last of our beloved Keeshond dogs died of old age, we didn't adopt any more pets. Jack feeds his raccoons on the patio every night, but I keep my distance.

But isn't it ironic: when our girls go out of town, who do they ask to take care of their dogs?

Killer Mom, that's who.

(Dallas Morning News Neighbors 12-02-06)

At my house, all animals are welcome for a meal

2009-02-20T19:47:00.000-06:00

I'm sure there are parents out there who managed to raise children without also having to raise pets, but Jack and I never mastered that trick. Along with daughters, we raised dogs, cats, gerbils and the occasional rescued bird.

A pet ties you to home. If you travel, even for just a weekend, you have to either take the animal along with you or arrange for its care. So once our last daughter moved out, and the last dog died of old age, we just never got around to getting another pet. On a few occasions, I broached the subject of getting another dog, but Jack was always adamant that he didn't want that responsibility.

"Thirty years of pets is enough," he claimed.

Those were famous last words if I ever heard any. Now, no matter where we are or what we're doing, if we're within driving distance of home, Jack wants to be back at home pretty close to dark.

That's when the raccoons come to dinner.

Over the past couple of years we've watched several crops of raccoon babies grow up. Right now Jack feeds a mama and her five babies, who are growing so rapidly that we soon won't be able to tell them apart from Mama, as well as a few other masked strangers who like our cuisine.

Our record for one feeding is 10 raccoons, but three of those were too shy to come close and they stayed under the deck, reaching their little paws up from under to snatch at the bits of dry dog food we tossed their way.

Internet research indicates that most people use dry pet food when they feed their backyard raccoons. We do the same, buying cheap bulk dry dog or cat food. We've tried different types of fruit, but the critters aren't really interested. They like bread, but not crackers or chips. They absolutely love graham crackers.

Once we threw some stale powdered-sugar-coated lemon cookies out on the patio, and the raccoons went nuts. They gobbled them up. With their sugar-dusted noses, they looked like they'd been playing in the snow. I worry a bit about what sugar might be doing to their digestive systems, so we don't give them too much of it, but it sure is fun to watch.

They also love milk. The first time I put some out in a bowl, just as an experiment, one raccoon put his snout down in it to taste and didn't rise up again until the milk was gone. Another night, I put a little milk out in a small plastic bowl, and a baby grabbed it by the edge, tilting it up high as he ran away with it, and the milk poured down all over his face.

I used to worry about Jack getting so close to wild creatures, but he's careful not to get too near to claws or teeth. He loves spending time with his backyard buddies. You can't be stressed when you're watching raccoons. There's something so appealing about them. Not just the sweet faces, but the ringed tails, the dexterous paws, and the rolling way they walk.

God was definitely in a good mood on the day he designed raccoons.

(Dallas Morning News Neighbors 8-19-06)

Parade brings American spirit

2009-02-20T19:33:00.000-06:00

Last year, I had the pleasure and privilege of participating in Duncanville's Fourth of July parade. I drove a van bearing a group of residents of a senior-living community, and we had a wonderful time waving at the folks along the parade route.

We were astonished at how many spectators there were, many of them dressed in red, white and blue. Many of them were waving American flags, and judging from their expressions, all of them were happy to be there. And why shouldn't they be? They were celebrating a birthday.

Officially, our Fourth of July celebrations comemmorate the fact that in 1776 a group of 56 representatives in Congress assembled and signed a document declaring the colonies' independence from Great Britain and its tyrannical leadership.

How often do we re-read that incredible document, the Declaration of Independence?

"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness..."

I suspect that John Hancock and the other signers would be astonished to see what the United States looks like 230 years later. They could scarcely have imagined a republic that would stretch from sea to shining sea, would be populated by millions and millions of individuals descended from immigrants from around the globe, or have citizens who would be responsible for astonishing inventions and achievements and innovations.

They could not have predicted that the United States would one day be a nation that sets the example for helping those in need, an example unmatched by any other country in the world. They could not have envisioned a country that offers such unparalled opportunity that the concept has its own name: the American dream.

The Declaration concludes with these ringing words: "We pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." The founding fathers were willing to risk their very lives so that the generations to follow could live free from tyranny. Freedom: it's the dream of people all over the world, and we have it. That's what that Declaration gave us. Freedom to speak, freedom to disagree, freedom to vote, freedom to dream, freedom to go, freedom to stay, freedom to fail, and freedom to try again.

Driving along that parade route, we saw a community of people who were black, white and brown. We saw people who were young, old and in between. We saw people who were skinny and people who weren't. Some were probably wealthy, some were probably not.

Perhaps on other days their differences would set them apart, but not that day.

On that day, they were Americans. Happy, smiling, birthday-celebrating Americans.

What a beautiful sight.

(Dallas Morning News Neighbors 07-08-06)

You don't lose your heritage by learning English

2009-02-20T19:07:00.000-06:00

As the wife of an immigrant who came here from Holland in the mid-1950s; as one who has taught English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) classes to immigrants from Laos and Cambodia; and as one whose Anglo children were for many years the minority in their predominantly Hispanic schools, I have direct awareness and experience with the challenges faced by those who do not know English when they come to this country.

It is not necessary now for Mexican immigrants to learn English, since they can transact pretty much all business of life in Spanish. That wasn't an option for my husband's family, since there were no bilingual Dutch classes, Dutch TV programming, Dutch newspapers, Dutch driver's license exams, etc., available to them when they settled in Kansas in 1955.

My father-in-law was the only one in the family who knew English. His wife and three sons, anxious to become Americans, knew that it was essential that they learn English, and worked eagerly to do so. My mother-in-law (who is now 87) has told me that of course it was not easy for her to learn English in her 30s, but she knew that it was an important part of becoming American.

For many generations, immigrants came to America and assimilated, even though it was harder, and took longer, for the older members in the family. The rich heritage and traditions of the U.S., and the very reason we have been called a "melting pot," is that we have combined such a rich stew of nationalities into one nation. That melting pot has produced achievements and advancements which are the envy of the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, in recent years, and apparently only with Mexican immigrants, the process of assimilation into our English-speaking culture has been considered a "threat" to their culture.

My husband's family didn't lose their Dutch heritage as a result of becoming Americans; instead, it was something that they, then and now, continued to celebrate and embrace. All of their grandchildren are proud of their Dutch roots. Mom doesn't understand, and feels frustration with, the fact that so many immigrants coming here from Mexico seem to want to remain fully Mexican while taking advantage of the benefits of living in America.

The Laotion and Cambodian students I taught in the ESL classes came to this country in the late 70s. Very few of them knew any English. Learning our language, and educating themselves and their children, was a priority with them. With no bilingual classes available to their children, they learned English by immersion. And almost without exception those children excelled in school, because their parents placed a premium on learning. Those children and their parents did not lose their heritage by becoming Americans.

I read the comment by someone of Mexican descent: "...it is just as important to be bilingual as it is to know English." That comes across as very arrogant. Bilingualism is indeed a wonderful goal, and one to which we should all aspire. However, there are thousands of languages on this earth, and a person can be bilingual, or indeed multilingal, without knowing Spanish. The same person stated that a person of Mexican descent being unwilling to speak Spanish is to "ignore and deny your Mexican roots." Are my daughters denying their Dutch roots because they don't speak Dutch? Do I disparage my Scots/Irish heritage because I don't know the languages of those countries? What nonsense.

If I moved to France, or Germany, or Japan, or any other country whose predominant language was not English, I would expect to learn that country's language. If I moved to Mexico and intended to become a citizen, I would expect to learn Spanish. I would not expect (much less demand) that business, industry, media, retail, etc. provide me everything in English in order to accommodate my unwillingness to adapt.

It is the responsibility of immigrants - to any country - to learn the language of the county in which they reside and whose benefits they enjoy.

(Dallas Morning News Consejos forum 3-14-06)

It's not your Mama's wedding, that's for sure

2009-02-20T18:50:00.000-06:00

Thirty or so years ago, when my friends and I were getting married, weddings were a fairly simple undertaking. They were nearly always at church, with the reception held in the fellowship hall.

There was a wedding cake (groom's cakes hadn't been invented, I guess), punch, maybe some coffee for the older folk, a bowl of salted peanuts, and the proverbial pastel mints. If things were really uptown, there would be finger sandwiches.

The bridal party would stand in a receiving line, and the guests would walk by and hug and congratulate. We'd have some cake, laugh at the garter and bouquet tosses, and then throw rice at the departing couple. The whole thing was over in an hour and a half.

Since my husband and I eloped, our costs were minimal: blood test, marriage license, and judge's fee.

My first exposure to different wedding customs was when my sister married a man who grew up in New York. Held in Long Island, that was the first wedding I'd been to where guests brought cards containing money. It was also the first wedding reception I'd attended that featured a sit-down dinner and dancing. It even offered an ice cream bar, which I thought was pretty cool. That reception went on for hours.

For a long period I didn't attend any weddings. Everyone I ran around with was already married and busy raising kids. By the time our kids were old enough to start getting married, the world had changed. Man, how it had changed.

Onewed.com says the average wedding cost (including honeymoon) in 2003 was $20,000 to $25,000. That's what we paid for our first house. The average cost quoted includes such things as videography and limo transport, which not all brides choose. It also figures that the apparel for the mother of the bride will run $900. (Where do those women shop?)

Our oldest daughter, Jill, was married in 1997. We still had two daughters in school and were paying college expenses. To economize, I made her bridesmaids' dresses and used silk flowers for everything but the bridal bouquet. Since the ceremony was at our church, there was no rental cost. My sister did the photography and did a great job. We did use a hotel banquet room for the reception. Everyone had a great time, and it didn't break the bank.

In the nine years since, as I was busy enjoying my grandkids, I was lulled into complacency, never dreaming that our two remaining daughters would become engaged within weeks of each other and plan their weddings for dates only 11 weeks apart - first week in April, last week in June. These days, weddings are much on my mind.

Joanna and Janet are practical and economical (God bless 'em), so their plans don't include videography and limousines. They'll be happy events, and we'll celebrate, but the girls don't want to go crazy. So the overall costs are not the scary factor, rather the fact that we're juggling planning for two events so close together.

I can go years wthout buying a new dress, and now I need two. (But they won't cost $900 each, that's for sure).

My granny used to refer to "running around like a chicken with its head cut off." I think my head's still on my neck, but I do feel a bit like I'm going in circles.

It will all be wonderful. In the meantime, I'm watching for a sale on Stresstabs.

(Dallas Morning News Neighbors 3-04-06)

One Husband, One Wife Should be Enough

2009-02-20T18:36:00.000-06:00

The newspaper headline read, "Utah court orders removal of judge with three wives."

Recently un-benched Walter Steed has served for 25 years on the Justice Court in the "polygamist community" of Hildale, Utah.

Of course the obvious first question that comes to my mind is how on earth this guy could have been allowed to sit in judgment on fellow citizens while he was violating Utah's law against bigamy, considered a three-degree felony. Steed legally wed his first wife in 1965, then added his second and third "wives" in 1975 and 1985, and has 32 children by the three women.

The legal (I should say illegal) aspects annoy me. But the psychological and practical aspects astonish me.

I've never really comprehended how any guy could get away with bigamy for long. I guess if a man travels a lot in his job it makes it easier to hide illicit behavior, but how does he hide the fact that he wasn't actually registered at Motel 6 but was instead at his second home?

Apparently in Steed's part of Utah, there's no need for pretense.

Consider the physical presence of 32 children. Did they all share one giant house? Did they have three separate houses? Did he rotate locations for dinner? How do you tuck 32 kids into bed at night? My husband and I have three daughters, and there were many times that we felt pulled in too many directions with all of their (and our) activities. How on earth can you give adequate parental time to 32 children? Can you imagine the grocery and clothing and doctor bills? The car insurance costs? College costs?

Utah must pay its judges really well.

When Jack and I married, he played golf, basketball, tennis, soccer, and baseball, and I was sometimes jealous of the time he devoted to those pursuits. I'm trying to imagine him having another couple of women added to that mix, and it's not a happy picture. No way can I wrap my mind around the possibility of one husband dividing his time, and his affection, and his obligations, between three women.

But here's the absolutely astonishing corker: the three women with whom Steed has been consorting are sisters! You've got to be kidding me! My sister and I couldn't even share clothing without argument; the idea of sisters sharing a husband is mind-boggling. Even worse is trying to draw this family tree -eeuuw. Kids who are first cousins are also half-siblings. That's appalling, as well as genetically scary.

Making a marriage work well, especially where there are children involved, takes a lot of time and effort, and that's just one husband and wife at a time.

Thank God that's enough for most of us.

(DeSoto Today 3-09-06)

Outdoor Life

2009-02-20T16:34:00.000-06:00

When I married Jack, I assumed that his participation in so many outdoor sports meant he loved the outdoors in general. Ha! His family stayed in motels when they traveled. Their idea of roughing it was going barefoot inside the house.

“Let’s go camping,” I’d plead. “No,” Jack replied.

A friend finally persuaded Jack that camping would be fun, so we bought a small tent. Arriving at Galveston Island State Park on the day in 1975 that it first opened to the public, we had the place almost to ourselves. Shortly after we pitched our tent, Jack split his toe on a metal tent stake, resulting in profuse bleeding. Heading home, we stayed at Lake Livingston, where the mosquitoes were so vicious that we were literally prisoners inside the tent. “This is why I don’t like camping,” Jack grumbled, and that was the end of our camping life.

For years our friends Hill and Leslie asked us to go camping, but Jack was inflexible. Finally, about 10 years after our first disastrous camping experience, Hill convinced Jack that Turner Falls in Oklahoma was the perfect destination: drive up Friday afternoon, stay that night and the next, come home after breakfast Sunday. Jack reluctantly agreed.

Hill headed to the store for a new tent. On his return, Leslie wanted to take the tent out of the box and set it up to make sure they could handle it. Hill declined, scoffing “I’ve sent up plenty of tents.”

Between the two families, we had two vans, four adults, six kids, two tents, two Coleman stoves, and other paraphernalia. At Turner Falls, we paid for two nights, then drove to the campgrounds seeking adjacent sites. With the campground nearly full, the only sites we could find that were next to each other were on a pretty pronounced slope. We flipped a coin and our family wound up with the lower site.

As we were setting up, we heard Leslie exclaim “I TOLD you to take it out of the box before we left!!” Apparently the box Hill purchased had been a return that was put back on the shelf by mistake. No tent inside: the box contained only a canopy. Hill moved their van closer to a tree and rigged the canopy between the van and the tree to make a shelter, and they laid their sleeping bags out on the ground. Hill assured his kids “Lots of fresh air this way! It’ll be fun!”

We had a great time at the swimming hole, and were starving when we headed back to the campsites. Unfortunately, Hill’s stove wouldn’t light no matter what he tried. In complete frustration, he slammed it down into a trash can. That left our two-burner stove to cook dinner for the ten of us, so we ate in shifts.

After dinner, the girls headed to the community bathroom to shower, and discovered that there were two shower stalls: one with a long curtain, and one with a short curtain. Naturally there was a line for the long-curtain stall. Unfortunately, those waiting for showers had to line up directly in front of the two toilet stalls – neither of which had a door OR a curtain. The girls decided that they’d wait until after midnight to use the bathroom.

Seeing our friends stretched out in their sleeping bags on the ground under their canopy, we felt guilty at having a tent. Novices that we were, we didn’t realize until later that we should have put our sleeping bags perpendicular to the slope, rather than along it with Jack at the top. Every time he turned over in his sleeping bag, he rolled a little bit more down the slope and squashed the rest of us.

During the night a wind came up and blew dirt from under the Copelands’ van into their faces. The large group at the next campsite played mariachi music – loudly – for much of the night. The kids were the only ones who got a good night’s sleep.

When we woke the next morning, the adults came to a quick agreement: forfeit our second night’s fees and head home immediately. I was a little sad, because I’d seen the whole experience as an adventure. Jack saw it as proof positive that he’d been right all along about camping.

When we got home, he gave our tent to our neighbors.

(Dallas Morning News Neighbors 3-22-08)

Memories of a Sweet Aroma

2009-02-20T16:30:00.000-06:00

Recently while browsing at an antique mall I found a pipe rack with a glass humidor. I bought it ostensibly to turn into a lamp, but I think I really bought it because it reminded me of my grandfather.

Now I must confess up front that I really hate cigarette smoking and am not all that fond of cigar smoking. But there’s something about the sweet aroma of pipe tobacco that sure is appealing. Maybe it’s mostly the memories of Granddaddy, whom I adored, and whose pipe was a constant presence in my life.

But I think that looking at that rack, remembering my grandfather and his pipe, also carries me back to a time when it seemed that life was gentler, slower, not as full of stress. I can so clearly remember watching Granddaddy open his pouch of tobacco, scoop it out and begin packing it into the pipe, tamping it down until he was satisfied that it would burn well. He used a wooden kitchen match to light his pipe, and he would puff and puff until it was drawing correctly. His eyes were always closed as he got his pipe going; maybe the methodical ordered routine required his focused concentration, easier to accomplish if he wasn’t looking at anything around him. From start to finish, the intricate pattern of motions was never rushed.

I suspect that you can’t be a pipe smoker if you’re always in a hurry, or have a nervous temperament. Maybe folks who are prone to road rage should take up pipe smoking; it might calm them down.

Granddaddy’s smoking took its toll on his clothes. Pretty much every shirt or suit jacket he wore bore tiny holes caused by flying embers that dropped down as the tobacco burned in the bowl of the pipe. I’m sure my grandmother got tired of little flakes of tobacco all over the house. But that pipe was my grandfather, just as much as the khaki pants and shirts he wore to work as a carpenter, or the grey wool hat he wore to church.

And remembering Granddaddy and his pipe, and his khakis, and his hat, makes me wonder if there’s anything that my grandchildren will one day associate with me as closely as I do those accoutrements of my grandfather’s.

When my daughters saw the pipe rack, they asked “what is it?” They probably barely remember their Papaw smoking, and certainly didn’t remember that he kept his pipes in a pipe rack. It’s not the sort of decorative accessory that you see just anywhere - in fact, I’m not sure you can find too many outside of an antique store or estate sale or on ebay.

I fashioned the rack into a lamp, and filled its tobacco jar with old matchbook covers. The deep brown of the lampshade casts a soft glow that warms my heart.

As do the memories of my grandfather.

(Dallas Morning News Neighbors 4-01-06)

The Duplex

2009-02-20T16:25:00.000-06:00

When Jack and I married at age 20, he was still in college and we had hardly any money. We couldn’t both fit into my tiny efficiency apartment, and buying a house wasn’t even the glimmer of a thought in our minds (no zero-down mortgage loans back in 1971!), so we found a little duplex on Westmoreland Road in Oak Cliff and were thrilled to rent it for $65 a month. A living room, bedroom, bathroom, and galley kitchen – that was plenty of space for us since we didn’t have many possessions. The duplex had tiny front and back yards, and we even got half of a garage, new home to our 1969 VW beetle.

We were only a few blocks from my parents, not much farther from Jack’s, and a mile from our church, so our support system was nearby. Our furnishings consisted of family hand-me-downs and finds from Goodwill. The look was definitely 70’s, down to the turntable and stereo system atop a bookcase made of boards resting on cinderblock supports. It wasn’t fancy, but we were content.

I was pretty naïve, and had never been the owner of a Major Appliance before, so I didn’t realize that it wasn’t a good idea to defrost the refrigerator’s freezer by means of an ice pick. One day I was chopping busily away when I heard a hissing sound. After everything in the freezer thawed out, I realized that I had stabbed a hole in the tube carrying the Freon. Shortly afterward, our Volkswagen was joined in the garage by our Dead Major Appliance.

The unforeseen drawback of our living arrangement was the fact that, by its definition, a duplex provides two dwelling areas. And on the other side of our all-too-thin walls resided a man who liked to watch late-night reruns of “Mr. Ed.” Every night as we tried to sleep, we could hear “A horse is a horse, of course, of course” coming through the bedroom wall. The guy was nice enough, but he enjoyed mowing the lawn wearing Bermuda shorts and no shirt. Since he weighed about 400 pounds, I was motivated to stay indoors whenever he was out.

One weekend a friend from out of town came to visit. We took a quilt outside late one night and the three of us laid on the front lawn, looking up at the stars and talking. We fell asleep, right there on Westmoreland with the traffic whizzing by. Of course in 1972 there wasn’t quite as much traffic – but it still amazes me to realize that life was so different then that we didn’t feel any concern for our safety.

After a year or so, we moved up in the world to renting a 2 bedroom house with a big back yard and – egad! – a dishwasher. I thought I was in heaven. Even after our first daughter was born, we had plenty of room. It wasn’t until we’d been married nearly seven years that we bought our first house.

I look at our daughters, and their friends, most of whom have waited a little longer to marry and who are buying houses within a year or so of being wed. I’m happy for them being able to take such a major step so soon. But I don’t regret for a minute that we began our journey together as newlyweds who had to wait a while for home ownership. It was all part of the adventure of married life. We were poor in possessions, but rich in love.

And, now, happy memories.

(Dallas Morning News Neighbors 4-22-06)

Getting in Shape

2009-02-20T16:22:00.001-06:00

Some years ago I attended an aerobics class with my neighbor Alice. It was something we could do together while our daughters were in school, and besides we both wanted to get in better shape. Classes were held at the local roller rink, and we went at least twice a week.
I think most of the women who attended were stay-at-home moms. When we all began, most of us wore our tee shirts and baggy shorts. As the weeks went by and we got in better shape, I noticed more and more of us daring to wear leotards – still covered with shorts, of course.

I like the movement and the music of the class. I always thought I was a klutz, but I could manage those moves. We did warm-ups that gradually moved into pretty strenuous stuff, and then did nice easy moves to cool down. Sometimes I even imagined myself to be graceful.
It can’t hurt to dream.

During the height of each routine we were really working hard. I swear our instructor used to be a drill sergeant in the Army. She was always so bright and chipper and unflagging, until some days I thought I could take her little leotard and stuff it down her skinny throat. Even when she grunted during a strenuous routine, she sounded so cute. My grunts sounded like…well, grunts.
I’m sure a lot of folks are self-motivated, but I’m not one of them. If I’m left on my own, I won’t do it. The exercise tapes I own just take up space on a shelf. I needed the encouragement of a schedule and a class to attend. Alice and I encouraged each other, and prodded each other to keep trying when one of us was feeling lazy.

After about eight weeks, I had lost ten pounds. I just wanted to get toned up, I didn’t even think about weight loss. That was really exciting! The hard routines were still hard, but I was really motivated once I started losing weight.

I figured that the exercise might kill me, but at least I’d be in great shape for my funeral.

(Dallas Morning News Neighbors 11-12-05)

Lucy Redux

2009-02-20T16:18:00.000-06:00

Occasionally I worry that I’m channeling the ghost of Lucille Ball from a lost episode of “I Love Lucy.”

One Sunday my husband Jack and I had gone with our daughter and her family down to the Bosque River, to fish and enjoy nature. Jack had to travel to Austin from there, so I rode home with Jill, John and the boys.

Jack had entrusted me with putting his fishing poles away safely. When we got home, I leaned them against the porch bench until I could unlock the door. Jill, John and grandsons drove away.

A saving grace: that meant there were no witnesses.

Apparently I slipped into the “Lucy” dimension on the front porch as I waved goodbye. Because when I turned from the door to pick up the poles and carry them in, the treble hook on one came loose from its eyelet and snagged on the left leg of my jeans, down below my knee. I did a little hop-step into the house, holding both poles, and went on to the kitchen. I laid the poles on the table and put my left foot up on a chair seat and tried to unhook myself.

Now a treble hook is so named because it has THREE hooks. When you try to grab that sucker you’d better be careful. It sure wants to do its job, which is to hook something. My foot being up on the chair made things awkward, and I couldn’t extract the hook from the denim. I decided to take off the jeans to be able to get closer to the hook. Grabbing the pole that had hooked me, I took my foot off the chair to discover that before the hook snagged me, its line had wrapped around the line of the other rod. I couldn’t separate the poles.

Again holding both poles, I hobbled into the bedroom and kicked off my shoes. I couldn’t get the leg of my jeans down over my left foot no matter how hard I pulled. That’s when I discovered that the hook from the second pole had snagged my cotton sock. Its fibers were wrapped tightly around the prongs of the hook, never to let go.

Light bulb moment: I wouldn’t try to work the hook out, I’d just cut it out of the sock! Now I hop-stepped (holding both poles, snared now by hooks in both my jeans leg AND my sock) over to my desk, got my scissors and cut the hook out of the sock. I unwrapped the two lines, laid the poles down, took off my jeans, and was then able to get the other hook out of the jeans without tearing them. Put my jeans back on, threw away my ruined sock, hung both hooks carefully on their eyelets, and put the poles in the garage.

When Jack called me to tell me that he’d arrived in Austin, I said “You’ll never believe what happened to me,” and recounted the story. His first question was “Was there profanity involved?” “No,” I answered, “just a lot of laughing.” His second question was “Why didn’t you just cut the lines?”

Well, shoot. If I opened the dictionary to the word “chagrin,” would I see my picture there?

I had spent fifteen minutes getting myself untangled from two hooks on two poles, and it had never occurred to me to cut the lines. I couldn’t even claim to be trying to save Jack from having to re-tie the hooks. I just didn’t think of it.

As a kid watching those old “I Love Lucy” shows, even as I laughed at her antics I remember thinking “Nobody could be that stupid.”

Just call me Nobody.

(Dallas Morning News Neighbors 12-31-05)

Look for a Rainbow

2009-02-20T16:14:00.000-06:00

Some years ago, I made a right turn onto a local street and was confronted with an amazing sight. There, arching across the sky ahead of me were not one, but two huge rainbows, one entire bow clearly visible and the second one a bit fainter above it. It’s not unusual to see a portion of a rainbow – a part of its leg or maybe the top of the arch partly obscured by clouds – but this was the whole enchilada, in duplicate.

I have an extravagant fondness for rainbows. Of course I learned the story of Noah and the Ark when I was very young, and always loved the idea that God’s “bow in the clouds” meant that he would never again destroy the earth by flood. I sang right along with Judy Garland on “Over the Rainbow” when I watched the Wizard of Oz, and with Kermit the Frog of Sesame Street when he sang “The Rainbow Connection.” I don’t collect rainbow magnets or key chains or drawings, but I sure do love the real thing.

Years ago my family was driving toward downtown Dallas when I saw a double rainbow. That was the first double I’d ever seen, and I was ecstatic. “Jack! Jill! Jo!” I cried. “Look, look – it’s a double rainbow! Think how many people are driving along and not even looking up, not appreciating how beautiful it is! Isn’t it incredible? Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Mom,” said my ever-practical daughter Jill, “take it easy.”

Serendipity is the unexpected gift that catches us by surprise and lifts our spirits. It’s the little grace note that enhances the music of life. I find serendipity in lots of places – my grandson’s grin as he teases me, a raccoon scratching at the back door to get our attention, an unexpected letter from a far-away friend. It’s easier than you might think to find those gifts when you’re looking for them, when you’re paying attention, and you should be grateful when they arrive.

I thought it was a plain old Monday until I turned that corner, and then it was a Great Gift day. So keep your eyes open: maybe one of these days you’ll turn a corner and see a rainbow. And if it’s a double rainbow: hey, even at the risk of having your child think you’ve taken leave of your senses, get a little excited. You won’t regret it.

I promise.

(Dallas Morning News Neighbors 12-03-05)

Thinks a Lot

2009-02-20T16:00:00.000-06:00

My husband Jack once told me that I think too much. That accusation wasn’t apropos of nothing; it was a result of one of the myriad questions I’ve asked that just seem pointless to him. But I’m curious about so many things!

It drives him particularly crazy when we go to the movies. While I have no objection to suspending belief for the sake of a story, sometimes a plot element is just so contrived, or a mistake is so obvious, that I can’t stop myself from commenting “Come on, give me a break!” to which he invariably replies “It’s just a movie.” But I always want to know why someone somewhere didn’t catch the numerous stupid mistakes that are so commonplace in the movies nowadays. Am I the only one who thinks about these things?

Jack and I had a conversation about this. He said there are times, such as when he’s fishing, that he tries not to think about anything, to just make his mind a blank. That is such an amazing concept to me, the idea that your mind can be like a big white dry-erase board with nothing on it. We were on the road to Lubbock when we had this conversation, with lots of nothing to look at, so I decided to try for myself to just zone out and not think about anything at all. I looked out the window towards the horizon and tried to go blank. Right away I spied a house on the service road, in between an auto parts place and an appliance repair center, and I thought “Why on earth would anyone want to live right there?” and then “Well, maybe the people who live in the house own the businesses on either side, and they wouldn’t have far to go to work.”

Okay, start again, picture that blank board.

I looked out the other side of the car and saw acres upon acres of plowed fields, and thought “How long would it take to do all that in the old days without a tractor?”

Shoot. This blanking-out business is impossible.

Could it be a gender thing? Is the ability to “not think” the result of an enzyme or a protein or something like that on the Y chromosome? More than once Jack has come home to tell me that a co-worker had her baby, and I asked how much did it weigh, did everything go okay, and he looked at me blankly and said “I don’t know – I didn’t think to ask.”

I am acutely sensitive to cigarette and cigar smoke. At close contact, it causes my throat to close up and makes me miserable. Once Jack and a friend borrowed my car to go somewhere, and smoked big old smelly cigars the whole trip, and came home and parked the closed car in the driveway. The next morning I got in the car and was nearly knocked over from the stench. The smell had permeated every fiber of the upholstery. I couldn’t get away from it. I later said to Jack “You know how sick smoke makes me! That’s MY car! What were you THINKING?” He just looked at me blankly. Because, of course, he and his buddy hadn’t thought, not for one single second, about anything other than the desire to smoke cigars and enjoy themselves. They just hadn’t thought.

I sometimes think too much; he sometimes doesn’t think at all. After thirty-four years together, we balance each other.

I think.

(Dallas Morning News Neighbors 2-04-06)