family

The Rest of the Story (or, An Ethical Question)

July 28, 2017 Sally7 Comments

If you knew that one phone call to an influential person would elevate the level of care received in a health care setting, would you make that phone call?

I delved into that question yesterday when I met with someone on an unrelated matter. After taking care of some business, our conversation detoured into my father’s most recent emergency room experience.

“Call me next time,” he said, and handed me his card. “Keep this in your wallet and call me.”

“I won’t call you,” I told him.

My parents raised me to believe that everyone should be treated in the same way. Everyone deserves dignity. Everyone deserves good care. Everyone.

Yet, despite my saying otherwise in this man’s office, I had, the day before, been searching for his phone number while sitting at Hallway 6 with my father. It turned out the website wouldn’t load because it was down for maintenance.

As my sister would say, “It was a God thing.”

I was ready to throw my principles out the window for a little respect for my father. See how shallow I am?

But God, or happenstance, kept me from calling, and my principles remain mostly intact.

Because, in the midst of this search for someone who could get us out of the hallway situation, Roy the cheerful PCA came along.

“Tell him a story,” he said.

The rest is history — castles in Bosnia and a hallway bed that became a place for storytelling.

Next time, would I make the phone call? I like to think not.

When I sit quietly with my ideals, everything is clear. I am confident in how I would act given a difficult situation.

But in the midst of a trial, idealism and nobleness vanish like smoke. I need safety measures and reminders in place. I need websites to malfunction.

I intentionally did not put that business card in my wallet. I don’t want to be tempted.

A different hallway bed I sat beside last year.

The call bell for the hallway bed last year. My father didn’t even receive this.

Tell Me a Story

July 27, 2017 Sally13 Comments

During our down time in Bosnia, Leah starting asking, “Tell me a story.”

It was so open-ended that I struggled with it.

I asked her if she got the idea for that from La La Land. Those words were the lead-in to my favorite song from the movie.

Leah assured me that, no, she had been asking that question for years. I’m pretty sure that La La Land got the idea from her.

So, sitting in the shade one day, she said, “Tell me a story.”

“I can’t,” I told her. “I need some parameters.”

“Okay. Tell me a story about when you were in grade school,” she said — and I did. I told her about a day in 3rd grade when I experienced agony and ecstasy, as best a 3rd grader can.

In short, our class had gotten back from a trip to the library. I had checked out Mark Twain’s “The Prince and the Pauper.” My teacher, Miss Bliss, held up the book (and me, figuratively) as an example of a student choosing good literature to read. Later in the day, I couldn’t find my math paper in my desk — I’ve been a messy for as long as I can remember — and she dumped the contents of my desk on the floor in the middle of the classroom. I can still remember that shame. Same day.

Later, Leah asked Mary to tell a story, and Mary launched into an imaginative story with dragons and little girls. Ajla, one of the Bosnian girls, listened wide-eyed and delighted.

“You are a great storyteller,” she told Mary, “in the lies.”

Ajla’s English was excellent. Except when she didn’t know the right word.

Yesterday, I spent some time at the emergency room with my father.

As we waited and waited, I grew fidgety. An excellent PCA named Roy helped turn my attitude around.

Roy had stopped by my father’s hallway bed several times. He was always cheerful. On one of his check-ins, he looked at me and said, “Tell him a story.”

I was busily mentally drafting complaint letters and griping to my sister via text. I didn’t respond to Roy, so he repeated it.

“I’m talking to you,” he said. “Tell him a story.”

“I can’t,” I said. “I need some parameters.” It was a deja vu moment — and I was back in Bosnia.

“I’ll get you started,” Roy said. “‘Once upon a time in a castle far, far away…’”

I laughed, and took up the story.

“Dad, did I tell you about the castle where we stayed in Bosnia?”

“A castle?” he asked.

“A real castle,” I repeated, “from the Ottoman Empire.”

Telling him about the castle took our minds off the fact that we were waiting in the emergency room.

With Leah, it took our minds of the heat and lethargy of the day.

“Tell me a story.”

Those are magical words.

photography · Travel

Summer Swimming

July 26, 2017 Sally6 Comments

Hitting is like swimming. Once you learn the stroke, you never forget it.

Stan (The Man) Musial, inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame 1969

A baseball quote, because Baseball Hall of Fame induction weekend is closing in, but the topic is swimming.

I hadn’t gone swimming in well over a year. Our local pool had been closed, and I’m rather loathe to be seen in a swim suit.

But during my travels, I swam multiple times.

I got in the first time because I was so hot. Leah and I took a kayaking tour around Lokrum Island. The guides had told us the temperature in Celsius which didn’t mean a whole lot to me.

But it was hot.

On our way around the island, we stopped at a cave. Leah was, I think, the first to hop in the water. Then other people from the group jumped in — so, finally, I joined them. It was so refreshing. Refreshingly cold.

That was swim number one.

A few days later, we walked down a gazillion steps to a little swim area we had noticed on our way to and from the Airbnb.

We got there early. A young woman was doing yoga on the pier while a handful of people were already in the water. Of course, Leah ventured in first. I followed.

Even at 8 AM, Dubrovnik was hot, so the water felt good — cold and refreshing. I swam to the far post, to the mouth of a cave, and back to the post. I hadn’t forgotten how to swim, despite my hiatus.

Swim number three took place during a tour from Mostar. We spent a few hours at a place called Kravice Falls.

Our tour group consisted of Leah, a family of four from Sweden, a young woman who was a recent college graduate, and me.

The two girls from the Swedish family immediately headed for the water. The rest of us sat at a table and ordered some lunch. The girls called and waved to their parents from the water.

“The younger one just learned to swim on this trip,” said the mother.

Subconsciously, I scanned the swim area for lifeguards. Nada.

“A week or so ago, she just decided she would swim,” the mother continued.

There were ropes out in the swim area, but no clear designations what they were all about. People just seemed to swim wherever they wanted.

“There are no lifeguards here,” I said. “Does that make you nervous?”

I asked because it was making me nervous.

“No,” said the mom, “they’ll be fine.”

I realized that Americans are far more safety conscious than the rest of the world.

And that someone who has been a lifeguard/swim instructor/swim coach can’t turn off that part of her brain.

I swam at Kravice Falls with the young woman who was part of our group. We got in the middle of the swim area on our way to the falls, and she said, “I’m feeling really panicky. I don’t think I can make it.”

We stopped and treaded water for a while. Right there, in the middle, we paused and talked. I told her that I was a swim coach. I asked her about her life. I watched the anxiety dissolve before we continued to the falls where we sat on a rock together and let the water beat down on our backs.

My fourth swim was at a lake in Bosnia.

One of the men from Gradacac had made arrangements for us to visit a scuba club. At a lake. In Bosnia.

We didn’t scuba, but we did go out on a boat tour of the lake.

Our sweet translator, Amina, didn’t know how to swim, so she put on a life jacket. And clutched Nicole’s leg.

I reminded her to breathe. And took lousy pictures of her.

After the boat ride, I swam out in the lake. It was cool (not cold, like the Adriatic) and refreshing.

Swimming again gave me great satisfaction.

I hadn’t forgotten how.

I still loved it.

Now that the pool has reopened, I need to get back.

Leaning In · Life · Travel

Things I Would Have Done Differently in Bosnia

July 25, 2017 Sally4 Comments

While I was in Bosnia, I began thinking of things that I would do differently next time.

First, I would bring my computer. I intentionally did not bring my computer on this trip, so I could “unplug” a little. I had my phone which I thought would be adequate.

I learned something about myself, though. When I journal with a notebook and a pen, I tend to write little notes to myself. Reminders of the day. Conversations occasionally, but with minimal extras. When I write on my computer, I write complete sentences. Or complete thoughts. (<– see what I did there?) I edit, delete, rewrite, and write a little more — because the process of writing helps me to unfold my thoughts more completely.

In Bosnia mosques and churches – side by side — something I’m still pondering

For two weeks, I didn’t do that. Now I am left with a hopelessly tangled knot. I try to write about an experience I had there and I can tell something isn’t right about what I just wrote, but I’ve lost the moment. Sigh.

So — next time, the computer travels with me, and journalling will be worked into the schedule.

Second, I would bring more gifts. I was overwhelmed with the generosity of the Bosnian women. They gave us clothes, jewelry, hand-made lace items, plums — not because we needed them, but because they wanted to express things that only a gift can express — Thank you. I appreciate you. I want you to remember me. I was thinking of you and I wanted you to have this.

Group photo — I’m holding some clothing given to me as a gift

Quite frankly, I wasn’t prepared at all for that. I had thrown a few things in my bag to give, and gave them on our last day. (Stay tuned for a future post about that.) But I really wished I had more, much more, because I wanted to say all those things that only a gift can express. (See previous paragraph.)

Third, skip the brick brigade.

Ostensibly, we were there to help build a house. I was a little skeptical of my part in that from the get-go, but figured there must be something I could do. A prerequisite for the trip was the ability to carry bricks uphill. Well, we carried them downhill. And not even that. We formed a brick brigade and passed them down the line in the many-hands-make-light-work spirit. Moving a palette of bricks took, maybe, 20 minutes. It just felt like, um, fluff — well, as fluffy as brick-moving can be. Later in the week, I saw a truck deliver bricks much closer to the work site. It made me wonder how much of the original delivery site was so that the Americans could feel useful. I didn’t want to feel useful; I wanted to be useful.

Which is why, fourth, I would have volunteered more in the kitchen. On the last day, I went into the kitchen with the Bosnian women. Perhaps I should have stuck with moving bricks because I was pretty terrible at scraping potatoes. Had I started earlier in the week, by this point, I might have gotten the hang of it. Had I known I would be doing that before we left, I would have brought some peelers. As gifts. To say, I want you to remember me — every time you peel potatoes.

But peeling potatoes and cutting cabbage were the highlights of my week. We communicated through hand gestures (when the translator stepped out) and demonstration. We laughed at my clumsiness – ineptness needs no translation and neither does laughter. The women asked if I wanted to make the traditional pie, but, if I couldn’t peel a potato well, I was afraid what I would do to the pie.

Next time, though, I would head straight for the kitchen. I would help with the daily bread-making and soup-making. And I would learn the Bosnian way of rolling out pie dough. (It was pretty amazing!)

Last, I would leave the photography to other people. If I had left my computer home so I could be unplugged, I should have left the camera off so I would stay in the moment. I’m not the greatest photographer. One girl on the trip was truly gifted in that area. My pictures are adequate at best.

In addition to shoveling cement, Nicole took fabulous pictures

Once, when we went out on a boat, Amina, our translator, asked me to take a picture of her. The first three or four pictures that I tried to take were so bad that she turned to someone else. I should have warned her that I was lousy photographer.

As the week went on, I took less and less photographs. I tried to memorize the things I was seeing, smelling, tasting and feeling. All the pictures in the post were taken by someone else — proof that I didn’t need to take any.

A number of people have asked if I will go back to Bosnia.

I guess I need to, if only to do it better.

Travel

Dubrovnik

July 21, 2017 Sally2 Comments

On one of our first nights in Dubrovnik, I told Leah that finally I was starting to understand parts of Isaiah 60, the scripture I’ve been trying to memorize for months.

We don’t have any walled cities near where I live. I needed to walk the walls of Dubrovnik to “get it”.

Foreigners shall build up your walls… (Isaiah 60:10)

One of our guides told us that back when the city was being built, men coming to trade were expected to bring stone to Dubrovnik and the women eggs. Stone for building. Eggs for the mortar that would hold it all together.

Your gates shall be open continually;
day and night they shall not be shut… (Isaiah 60:11)

The gates were, most definitely, open. The drawbridge was down, the moat dry. In fact, part of the moat had been turned into a playground.

Swallows screeched and soared above us down the narrow streets. Pigeons nested right in the walls. Every time I saw them, I thought about this verse.

Who are these that fly like a cloud,
and like doves to their windows? (Isaiah 60:8)

I know that the Isaiah passage is actually talking about Jerusalem, which is the city I most want to visit. How Leah and I happened to end up at Dubrovnik was serendipity.

But I’m so thankful.

It wears the scars of recent violence —

Inside the Franciscan monastery in Dubrovnik

But the bustle and busy-ness of the place tell a different story.

Violence shall no more be heard in your land,
devastation or destruction within your borders;
you shall call your walls Salvation
and your gates Praise. (Isaiah 60:18)

One day, I pray, we will have no more violence.

In the meantime, I’m thankful to have visited Dubrovnik.

photography · Travel

Počitelj

July 20, 2017 Sally7 Comments

Coke machines aren’t unusual — except when seen on a trail from a medieval fortification.

One of my favorite days on my recent trip to Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina involved a full day tour from Mostar. Our tour guide, Emir, was very knowledgable, engaging, and absolutely wonderful. I highly recommend him. (See: Kravice Waterfalls, Pocitelj Old Town and Blagaj Tekke Day Trip) I’m sure I’ll write more about his tour in the days to come.

But Počitelj.

It was our last stop after a full day of sightseeing. Emir drove us to the top of a little mountain or large hill — I’m not sure what the distinction is.

Side note: Bosnia is a country of panoramas. Every time I looked out the window of the train or car or bus, I was struck by the beauty of the place. A town nestled in a valley. Sheep grazing on a hillside. Haystacks. Farmland. Mountains. Rivers.

From the top at Počitelj, we looked out over the Neretva valley and down on a cluster of homes and the mosque.

According to Wikipedia:

The entire historic urban site of Počitelj and surrounding area suffered extensive collateral damage during the 1992-1996 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Namely, it was heavily damaged by Croatian forces during the 1993 Bosnian War. Following the bombing, Počitelj’s sixteenth-century master works of Islamic art and architecture were destroyed and a large part of the town’s population was displaced.

That’s Bosnia — beauty and war damage intertwined with each other everywhere. Destruction and rebuilding, rebuilding, rebuilding.

Hope.

Everyone else in our group climbed to the top of this tower, but the stairs of Dubrovnik had done me in. (I made 5x my stair goal one day in Dubrovnik.) I relish alone time, too, and saw this as an opportunity to sit and just enjoy the views.

The place was spectacular.

The Coca-Cola machine on the path down, undoubtedly pre-war, was a reminder of a different time.

I laughed when I first saw it; it was so unexpected.

But if I think too much about it, I may cry.

photography · Travel

Mostar

July 9, 2017July 9, 2017 Sally3 Comments

Mostar is a confusing city.

We’ve been here about 12 hours.

The bridge is lovely.

People bustled around last night — both visitors and locals (I assume) with the vibrance of any tourist destination.

But this morning’s quest for coffee drove home the urban blight — not a US city’s urban blight, but war’s scars still festering and ugly.

I took pictures so I could remember, but I won’t post them here. Not now anyway.

I drank my tiny cup of Turkish coffee at an outdoor coffee bar. All around me were signs in Bosnian. I was pretty pleased with how much I understood.

The sign that spoke the loudest, however, was in English. However, the reason it spoke so loudly wasn’t that it was written in my native tongue. It was the message —

The Stari Most, the bridge for which the city is known, is missing in the drawing, a casualty of the war that has since been rebuilt.

But, I dare say, the city and the country have not fully recovered.

The world has moved on.

Other cities have bombs dropping on them now.

But we who live in peace and safety mustn’t take it for granted.

Or forget.

Life

Postcards

July 3, 2017 Sally2 Comments

I hope Leah doesn’t mind, but we’re going to spend some of our evenings dashing off postcards from the former Yugoslavia.

Mary found my postcard list in my travel folder. It has names, addresses, and boxes to check off, so I can have that sense of accomplishment.

“I don’t know who some of these people are,” she said as she read through the names.

“They’re people I met on the internet,” I told her.

I know, it goes against all the internet safety rules, but I didn’t respond to phishing letters or meet these people in sketchy chat rooms — they’re fellow bloggers. I think I’m allowed to use a little common sense.

I sent one an email the other day, worrying all the while that I would seem like a stalker. Her response was so heart-warming. “Thank you SO so much for contacting me – you’ve rather made my day,” she said.

That’s how I felt when my former classmate reintroduced himself to me at the grocery store. That’s how I feel when someone does some little nice thing. That’s how I hope my postcard recipients will feel when they receive a note from Croatia or Bosnia.

A few years ago at Laity Lodge, during an informal conversation around the fire pit, one woman shared how special it makes her feel to receive a hand-written note from someone.

“I’m holding something in my hands that they held in their hands,” she had said. “They took the time to write something for me. They wrote my name and signed their name. It’s a gift of time and thought.”

During the A-to-Z Challenge this year, I stumbled across a blogger who daily posts snail mail that she has sent or received. I look forward to seeing Hawwa’s Mail Adventure‘s in my inbox every day.

I contacted her to see if she wanted a postcard from Bosnia or Croatia, and she replied that she had never received a postcard from Bosnia — so I put her on my list.

I sent a trial run postcard to her — just a collage I had made.

She received it — and put it in a post! I was honored.

Last week I received a postcard back from her.

I held a postcard that she had held in her hands. She took the time to write something for me. She wrote my name and signed her name. It was a gift of time and thought.

And I appreciated it.

family

Mentor

June 30, 2017 Sally4 Comments

A Facebook friend has been asking a “Question of the Day.” Yesterday, he asked this:

Who is your “I’ve never met you and likely never will” mentor?

I realize more and more how much of a mentor my mother was for me. She was, above all the other things, a caregiver. Obviously I’ve met her, though. I just didn’t appreciate her enough in that role.

The thing is — a caregiver’s mentor is never going to be in any spotlight.

She’s going to be home, quietly doing mundane tasks.

She’ll find her strength and solace in an abiding relationship with God.

She’ll be able to count on one hand her closest friends, but will still have a wider circle of loved ones, people she cares deeply about and who care deeply about her.

However, most people won’t even be aware of half of what she does.

*****

The other day, at Cooperstown’s Antiquarian Book Fair, I found a treasure that comes close to finding my mentor.

I found a Book of Common Prayer with a name imprinted on the front: Rachel Ware Fuller.

Inside, the inscription told me that the book had been a gift from her son.

And then, there were pages and pages of handwritten notes.

I thought I had found the treasure I’ve been searching — a mother’s spiritual summation, all the things she has learned through parenting and wifing and friending and living. This would have been the mentor I never met and never will.

However, further inspection showed the notes to be from a Samuel Clark Harbinson, an Episcopal rector at a New England church. I’m not sure how the book was transferred from Rachel Fuller to him, but it was. Another inscription revealed that.

His notes are fascinating. And challenging. And thought-provoking.

Someday though, I hope to find a well-worn book with the margins and flyleaves full of notes written by a caregiver. I want it to have a coffee spill on a page or two, and ink smeared by tears on many pages.

And notes. Lots of notes.

I’ve already started accumulating a collection of other people’s journals and some religious books with notes in the margins.

But I’ll keep looking, at book sales, and in book boxes, for this Holy Grail of books.

That’s where I’ll find my mentor.

family · Life

Good-bye, Odyssey

June 29, 2017 Sally15 Comments

Bud said that he woke up in the middle of the night wondering if it was the right decision.

I reminded him all the reasons why — the catalytic converter, the exhaust system, the timing belt, the short circuits in the electrical system.

Still, our Honda Odyssey had taken us many miles — well over 200,000. Many trips to Florida, to South Carolina, to North Carolina, to Washington, DC, as well as the hundreds, maybe over a thousand trips between Cooperstown and Greene.

It’s almost as old as Laurel.

It has served us well.

When Philip was a little boy and we traded in one of our cars, he drew sad faces in the dirt on the windows. Laurel did the same last night with the Odyssey. My bookend children think the same.