Up In Flames

He's the one with the moustache.

I married a fireman. 

Thirty-eight years after he first wore turnouts, he retired as a battalion chief, but I still think of him as a firefighter. Our kids grew up climbing all over real fire trucks when we visited their dad on shift. They had the most expensive playground equipment in the world.

My husband was cut out for his job. He’s calm, cool, and collected under any circumstance. It takes a lot to get his feathers ruffled. He understands how to build a good fire and he knows how to put one out—there’s very little that gets the best of him. 

I, on the other hand, can barely spell calm, cool and collected.

We were spending a weekend in an old, family cabin one October.  Okay, it was more like an ancient mobile home with an attached family room. The kitchen’s vintage gas stovetop had been reduced from four to two working burners, and a third had attitude problems. The pilot light was non-existent.  Weekends in that trailer with its gas appliances was one of the few things that made my firefighter husband twitch.

One evening, I turned on a knob for the stovetop, lit a match and held it to light the gas below the burner.  In horror, I watched as the flame lit and followed the gas line back to the knob itself. I needed to shut off the gas to the defective burner, but the knob was also engulfed in flames. There was only one thing to do—alert my local fire department.

“Rob!!!  The kitchen is on fire!!!”  I screamed to my husband who was busy in the other room trying to start his own inferno in the fireplace. Then I ran back and forth across the kitchen, holding the burned out match and trying to remember where my jewelry and kids were.

My fireman wandered into the kitchen where I grabbed him, pointed to the flaming control knob, and cried,

“What are we gonna do?!”

He summoned all the years of training and experience he’d stored up as the best firefighter in the world, took a great big breath, and—blew out the flame on the knob. 

Big deal.  I could’ve done that.  If I’d thought of it.

A firefighter’s wife is her own kind of special hero, too, you know.  She runs the household all by her little lonesome one third of the time, making her a single mom without recognition or tax breaks.  But when there’s an emergency, she knows who to call, how to tell them to show up (code three—lights and sirens, please), and where to find her on-duty husband.  

It’s a miracle that they can run a whole department without her expertise.

We rented a tiny one bedroom house on the gulf coast of Florida for the first couple of years we were married.  You wouldn’t think it ever gets cold enough to require a heater there, but it does.  Orange groves freeze there all the time, and I remember one Christmas morning when the thermometer wouldn’t budge above nineteen degrees. See?  You need a heater when that happens.

But our house had an old southern-style unit which ran off of fuel oil.  Most of the South has gone modern now, and people warm their homes with gas or electricity.  But this little rental had its own hundred gallon tank of fuel oil propped up on metal stilts outside the back door.  The oil ran through a small pipe into the house and around the back of a four-foot-tall cylindrical heater that sat in the corner of our dining room.  When we needed to warm up, we turned a little lever at the back of the cylinder—in the poorly lit paneled room—and waited a few minutes for a puddle of oil to appear in the bottom of the giant heater.

For step two of the heating adventure, we tore a piece of paper, threaded it into a slot on the end of a long metal rod, lit it on fire and lowered the burning flame deep inside the heater’s dark abyss.  There it shone on the glistening oil, and set it all on fire if we did it right.  Then a tiny little fan attached to the back of the tank by the landlord blew heat from the giant flaming missile throughout the house, and we called that whole endeavor "central heat and polluted air."

One night when my husband was on duty and I was home alone, a cold front blew south from Tampa and right through our house, taking the flame in our heater with it. In a matter of minutes, the temperature dropped ten degrees in our uninsulated living room.

But I am a fireman’s wife.  I knew what to do.

I ran the drill. I made sure the oil was turned on, lit a paper scrap, lowered it into the bottom of the tank, and watched to see it catch fire. It didn’t.  I didn’t see any glistening oil inside, either. Anxiously, I turned the knob controlling the oil so more would flow. Then I lit another paper and watched it burn out inside the tank without igniting anything. By now I was convinced that the oil tank outside had run dry and I would freeze to death overnight in my own bed.  For five or ten minutes I tried to start up the heater and, on the last try with the lever opened full, my flaming torch revealed what I’d been hoping to see – sort of. 

There was indeed oil pooling at the bottom of the heater.  About a gallon of it.  And I saw it glistening a split second after there was any hope that I could retrieve the torch of death.  The swimming pool of black gold caught the flame like an outfielder in Yankee Stadium, the oil went up in flames, and I backed against the wall waiting for the house to blow up.

The heater stood its ground, huffing and puffing like a menopausal woman with hot flashes.  I began to panic.  I was certain I’d heard of a tank like this turning a bright shade of hellish red just before melting down and oozing volcano-style down the hallway, through the living room and out the front door, taking every living thing and a lot of glass knick knacks with it.

I wasn’t taking any chances.  I grabbed the telephone with the long, long cord attached to the kitchen wall, and stretched it out all the way to the laundry room around the corner while I phoned the fire department—just in case I had to make a fast exit out the side door of the house.

“Fire Department,” the professional voice on the other end of the line answered. "What’s your emergency?”

“I turned on the oil to my heater and caught it on fire and now I’m afraid it’s going to explode,” I answered breathlessly.

“Your house caught fire and exploded?” she questioned.  “M’am, did you leave the house before making this call?”

“No, the house isn’t on fire yet.  I just think it might be on fire soon.”

“So you don’t have an emergency?” she queried.

Why was this so hard to understand, I thought in frustration.  Don’t oil heaters blow up at least once every winter?

“Look,” I told her carefully, “my husband is on duty with the fire department tonight.”  Then I told her his name.  “I talked to him an hour ago—he’s outside playing volleyball with his crew.  I don’t want him to panic when he hears our address over the loudspeakers and finds out you sent a fire truck to our house.  Could you just have someone go tell him quietly that there’s too much oil burning in our tank and we’re probably fine but I’m just being cautious in case it catches on fire?”

“There’s an oil tanker on fire?” she asked tensely.

“No! I turned on the oil to the heater from the oil tank and then I lit it six times before the oil caught on fire and now my heater looks like it’s having an asthma attack and I’m afraid the house is going to blow . . ..”

“M’am, calm down,” she interrupted.  “We’ll send a truck over to check it out.” 

“Okay,” I said in relieved frustration, “but tell them they don’t need to use lights or sirens or anything like that.  You know, send them code two.  And tell my husband out on the volleyball court that I’m fine but I just want someone to come tell me if I need a bigger truck with a fire hose to cool off this tank because the house is getting really hot and . . .”

“The truck is on its way,” the exhausted operator told me.  “I told them not to use their sirens.  Have a nice day.”  And she hung up.

She also lied.

In a better than average response time, the fire department shrilled a loud, “The cavalry’s comin’, the cavalry’s comin’!” across time and space, complete with air horns and wildly screaming sirens and flashing lights. Assuming they were coming to my house, I let out a big sigh and headed for the front door.

It looked like a Christmas parade outside. Engine No. 1 had the lead, followed by an EMS truck, the battalion chief and the chaplain. All we needed was Santa Claus throwing candy from atop the ladder truck. Flashing lights lit up the living rooms of every home on our street. A minute after that, my father-in-law showed up in his take-home fire chief car and behind him was the associate pastor from our church who recognized the address from his fire scanner. In three and a half minutes there were seventeen people in my front yard and another half dozen in the cramped dining room warming their hands by the glow of my overfed oil heater.

I cut through the crowd until I reached the scene of the crime, hung my head in embarrassment and asked timidly, “Is it gonna blow?”

“No, m’am,” one of the firefighters grinned.  “You just need to let the oil burn off for a couple of hours.  Open some windows to let cool air in and you’ll be fine.  By the way,” he added over his shoulder. “Rob said to tell you his team won three sets of volleyball.”

“Woo hoo,” I answered lamely. 

It takes a lot more than a burning oil tanker to unnerve that firefighter of mine.

The Secret to Happiness

I usually try to save up all my bad luck and blow it all at once in one long day.  It’s kind of like getting immunized against the flu, the mumps, the measles, the chickenpox, and the plague in one big old mother of a shot.  I figure after that I should be good for a couple of years before another wave of wonderful heads my way.

Here’s the problem—I’m not in charge of Trouble.  And Trouble has a mind of its own.

So what’s the crisis this time?  Another expensive car repair. We took our truck in to the mechanic for a little ol’ brake job and some routine maintenance.  He said it should be two hundred dollars less than it ended up costing us. And I responded, this check should be good at the bank.  He didn’t even smile as he handed me the keys to our gold plated Chevy.

If we weren’t mechanically challenged, we could handle things like this ourselvSes and save the cost of labor.  But the love of my life and I have something in common—we don’t know how to fix stuff. We’ve tried, believe me, but we gave it up years ago for the sake of our marriage. I’m no good at fixing busted things (I don't even like to sew buttons back on), and my husband resigned as part-time handyman after I asked him if we could afford for him to make any more repairs.  I had to give back my Wife of the Year award after that.

When things break down, I break down.  Okay, I panic.   

Like that time when we smelled smoke in our house.  My husband is a fireman.  It’s a really bad idea for a fireman’s house to burn down—it’s so embarrassing.  We had no idea where the burned wiring smell was coming from, but I was pretty sure it was something electrical. 

That narrowed it down. 

I ran back and forth through the house, trying to think what to grab if the whole place suddenly burst into flames and came up with . . . pretty much nothing.  It was late evening, and I was more worried about being bra-less than homeless, so I put one on under my jammies, grabbed my wedding rings, and ran outside with a flashlight. I had no plan, but I was clothed and bejeweled. 

The Rock of Gibraltar under pressure—that’s me.

Once, years ago, the dishwasher broke and, as gallons of water spewed out from under the sink flooding our whole kitchen, I stood in fascination—completely paralyzed—waiting for the water to stop of its own accord.  When it didn’t, I began running back and forth from the front door to the kitchen with my head in my hands moaning, “I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to do!”  My teenage son, meanwhile, went outside and shut off the water at the main valve, and my daughter grabbed towels to mop up Noah’s flood.  Together, they singlehandedly shored up the dam.

At least I raised smart kids.

I am worthless in a crisis, I tell you.  If it wasn’t for the doctors in the delivery room, there’s no telling how long I’d have stayed pregnant before doing the intelligent thing and giving birth.

I’ve discovered the root of the problem, though. It’s that little phrase, should be.  It sounds so harmless.  But don’t be fooled.  It’s not. It’s as deadly as a two-year-old with the sniffles. Just cozy up to that little bit of innocence, and you might as well cross two weeks off your calendar right now, cuz you’re going down.  And it’ll be ugly.

Things are never as they should be.  If things were as they should be, chocolate would have no calories, clocks would have no faces, and good novels would have no endings.  Gas would cost us pennies, houses would be self-cleaning, and teenagers would all be grateful.  Government would be intelligent, nothing would be clearly ambiguous, and mornings would always be good.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve fallen under the spell of unrealistic expectations.  That’s where disappointment comes from.  Not from your husband. Not from your wife. Not from learning the truth about Santa.   

Disappointment comes from unrealistic expectations.

The secret to happiness is having realistic expectations.  I don’t usually know what those look like—reference Paragraph One above—but I’ll try to take a stab at it.

Realistically, you must understand that everything you need to get to work on time is going to break down at exactly the moment you pull out of the driveway.  That’s Murphy’s Law—if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. My husband says that the law of our house is that Murphy was an optimist. But you know you’ll get through it just like always, so stop running back and forth with your head in your hands crying, “I don’t know what to do!”

In other words, don't be like me.

Does this mean we shouldn’t hope for a brighter day?  Nope. All this means is that I had a bad day today and then I came home and whined for twelve hundred words at your expense because I ran out of chocolate.  Writing has fewer calories than chocolate.  But chocolate has fewer readers.  And, it’s possible, that after you finish reading this tome, I will have fewer readers, too. So let me leave you with these words of wisdom written by a bunch of cowards too afraid to take credit for them. 

“Keep smiling, and one day life will get tired of upsetting you.”

Well, that’s just stupid.  Life lives to upset you.  Let’s try again. 

“Always ask God to give you what you deserve and not what you desire. Your desires may be few, but you deserve a lot.”  

Are you kidding me??  He’s not Aladdin’s Lamp, you know.  And do you know how nice He’s already been to me?  If He gave me what I deserve, there’d just be an oily spot on the ground where I used to be. That’s the last thing I’m asking for. Where do they come up with these things?  One last try. 

Life is like a kaleidoscope, you get lots of views. So forget what people say and cheer up.

Well, I don’t even know what that means.  Forget what people say and cheer up?  Because life is a kaleidoscope?  That’s what you get when you listen to strangers on the internet. Nothing but nonsense. Thanks, but I’ll just wing it from here.

I think when life gives you lemons and then knocks over your pitcher of lemonade, you just go get a mop and clean it up.  You don’t have to break down.  But in case you do, don’t beat yourself up for feeling disappointed.  And stop listening to folks who keep trying to should on you.  All you need to be happy again is to do what I do. That's not the same as being like me.  Don't be like me.  Just do what I do. 

I climb inside my gold-plated Chevy, drive up to my favorite barista's gold-plated window, put five bucks down on the counter and repeat this mantra:

 “I’ll have a café-mocha vodka-valium latte to go, please.”

I’ve said it twice this morning.   I feel better already. 

Breathe

It sits on the corner of the garden tub I never use. I bought it at Hobby Lobby one afternoon because I love its short sentiment:  Breathe.  You wouldn’t think you’d need a wooden plaque to remind you to do that, would you?  But there are days when I do.

Today was one of those days.  I’m pretty sure it’s not a good idea to get political here—no one seems to appreciate the passion of a conservative—but let’s just say that if you do the math and today is the day after election day 2012 and I’m more of an elephant lover than half of America’s population—well, it’s a sad day for those of us who don’t think much of donkey politics.

On top of that, I’ve had a toothache the size of Hurricane Sandy.  Which, by the way, may have had something to do with the washout of the east coast’s support for a certain. . . elephant. Not the toothache.  The hurricane.  Just saying.  Plus, we have repair bills to cover and a retirement plan to adjust to and taxes that are going to rise in January thanks to, well, never mind, and we didn’t get our rye grass in this year in the front yard.  Or the back yard.  So now the dried up back yard is going to be in my family room every time the dog comes inside from her potty breaks. It was my money saving idea, so I only have myself to blame. I’ll try to remember that while I vacuum. And when the HOA complains.

Then that toothache got in the way of my funny bone and now I’m two days behind in my challenge of writing fifty thousand words in one month.  Christmas is coming and medical expenses this year tied our budget up in knots so now my stomach is doing the same thing.  Every day has trouble of its own—and then some.

It’s enough to make a person forget to . . . breathe.

“Just breathe.”  I love that advice.  The first time I heard it was in the movie, Hope Floats, with Sandra Bullock, who just may be the funniest, best actress on the planet.  Her character was a gal who’d been rejected despite her best efforts to be perfect.  What a drag, huh?  The thing you’re trying to avoid by being everybody’s best friend turns out to be the thing that brings you down. 

Perfection. 

It’s an illusion.  It’s a goal that’s moved every time you almost reach it.  Kind of like those poor greyhounds who run forever in circles after a stuffed rabbit.  If they ever caught the thing they live to win, they’d wind up with a mouth full of stuffing and a stomach that’s still aching.

Our dog loves stuffed animals.  We don’t make her run in circles for one—we just make her go get a bath at the groomer’s and then we reward her with a squeaky hedgehog.  It’s a five dollar bribe to put up with a thirty dollar bath.  Dogs sure are expensive.  But that poor hedgehog always gets the worst of the deal.  His lifespan is shorter than that of a mayfly, which is only thirty minutes.  Clinched in the jaws of our mighty mutt, DestructoDog, a stuffed hedgehog has been known to expire in just under five minutes. 

At least it’s relatively painless.

Nothing lasts forever.  Not toys.  Not presidencies. Not even bad days.  Who said it?  Oh, yeah, one of my favorite musical philosophers, Bryan Duncan.  “If there’s one thing you can count on, things are gonna change.”  It’s pretty easy to pinpoint change.  Every week the prices at the gas pumps change.  Babies change. Even faster than gas prices. Just one month after my son and daughter-in-law brought home their second daughter, their seven pound angel had already gained a pound.  Now that’s fast.  She increased her size by one-seventh in four weeks.  If I did that, I couldn’t fit in my Lazy Boy.

There’s plenty of proof all around us that nothing stays the same.  But for some reason, I default to the idea that if I could just get all my eggs in one basket, keep all the plates spinning, and give the dog all my dust bunnies so she can chase them instead of me, that would be perfection.  And perfection would finally make me happy.

It’s not true.

I read excerpts of a king’s autobiography* just now. He had so much money he did absolutely everything he wanted to do without any guilt at all. Kind of a lottery roller coaster ride. He had no debt.  He had no political fear.  He owned everything and everyone.  And he was a nice guy.  But after he achieved his own little State of Utopia, he wasn’t happy.  He asked himself, “What’s left to do after you’ve been king? That’s a hard act to follow.”  And he ended up saying that he hated life.

I think he forgot to do the most important thing of all.  With all his wealth and women and liquor and parties and real estate and power, he lived so fast and hard and easy that he forgot the one thing we all need to live.  He forgot to breathe.

It’s the hard things in life that force me to take time to breathe.  When life gets tough, I get tense.  My wrinkles get wrinkled. My worry wart shows. And just at the moment when I fear I’ll fall in failure, I run across that reminder again:  Breathe.  Then I fill my lungs full, exhale my stress, and let go of that suffocating obsession with perfection.

Life is good.  Even in an off year of politics.  Even in the dentist’s chair.  Even with a stack of bills.  Life is good.

I just need to remember to breathe.

(*Ecclesiastes 2:12)

Running On Fumes

ThreeAndAHalfHoursSleep.  In the words of two-year-old Jules, “ho-wee cow.”

I just want to tell you—as you sit there googling terms that land you on my insignificant blog—this is all your fault.  Because of you, I couldn’t sleep last night.  Well, that and an afternoon nap and that cup of peppermint mocha I drank at seven o’clock p.m.  What part of “decaf” didn’t that barista understand?  And there I stood, on the phone with my sister, trusting Starbucks to check mark all the boxes on my cup so I wouldn’t have to question their memory, when Bam!  I get hit with two shots of complimentary espresso.  Wait . . . where was I?  Oh, yeah, blaming you for my insomnia.

On the other hand, when inspiration hits me, there’s no ignoring it.  I just have to say, “Yes, master,” in that zombie voice, pull up my laptop and wave to my husband as he heads to bed without me.  He knows I have no control over this.  It’s just best to let it run its course.

So I wrote til today arrived. I wrote for posterity. I wrote for the betterment of humanity. I wrote for public approval.  I wrote until my eyes began to slam shut. 

It’ll be fine, I thought to myself, as the words held me hostage, forcing me to put them down on cyber paper.  I had that nap this afternoon, I reminded myself, as yawns refused to come.  It’ll just take a while to wring the last drop of coffee out of my veins, I thought, and in the meantime, I’ll blog. Sleep is overrated, right?  Finally I crawled into bed at 2:30 a.m.  “Hi there, Caffeine Queen,” my husband muttered as I apologized to my despondent pillow.

Now it’s 6 a.m., my eyes are scratchy, my brain is foggy, and in a few minutes I have to get behind the wheel of a half ton pickup so I can play Follow The Leader on the freeway.  I don’t even remember where I’m going.  But that alarm screamed “Get Up!” and now I gotta drive . . . someplace.  All because I have an addiction to writing.  I would have thrown my laptop at the alarm and gone back to sleep, but now I remember why I had to get up so early. Why I just swallowed four vitamin C’s and a couple of One-A-Day’s.  Why I drank some caffeine and splashed cold water in my face. It’s my weekly appointment to walk with a friend.

I might have to give up walking.  I think it’s bad for my health.

 

(Photo courtesy of H is for Home's photostream, Flickr.com)

Oh, Give Me A Home . . .

The Pioneer Woman.  I think I always wanted to be her.  Back to nature.  Living off the land. Mother Earth News pinup.  I wanted to milk my own cow, whip my own butter, grow my own tomatoes, and can all our jams.  For years my husband and I were flat broke, so I was halfway there.  I hung out our laundry on a line in the sun.  Diapered our babies in cloth and plastic pants. I sewed—a few of—their clothes. Nursed them devotedly and made baby food in a blender.  I learned to dissect a chicken and fry it up like the colonel.  And we decorated our garden with a homemade scarecrow one fall.

Yep, we were country.  In the city.

But ever since I was a kid I’ve wanted to live on a farm.  Who knows why?  Maybe I sang Old McDonald too many times.  I wanted to have a horse. And play in a barn. And walk three miles to school down a country road. Instead, I spent my childhood in a California trailer park with a view of San Quentin.

So how do you get to be one of the lucky few who grow up surrounded by chickens and rodeos?

My granddad grew up on a family farm in Kansas, a farm that ran for over one hundred years until the last son retired—childless—and sold it to some city slickers.  My granddad had escaped to the city to become an engineer.  He didn’t want to raise his kids on the family farm. He fell hard for the desert and an eighteen-year-old beauty and never looked back at the amber waves of grain behind him.

It’s funny, isn’t it?  City kids want to live in the country and country kids long for the city.

The truth is, even The Pioneer Woman came to the country late.  She grew up in a country club neighborhood, the privileged daughter of a surgeon. On her way to Chicago to become a lawyer, she met her Marlboro Man and promptly changed occupations.  Now she lives on a ranch, runs a blog, homeschools her four kids, and takes pictures of cows. In her back yard.

Maybe I have more in common with her than I realized.  We both started out as city girls. Check.  We both homeschooled. Check check.  We both blog.  Triple check. We’re both redheads.  And I take pictures of my grandkids in my back yard.

So what if I don’t milk a cow? It’s five minutes to the grocery store.  And who cares if my jam isn’t  homemade, especially if the biscuits are.  I make a pretty good pie from scratch, and I drive by ranches full of horses every day on my way home.  Last week I even saw a camel in a corral.

I guess the life you have is the one to appreciate.  I may never be any good at rodeoing or chasing chickens or growing tomatoes.  But I’m also no good at getting up at the crack of dawn so I can feed  animals.  I’m not even any good getting up an hour after it cracks to feed my husband. The HOA won’t let me have chickens, but there are early risers five miles from my house who are happy to sell their fresh eggs to me.  Farmers have markets less than ten miles away, and my home isn’t far from the range.  

I think I know my limitations.  I’m not really cut out for life on a farm.  But just for fun, I’ll keep living vicariously through the blog of that pioneer gal.  From the comfort of my lazy boy.

My cowboy hat’s off to her.

Dichotomy At Dusk

Asked to create whatever this visual prompt inspires, the following is a little fiction drawn from this beautiful picture.

Mournful.  Obscure.  The vague glow of a hovel’s feeble light was, at first, diminished by its heavenly cousin in celestial display. While muted colors competed in melded beauty, the road less traveled appeared both welcoming and alarming.  Dichotomy at dusk.

I felt drawn by the boldly lit window, compelling me on with surprising allure.  Still, it was impossible to say if the road’s rise promised safety or obscured danger.  While the  rutted path to the beacon summoned, the disappearing boundary stirred caution in my soul.  How could I trust what I could not see?  Even the moon feigned weakness this night, its glow diffused by vaporous fog in a mottled sky.

I cursed the curiosity that led me too far down this path.  What’s wrong with the safety of security, anyway?  Who decided a comfort zone is uncomfortable? And why must I trade the familiarity of my surroundings in exchange for an uncharted road?

It seems I am always surrounded by dare devils and cheerleaders.  “Take a risk!” they cry.”  “Live til you die!” they admonish.  “Shut the hell up,” I want to say, but I am too afraid of offending.  I know in my heart, though, they’d just laugh at the outburst, delighted to stir up reaction from me.

And where are they now? I asked myself bitterly.  Full of advice, but nowhere in sight. I could run back to safety, but surely I’d find them there laughing at my failure.  “We knew you couldn’t do it!” they’d shout to my shame.

Suddenly this road seemed friendlier than the goading crowd behind me.  And though its secrets were sheltered, Hope urged me on in the dim light. Perhaps serenity, masquerading as loneliness, is a better companion than self absorbed chums.

Another step forward, my path somehow clearer, purpose took charge in my soul.

“This is my journey,” I thought confidently. “I’ll travel this way after all.”  I gathered my courage, forgiving curiosity, and as I followed the rise my taunters fell dismally silent.

That’s when I knew.  

All I need to walk alone in the dark is to follow the road that leads to the light.

(Photo by Anton Novoselov on Flickr)

With thanks to Liz Shaw for this story's inspiration through her writing prompt, http://www.thewritingreader.com/blog/2012/10/21/prompt-457-visual-prompt-of-the-week-moon-over-a-country-road/

Hush, Little Child

It was 1979.  A new album played on our new turntable and the lyrics made me cry.  The melody  haunting, the voice pure and strong, and before the year ended, I memorized the song.

It was 1981.  A babe in my arms.  His face sweet and delicate, his voice small but strong, and before the night ended I sang him the song.

Two short years later, another babe in my arms.  Her face soft and lovely, her voice pure and strong, and throughout the long nights, I sang her the song.

I sang it each evening as I turned off their lights, my voice strong and soothing, then I wished them good night.

Now it’s 2012. The children are grown.  In their arms now they each hold sweet babies, their own. They’ve heard that old song and request it each night, and my babies now sing as they hold their babes tight.

Just yesterday morning her two-year-old played beside the piano when I came to stay. Childish and lilting, the stuttered words clear, she sang—and I wept—as the song reached my ear.

Its melody haunting, still that sweet lullaby encircled my heart in the voice of her child.

Hush little child -- wipe that tear from your eye
Don't you be scared of the dark
For someone is watching to guard as you sleep
Protecting each moment you grow

Chorus:He'll take care of you, my darling, He loves you
He'll take care of you, my darling, for me
He'll take care of you and love you forever and ever
He'll take care of you, my darling, for me.

Moonlight casts shadows on warm summer nights
And the winter wind whispers through the whistling brush
There's no need to worry, He'll stay by your side
And nothing can touch you but love

Words & Music by David Meece 
Copyright 1979  Meece Music (admin by) WORD Music

Arkansas Blues

I’m not that good at swearing.

I’m kind of a late bloomer, and I probably shouldn’t even admit in public that foul language has ever crossed my lips.  I blame it on the culture I’m surrounded by—and my husband.  If he hadn’t driven through Arkansas, then my lips would still be pure as the driven snow.

Oklahoma is my friend.  Oklahoma has a speed limit of 70 mph.  You can cross their windmill scattered prairies at a pretty good clip and not get pulled over by bored state troopers.  Not so in Arkansas.  In Arkansas they believe that I-40 is their personal property and will punish out-of-state drivers for using it.

We were on a not-so-fun trip to Atlanta where my husband would soon undergo heart surgery.  Rob has feet that are not made of lead, and the only time he drives over the speed limit is, well, never actually.  He is the world’s safest driver. 

But at the border of Arkansas, on Interstate 40 as you leave Oklahoma, the posted speed is 60. That info is followed immediately by a giant billboard declaring “No Tolerance”, complete with a state trooper parked directly beneath it, radar gun aimed across the dashboard at innocent drivers in Oklahoma.  Now, come on.  Not even the turtle crossing the finish line in front of the hare could have slowed down ten miles an hour before he passed that billboard!

And that, my friends, is the definition of “No Tolerance”.  Don’t take a chance on Arkansas.  Trust me—they are not tolerant.

The cop flipped on his lights, spun around in the dirt like he’d just caught sight of O.J., and pulled us over in front of God and everybody.  Way to go, Barney Fife, I thought wryly. You just stopped Andy.

He swaggered up to our aging blue Ford Expedition, leaned in on one arm through the open driver’s window, and announced to my husband, “You, uh, were doing five over the limit there.  You wanna come with me?”  And he turned back to his squad car where, in a matter of a few seconds, he seated my potentially felonious husband next to him in the front seat while checking out our license plate. 

He seemed a little disappointed, I later discerned, to discover that our suburban race car was delivering us to a waiting surgeon and not a gang of bank robbers.  In short order, as his instincts were unarmed by my husband’s good citizenship and southern manners, the cop wearied of intimidating him and let him go with a warning.

I should have been pleased.  I should have kept my mouth shut.  I did neither. I was furious.

I dare not say here in public all the blasphemous and shocking terms that emerged from my mouth once my husband re-buckled his seat belt in his own truck.  I have no excuse.  And, in some religious circles, I also lost my salvation.  But I did get satisfaction, even with the doors closed and the windows rolled up.

“What if he heard you?”  Rob said to me in shock.  “This is the reason I talk to officers, and you don’t!”

Which kind of didn’t make any sense, since that sounded like I don’t get pulled over by cops and he does.  But it didn’t stop me.  It didn’t even slow me down.  I called that guy in the flashing car every name I could think of. Of course, it took a while.  I’m kind of inexperienced.  Rob just rolled his eyes as my potty mouth spit out bad words in staccato.The next morning I remembered one I’d forgotten and then I called him that one, too.  Finally I texted my best friend and told her I’d just cussed out a state trooper in Arkansas.

“To his face?!?!?”  she texted incredulously.

“No, to Rob’s face.” I wrote back.  Geez, what does she take me for, a dope?

The next morning we left Arkansas in a driving rain and crossed briefly into Tennessee’s friendly 70 mph arms.  I rolled down my passenger window, leaned out into the downpour and yelled at the top of my lungs,

“Good-BYE, Arkansas!” and then pulled my dripping head back inside and rolled up the window. 

Bet they don’t pull us over anymore.  Especially since Arkansas is now on our ‘no drive’ list. Rob’s still afraid that guy might have heard me.

My Major Award

November 17, 2012.   I’m drawing a circle around that date.  It means two years have gone by.  Two years since I stepped out on the web and let people see what’s on my mind.

What was I thinking???

It’s the second anniversary of my View From The Winepress.  And guess what?  I got a Major Award this year!  It’s the Liebster Blog Award.  I was nominated for it by my friend and mentor, Liz, of The Writing Reader  (http://www.thewritingreader.com) because I run a blog which currently has fewer than 200 followers.  Getting this award means the nominator thinks more people should read my stuff. 

So, thanks, Liz!  I’ve never received a Major Award before!  Well, except for that free hot dog lunch I won in first grade for a PTA poster I drew.  It was a pretty good poster.  And a pretty good hot dog.

But there’s a tiny little catch—I gotta share the love.  I have to nominate five other up and coming blogs for their own Liebster.   

This is turning out to be harder than it sounds. I found four, but I’m having trouble finding one more.  Most of the blogs I enjoy have already made the big time.  Others haven’t been updated in two years.  Some are photo albums with no writing. Many use their freedom of speech a little too freely for me to recommend.

I was going to nominate one lady until I saw she’s already received the Liebster, and is stuck trying to find a fifth writer herself. She actually posted a want ad for any blogger who wants to get a free award.  I’d apply, but I don’t need to.

I’m starting to feel some pressure to get this thing wrapped up. Liz told me she’s about to take back my Liebster if I don’t pass it on soon. I don’t think she can really do that, though.  I’ve already tattooed it on my website.  Besides, if she un-nominates me, she’ll be back to a list of four recommendations of her own and then her nominator will have to take back Liz’s award and so on and so on and so . . . .

I could just . . . start another blog under a pseudo-pseudo name and recommend that one.  But it’s a pretty risky idea.  If my new one goes viral while this one stays small, I think it’ll hurt my feelings. 

In the meantime, I am delighted to pass on the Liebster to the following four blogs which you should definitely check out:

1. Confessions of an Incompetent Blogger by Emi Bauer  (http://emibauer.wordpress.com)
2. Teeter Tottering by Lynne Hartke   (http://www.lynnehartke.com )
3. Finejulery by Jules    (http://www.finejules.blogspot.com)
4. Millionayres.com by Michelle Ayres  (http://www.Millionayres.com)

And when you’re finished with those, check out this one I found while I was busy writing this piece.  Hey, I’m ambidextrous.

5.      Helping Women Live With Purpose

(http://www.shelleyhendrix.org)

Congratulations to all five of these amazing women and their awesome blogs.  There’s a little bit of something for everyone in this list, and I recommend every one of them highly, including The Writing Reader, even though Liz threatened to take away my Liebster.

Hey, you can take my dog, but don’t even think about touching my Major Award.  Some things are sacred.

(Photo courtesy of r_gnuce at Flickr.com)

Fracturing Fairy Tales

Once upon a time two flawed people fell in love.

Not the way most fairy tales begin, is it?  I guess that’s why they call them fairy tales—if you marry a fantasy character in real life, you don’t get the stuff of which legends are made.

Heroes who become legendary are flawed people.  Face it—even Superman had a krypton allergy.  Florence Nightingale—the ‘ministering angel’ who nursed soldiers back from death during the Crimean War?  She retired to her bedroom her last forty years, nursing her own hypochondria and waiting to die.

Heroes do remarkable things under difficult circumstances.  Fantasies are illusions, filled with vaporous characters and condensed plots.  What was Peter Pan doing all those years until he got nailed down to his sensible shadow?  And Sleeping Beauty.  Do you realize when she woke up to that kiss and married the stranger who did it, she was a hundred years his senior?  That’s just wrong on so many levels.  What did they even have to talk about?  You know music had to have changed.

Still, these are the lives we long for.  ‘Happily Ever After’ and ‘The End’ are really just the beginning of the story, but we never get to hear the rest—the part that takes fifty or sixty years to live. 

Sometimes people look at my marriage and think we must have been born under a lucky star.  Okay, well, that part’s true.  But what my husband and I don’t talk about much are the times we engage in parallel conversations, misunderstanding that we’re both saying the same thing, and walk away with hurt.  Or how about when I throw him under the bus telling that same old story that embarrasses him but always gets a laugh from others?  Um hmm—true love, that is.  And believe it or not, sometimes we both are so proud and self protective, we let each other down while we hold ourselves up.

Doesn’t sound like heroics to me, does it to you?

But I bet you can relate.  And beat yourself up with the best of us.  Maybe we don’t have to go that far.  Maybe we just choose the wrong heroes. It happens all the time in sports, you know.  One minute a kid wants to grow up to be just like that rich, illiterate football star, and the next week his hero is in jail, autographing his own mug shot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but what are you trying to say, you ask me.  Sigh.  See?  Even my writing is imperfect.  I’m saying perfection is not the goal.  Transparency is the goal. The real heroes in life are those who openly admit they are flawed.  A single ‘I’m sorry’ is worth a hundred ‘I was right’s.

I’m a flawed person who fell in love with a flawed person.  We let each other down all the time because we hold up unrealistic expectations of what love should look like.  But this is what love looks like.  Love gives sacrificially and without being deserved.  And when a man loves me like that, I want to love him back the same way.  For better or worse, that makes him my hero.

Now that’s legendary.

(Photo courtesy of kh1234567890's photostream on flickr.com)