Category: Life

Life · Uncategorized

The Clothesline

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… one may find it extremely helpful to discover a clothesline on which all of one’s feelings and thoughts and desires may be placed.

Howard Thurman, The Creative Encounter

I woke up feeling irritable. Then, my cinnamon rolls didn’t turn out (I think I left out an ingredient). My pizza was cold when I got around to eating it. And now, it’s bedtime and I haven’t written anything. Humbug.

I found myself thinking about Howard Thurman’s clothesline.

Clotheslines have happy memories for me. My mother would dry the sheets on the clothesline up by the chicken coop. In the spring and summer, the sheets smelled like mown grass. In the fall, they carried the crisp fresh smell of autumn. When Bud and I bought our first house, I asked for — and got — a clothesline that stretched from the house to the garage. At our next house, he installed a shed-to-tree line with a pulley.

The idea of hanging thoughts on a clothesline appealed to me. Thurman was talking about putting our negative thoughts there to allow them to “float away” and then replace them with higher thoughts.

Honestly, I think I need two clotheslines.

The first would be for those thoughts I need to put aside. They are easy to identify. They have to do with cinnamon rolls with forgotten ingredients, cold pizza, parenting challenges, and disharmonies in my life.

The second clothesline is the better one. I have quotes I’ve copied from books I’m reading, scriptures I’m working on memorizing, and little notes people have sent or given to encourage me. What if I make a little clothesline — a quoteline — of those encouragements? I could stretch a length of twine somewhere, write quotes on little slips of paper, clip them to the twine, and then reread them often.

After a year like 2020, I could do with regular doses of encouragement. Could you?

Faith · Life

On Ideas

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Since writing the other day about dumb ideas and the perils of sharing them, I’ve been thinking more about it. Thomas Edison said, “To have a great idea, have a lot of them.” If that’s true, I am on my way to having a great idea.

Many of my ideas are like silverfish — fast, uncatchable, mostly harmless,  and/or slightly annoying.

My kids roll their eyes when I say I have an idea. “Most of your ideas involve us cleaning,” Laurel told me once. That’s not true. If it was, I’m pretty sure the house would look better than it does.

Most ideas are flawed but contain a kernel of good. Unfortunately, I fail to see the flaw until I share the idea with someone else and they point it out, or I actually carry out the idea and end up regretting it.

A lot of my ideas involve games — like Otter Island, which my friend Katy and I still talk about even though neither of us can remember all the rules. About 10 years ago, I had come up with this idea for a swim camp called Swim Like a Beast (<– hare-brained, I know) where instead of focusing on a different stroke each day, we used a different animal to springboard into our activities. On Dog day we had the little swimmers swim-morph from dog paddle to people paddle (as I called Freestyle that day) and on Frog day we worked on breaststroke kick, etc. Of course, we did other goofy things — like on Otter day playing this game that involved a floating mat (the island), foam noodles (predatory eagles), and lots of swimming either underwater or on the back. It was chaotic, slightly dangerous, and fun.

Chaos, danger, and fun were also ingredients in King of the Log, a variation on King of the Hill, that I made up for the high school girls swim team to play once — until someone got hurt — right before a big meet. Oops. But then, Oscar Wilde said, “An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”

The Ping-Pong Ball in the Compartmental Vegetable Tray game was a disaster one Christmas when I invented the game for our gift card exchange. Chaotic – yes, but no danger, and far more frustration than fun.

Then there was the art contest I came up with for Covid. The germ of the idea was good — get my kids to create refrigerator art for me during quarantine. Low on chaos, high in danger because sharing art is a scary thing, but the fun was questionable. Plus it dragged on way too long. However, here are my two of my favorite pieces from the 6 rounds (a new round every 3 weeks — using C-O-V-I-D-19 for inspiration):

O — for ocean (it’s a magnet)

V — for vacation (quintessential photoshopped postcard)

Idea people need sounding boards and guinea pigs. I am blessed to have both in my life.

If you’re an idea person, share your ideas — even the bad ones.

If you’re friends with an idea person, be a safe haven.

 

About My Dad · family · Life

The Bad Ones, Too

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My sister, my father, and me
Taken on Father’s Day 2012 at Jerry’s Place

The other morning, when I was praying for my sister during my quiet time, I thought about the text she had recently sent.

“Heat index of 113. No wonder I’m dripping.”

She lives in Florida. Heat index must be like the wind chill — one of those weather statistics you look at and groan. I have no idea of what the heat index has ever been in Cooperstown.

Anyway, I was praying for my sister, and the heat in Florida, and thought, The good thing is that she doesn’t have to go outside and she has air conditioning. 

I stopped myself. She DOES have to go outside. She recently got a dog, and a young active dog at that.

Oh, the things we do when we are responsible for another living being! Dog owners must take their dogs out in all kinds of weather. Cat owners scoop kitty litter. New parents get up in the middle of the night. Parents of older kids make that awful trip to the Emergency Room for one reason or another.

I remember the first time the parent-child paradigm shifted with my father. I was staying with my parents off and on over the summer probably 10 or 11 years ago because some of my kids had jobs in Cooperstown. In the middle of one night, I heard my father heading down the hall to use the bathroom. I was only half-awake until I heard the thud of his body hitting the floor. I ran to find him collapsed in the hallway and unresponsive.

One of my kids called 9-1-1 for me and watched for the ambulance to arrive, while I tended to my father. As he came around, I told him to lie still and that we had called the ambulance. He was distressed, though, not because he had passed out but because he had wet himself.

“I need you to get me some dry clothes,” he said.

I ran down the hall to his room where my mother slept through this whole thing, grabbed some clean clothes, and ran back to him lying on the hall floor. While children slept in nearby rooms and another child waited at the front door for the EMTs, I helped him slide off the wet articles of clothing. I cleaned him with a washcloth, and then helped slide the clean clothes on. The whole time, he kept saying, “I’m so sorry. This is terrible. You shouldn’t have to do this. I’m so sorry.”

His dignity was important to him so I made sure he arrived at the Emergency Room clean. I never said a word about it to him, or anyone else for that matter.

Andrew Peterson, in his book Adorning the Dark, tells the story of a woman asking him to write a bit of song-writing advice for her when he was signing a CD. “Don’t write bad songs,” he wrote. She then took the CD to one of the other musicians who performed on it and asked him to write his advice. He saw what Andrew had written and wrote, “Write the bad ones, too.”

I was thinking about that the other day when I shared one of my hair-brained ideas with some friends. They gently pointed out the flaw in the idea, and I felt bad, but only for a moment. Because my heart was saying, “Don’t share dumb ideas” but God was whispering, “Share the dumb ones, too.”

It’s so easy to be crippled by the bad, whatever shape that may take — a bad song, a bad idea, a bad moment in time.

With that bad moment, it’s important to remember them. Not to dwell on them, but to remember.

Remember the time you walked the dog in 103 degree weather.

Remember the trip to the ER.

Remember sharing bad advice or a dumb idea.

Some day, you’ll be able to use that precise moment to encourage someone else.

Some day, you’ll remember how much you loved that somebody and doing that thing wasn’t a chore but an expression of love.

Life

The Little Free Library

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For Mother’s Day 2019, my husband built a Little Free Library for me and set it up across the street. (If you aren’t familiar with Little Free Libraries, they are free book exchanges.)

Choosing a book from the Little Free Library

Yesterday, my husband and I were in the living room when a car pulled up across the street. A young couple got out and went to the Little Free Library. They spent a looooooong time there.

I should back up and say that my Little Free Library has a romance novel problem. A group of locals uses my library as their exchange place — and those fat well-worn romance novels take up too much space. I limit the romance novels to one half of one shelf which means that I must regularly remove some just so I have room for other books.

Back to the couple at the library — I really wasn’t staring at them the whole time, but would occasionally check to see if they were still there.

I saw her take a romance novel. I whispered a little thank you.

He took books off the shelf, leafed through them, and put them back.

Over.

And over.

Finally he selected a book — a history of the Boston Red Sox that had been there a while..

The two walked to their car and I thought they were done, but then I saw them walking back with different books in their hands.

She marched over and placed a new romance novel in the right spot. I sighed.

He paused between the car and library. He held his book out and looking at it. I watched him pull it close to his chest in a tender embrace, then lift it to his lips and kiss the cover before placing it in the library.

(As I was telling Mary this story, she said, “Ewww…… COVID.” Yes, I suppose, but there’s hand-sanitizer in the library and I can wipe down his book.)

At this point, I imagine you are as intrigued as I was. What was the book?

I do know the answer.

But I’m not going to tell you.

Instead, I’ll leave you with the question I’ve been thinking about for days — what book would I kiss before giving it away to an unknown person? What book would you?

A to Z Blogging Challenge · family · Life

Blessed are those with Open Hands

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Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with my hands clenched and guarding my heart. I’m sure it’s stress, but it doesn’t change the little exercise I go through — opening my hands wide and spreading my fingers, willing them to stay open while I fall back asleep.

Open hands feel vulnerable. I have to be very intentional about it.

My son Sam went to British Columbia for school and adventure. Adventures like climbing sheer rock faces.

I had to ask him to stop sending photographs. I could handle ones like this:

But not ones like this:

Once he called me and said, “Mom! The coolest thing happened this weekend while I was climbing!”

“What?” I asked, thinking it would be a wildlife sighting or a beautiful vista.

“”I fell!!” he said.

My heart stopped. I felt my stomach squeeze.

“It was so cool!” he continued. “The rope caught me!”

“Don’t tell me stories like that,” I said.

Really. I can’t handle them.

But while Sam was out there, I learned to pray with open hands. I could do nothing to change what would happen — just pray.

And let go.

It felt very vulnerable.

I emptied a drawer in my mother’s dresser a month or so ago.

It was still filled with her things and the smell of my mother overwhelmed me when I pulled the drawer open. I don’t know that I can accurately describe what that smell is. Powder? Tussy deodorant? Sachets? Tissue?

I pressed my lips into a grim line and dumped the contents of the drawer into a large tote.

Then I did the same with another drawer.

And another.

Nearly four years after my mother died, I finally emptied her dresser.

When my sister came to visit, I pulled the tote downstairs for her to sort through.

Letting go of my mother’s things felt vulnerable. But right.

I’m worrier by nature.

And a breath-holder in stressful situations.

I don’t like change.

My tendency is to hold on.

Tight.

But…

Blessed are those with open hands, for they shall know peace.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Life

Blessed are the Laborers

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One of my summer projects involves research at one of the research libraries in town.

The other day, I told Bud I was going to make a quick stop at the research library. Two hours later, when I realized how much time had passed, I hurriedly got up to leave. Joe the librarian asked me if I had found what I was looking for.

I laughed.

“There’s always so much more,” I said.

True about research.

True about life.

Nothing about research feels like work to me. But this research IS work-related.

*****

Helen calls me about once a week to tell me that she loves her job. She’s a nurse and works as a care coordinator. Mind you — I don’t think she ever called to tell me that she loved her job when she worked as a floor nurse in a hospital. But she’s found her niche and it’s very fulfilling.

*****

My father loved his work. He used to leave the house about 7 AM and get home after 6 PM. And then be on call. Or get calls when he wasn’t on call. And make house-calls. Or calls at the nursing home. Plus reserve duty one weekend each month.

He worked hard.

Honestly, I don’t remember ever hearing him complain about it.

I do, however, remember how special it was if he took time off from his workday to see me win an award at school — that one time I won an award. In fourth grade. For spelling.

But I knew my father loved his work AND his family. I never questioned it. His job was meaningful to him and impacted others.

*****

I married a man who loved to work. Until last October Bud worked as a dosimetrist, creating treatment plans for people who needed radiation therapy. Often he would stay late or go back to the hospital after dinner to finish up plans for patients who needed to start treatment soon. When he left that job to help me take care of my father, he tackled all the outside work around my parents’ house, much of it having been neglected for years. The property has never looked so good.

2015 before Bud

2019 after Bud — even the sky looks better

He takes great pride in the work he has done here. People notice it often and compliment him.

*****

Blessed are those who have found work that is fulfilling. 

*****

If you have a job you hate, I can relate. My three worst jobs:

1.) In college I signed on with a temporary agency and once worked for a week at a local factory. I stood at the end of a conveyor belt, caught syringes, and packed them in a box. My heart went out to the people on either side of me who caught syringes as a full-time job. The factory was loud. The work was thankless.

2.) I sold Tupperware for a time. Actually, I gave away Tupperware for a time. I felt so guilty at the exorbitant prices I couldn’t do it. I’m pretty sure I lost money on this venture, but ended up with a whole bunch of Tupperware.

3.) I took a secretarial job at a lumberyard in Cheyenne. The work may not have been bad, but the workplace was awful. At lunch on my second day, I drove to the hospital where Bud worked.

“I don’t want to go back,” I said, bursting into tears.

“Then don’t, ” he replied.

So I didn’t.

It turns out that 12 hours of crass and suggestive language in the office was my limit.

*****

Blessed are those who work at unfulfilling jobs.
Your story isn’t over yet.
Do your work heartily.*
Keep your eyes and ears open for other opportunities.
Let that hope keep you going.

 

*Colossians 2:23-24

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Life

Blessed are the Kitschy (or Kind)

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Blessed are the kitschy
whose art is low-brow
whose writing is cheesy
who can stare at a lava lamp for hours
and whose kitchen clock is a cat with a wagging tail
and eyes that flit back-and-forth, back-and-forth

Blessed are the kitschy
for they are the salt of the earth —
Without them
life would be bland

The field where the cows have grazed the past few summers is planted in corn this year.

2017

2019

Nobody plowed the field or did anything to prepare it. In the spring and early summer, I kept watching for the cows, hoping they would bring them, not knowing the field had been sown with corn until it started to grow.

I said something to a friend whose husband had been a dairy farmer. “I didn’t know they could do that. I thought they had to get the field ready before they planted on it.”

She shook her head and frowned. “It drives my husband crazy to see those fields.”

There must be something fundamentally wrong with doing things that way, but I don’t know what that something is.

All summer, though, I’ve watched the corn grow and grow and grow. It seems to be doing okay.

When I started thinking about a “K” post, the first thing that came to mind was Kindness in a reap-what-you-sow beatitude.

Blessed are the kind, for those who sow kindness shall reap kindness.

The song from The Fantasticks — “Plant a Radish” — started running through my head.

Plant a radish, get a radish
Never any doubt
That’s why I like vegetables
You know what you’re about

Except, as usual, I started playing with the words —

Plant a kindness, get a kindness
Maybe you’ll get two
That’s why being neighborly
Is always good for you

I reread my words and thought, So cheesy. Ix-nay that.

Yes, I have my moments of thinking in pig-latin.

One of those most freeing things I heard at a Hutchmoot was when author N. D. Wilson said, “It’s okay to be cheesy if you’re on your way to being good.”

I don’t know if I’m on my way to being good, but I yam what I yam.

And if someone doesn’t like the way I write, they certainly don’t have to read it.

But, then, if you happen to have a Billy Bass hanging on your wall singing “Take Me to the River” or a garden gnome in front of your house. Or if you like reading Amish-vampire-romance novels, I’m not going to judge you.

And you may like when someone bursts out into a song from an old musical.

Kitschy and kindness may even go together.

Like corn seed on an unprepared field.

You never know.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Life

Blessed are the (un)Jaded

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True (and somewhat dull) story about a vegetable peeler:

Once day my vegetable peeler fell apart. I was peeling potatoes and it fell apart in my hands mid-peel.

The next time I went to the store, I bought a new peeler — a fancier one with a swivel blade and a soft-grip handle.

I was in for a shock when I first used it. Not only was the handle more comfortable, but peeling itself was a dream.  I had  no idea that the old peeler was as dull as it was until I used the newer sharper one.

Sometimes life is like that.  We’re plugging away, plugging away, plugging away all the while growing duller and duller and duller.

And then we fall apart. Or reach that brink.

I realize I’m being very trite by comparing life to a vegetable peeler — but it’s my life that I’m talking about so I think that’s okay.

I didn’t realize how heavy my burden had been of late — until I found that I had lost my smile. I was snapping at people. I was unmotivated to do much of anything. I was becoming jaded to this privilege of caring for others.

As I binge-watched a British crime show and ordered Chinese take-out for dinner, I started thinking about that peeler.

“Lord, make me an OXO peeler,” seems a strange prayer — but God understands.

And lest you all start worrying about me, please know that I’m doing fine. Really.

Life jades us. God unjades.


Blessed are the jaded —
the weary
the worn out

the ones who have lost the joy
of cooking a meal

who add unopened mail
to the pile
in the back room

who cringe at watching
“Wheel of Fortune”
one
more
time

who have given everything they have
– fruit, branches, trunk –
and have nothing left
but an old stump

Blessed are the jaded
who have lost their smile
and want only to sleep
or watch crime shows on Netflix
or unscrew another Oreo

To them Jesus said,
Come unto me,
all ye who labor
and are heavy-laden
I will give you rest

 

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Life · swimming

Blessed are the Individuals

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Blessed are the individuals
who have a sense of their own uniqueness
the set of gifts and talents peculiar to them
and who use those gifts
for the good of others
for they shall hear the words,
“Well done, good and faithful servant.
Enter into the joy of your master.”

When I was thrown into the role of high school swim coach in 2002, I had no idea what I was doing.

I’m sure I was a most unconventional coach. We had Wildcard Wednesday, where practice could be almost anything, and Thinking Thursday, where practice usually went homeschool-educational. (For example, one week when a hurricane was in the news, we “learned” about hurricanes. The eye of a hurricane can be 2 miles to 200 miles in diameter — so we did a 2 x 200 and they swam it fast because the winds around the eye are the strongest.)

But, honestly, I loved those girls. I loved talking to them and getting to know them — and the more I did of that, the more I realized that high school swim team isn’t about swimming. It’s about life.

I started working to impart life attitudes to them that would take them farther than their 10 week season with me.

Like all school sports, we have a rival. The rival was often spoken of in terms of evil, or like they were our enemy. I wanted to change that.

Over and over, I told my girls that after a race it was important to reach over the lane line and congratulate the girl in the next lane, no matter who won.

“That swimmer in the next lane is helping you to swim your fastest,” I told them.

We were at our rival’s pool for the championship meet. The second-to-last event in a high school meet is the 100 yard breaststroke. The meet was very close between Cooperstown and the rival team. My breaststroker, Becky, had little chance of winning. She was good, but the swimmer from the rival school was the top seed by many seconds.

Right from the start, the two swimmers were side by side. Every time rival swimmer pulled ahead, Becky pulled a little harder and brought herself even. During the last 25 yards, the screams from the stands were deafening. Those two girls were so close — and when they touched the wall, rival girl won.

Exhausted and smiling Becky reached across the lane line and congratulated the winner.

When Becky came to me after the race, she was beaming. “She helped me swim my best time” were the first words out of her mouth. Not a word about losing.

I felt like we had both won — and probably Becky was the greater winner because of what she had recognized.

By being our best, we help others to become their best.

Community and individuality walk hand-in-hand. We can’t ignore one for the other.

Becky and Olympic swimmer Jenny Thompson flexing together

Faith · Life

The Adult Swim Lesson

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I stood in the warm water of the teaching pool helping Nahla (not her real name) float on her back. It was my second time giving adult swim lessons, and, honestly, I love it.

Nahla had grown up in another culture, one that didn’t have access to swimming pools and swimming lessons. She wasn’t the person who started me thinking about immigration, but it has been weighing on my mind. I’m too much of a news junky not to think about it, but I’m always frustrated with the one-sided telling of the story.

“What do you think of immigration?” I asked a wise friend a few days later.

Jonathan paused before he answered me. “That’s a big question,” he said.

I had made a quick trip to Washington, DC, and gotten together with some people I know from Hutchmoot. I knew that I would get a thoughtful answer.

My own experience is limited. It is, perhaps, a downfall of living in a small, rural community. A few weeks of international travel opened my eyes, but certainly has not made me an expert on much of anything.

Doug, the other person at the mini-moot in Washington, joined in by telling a story about something that had happened when he was working with refugees. Then he told a story about his father, followed by a story from Sweden. He strung the stories together with the common thread of immigration. Some revealed one side of the issue; others revealed the other.

Never once did he tell me what I should think. Nor did tell me exactly what he thought.

His and Jonathan’s stories made the topic of immigration multi-dimensional. I could walk around the issue while I thought about it — kicking the tires, tooting the horn, taking it for a test drive.

On the other hand, memes — and I feel like I’ve been inundated with memes lately — take a complex issue and flatten it into a pithy saying.  Sometimes the pith is crumpled, fed into a cannon, and fired at those with opposing views. Those who agree laugh and A-men. The targets become offended and angry.

Memes are not conversation, nor are they conducive to conversation.

Last week, a picture showed up in my Instagram feed that showed a young woman holding a sign that said, “Behind millions of successful women is a an abortion they don’t regret.” Frankly, I found it offensive.

I thought, I’d love to introduce you to some women who do have regrets about their abortion.

I thought, I’d love to introduce you to some women who didn’t choose to have the abortion, and yet are still successful.”

And how do you measure success anyway?

Then I thought about the fact that the woman holding the poster has a story, too. I need to hear her story — with open ears and an open mind. She probably won’t change mine, and I won’t change hers, but we’ll be one step closer to understanding each other.

I thought about the pro-lifers who wave posters showing gruesome pictures of aborted fetuses. I’ve wanted to tell them about my friend who 30-some years ago had a late-term abortion because complications with the pregnancy were causing her kidneys to shut down. She and her husband had to make a Sophie’s choice. They don’t need their noses rubbed in it.

Oh, how we need to hear each other’s stories!

So I stand in the teaching pool, gently supporting Nahla’s back, encouraging her that it’s okay because I’m right there in the water with her.

A thousand thoughts run through my head — thoughts on immigration and fear and courage and the struggles women have and how grateful I am for this moment.

Mostly, that’s it — I’m grateful.