Paddling A Sinking Canoe

Working his oars in a frenzy, the frightened man sat waist-high in water, half-submerged in his own boat. While spectators watched from a safe distance, he did his best to navigate the damaged canoe to the other side of the lake, succeeding only in holding his ground, making no progress. It was an exercise in futility if ever I saw one, a word picture for panic.

We are paddling a sinking canoe.

Social Distancing, the catchphrase of this new decade, has taken over the reason and faith of even churchgoers who used to gather and give hugs and shake hands. No more holy kisses. No more pats on the back. Now we’re supposed to wave from the safety of our cars and try not to make eye contact if we find ourselves inside a grocery store.

Did you know your head can literally fall off your shoulders if you shake it too much in disbelief? True story—I read about it on the internet.

Far, far away in another galaxy known as China, source of all cheap manufacturing, subpar outsourced chicken parts, and icon of socialism, this communist country succumbed to a coronavirus strain that turned an everyday virus into a supervillain. Fashionable face masks appeared in social media, frightening numbers were released across the airwaves faster than a sneeze, and suddenly the entire planet put itself in a voluntary lockdown. Toilet paper disappeared off store shelves as the rumor escaped that either a) all of it was manufactured in China so there would soon be a shortage due to the shutdown of toilet paper factories, or b) hoarding toilet paper was the way to protect ourselves from a respiratory virus.

The obvious problem with the first theory is that if the toilet paper we buy here in America is manufactured in China, the source of COVID-19, then using Chinese toilet paper infected by the virus would be a really bad idea. Congratulations to all the hoarders who successfully filled their garages with contaminated wood pulp. Once again, the silent scream of truth goes ignored—most toilet paper sold in these United States is also manufactured here. Or in Canada. Google, people, Google.

The problem with the second theory is that it only works if you use it to blow your nose. In that case, we should be hoarding Kleenex.

This is flu season. Spring. Every year. Without fail. While the groundhog stays, well, underground, cloistering himself away until the predicted arrival of warmer weather, the virus flourishes. But once the warm—and in our case, hot—temperatures show up, Punxatawney’s icon emerges and flus bug out.

This is a new virus strain. It's not the Bubonic Plague. No, there is no vaccine for it. There are dozens of influenza strains that show up every year and we don’t have vaccines for the vast majority of them either. Worldwide, there are approximately 290,000 - 650,000 deaths related to seasonal flu each year. Annually, in the United States alone, between 12,000 and 61,000 people die from complications of the flu, and the most people can say is, that's too bad. Or maybe, I had no idea. You're not the only one. Even the CDC doesn't have an accurate count of flu deaths every season because, according to their website as well as many others, they, and we, expect that many people to die of flu-related causes each year and they either aren't fully reported or they simply are not counted.

That may be the difference right there. For the first time in history, we are being pummeled in the face with continuous updates about coronavirus cases and deaths. I'd be scared under normal circumstances if we simply knew on a daily basis how many people are injured in their own homes each year while taking a bath or shower. 235,000 -- in case you were wondering.

But does that perspective help when it comes to the coronavirus? Nope. The President, pressured by public opinion, advisors, and this current election year, has declared a state of emergency for all these here colonies. I’d have to agree. Fear is a terrible emergency. Churches and schools are closing, March has been canceled, fire departments are limiting access to the public, and common sense is on a ventilator, not expected to make a recovery any time soon. Sadly, while the virus has taken the lives of cherished loved ones, another 330 million healthy citizens have succumbed to rumors and panic and socially contagious fear.

Not since 9/11 have I witnessed so much panic and fear mongering and suspicion in America, let alone the rest of the world. Two NBA players tested positive for COVID-19 and within days the entire sports season was canceled. The theory is that people who are not sick may be carrying the virus around unknowingly, Typhoid Mary-style. Every person you see could be a carrier. Suddenly, I’m getting emails from every business in possession of my email address—I’m going to take care of that as soon as I finish writing this little tome—reminding me to wash my hands.

My mortgage company wants me to sing my ABC’s and wash my hands. Really? I’m 62 years old and you think I don’t know how to wash my hands after I go to the bathroom or pick my nose or pet my dog or clean up a baby’s butt or handle raw chicken? This is what I pay my mortgage company to do, send me emails about washing my hands, covering my sneezes with my elbow, or throwing tissues in the garbage when I’m finished with them?

I’m not worried about catching a virus. I’m worried about my contact with social media.

Is there any good news anywhere that we can hold on to while we’re told to keep everyone else at a distance? There is. For me, numbers are a good place to start. I've been keeping tabs myself on a website called Worldometers.info. Seeing the way numbers are reported, doing the math, figuring percentages--all of that is factual. None of it is spun into a terror cyclone by a greedy media. Thinking for myself has become an exercise in perspective that pays off in better mental health than if I depended on any form of media, social or otherwise, for the truth.

Here’s the best news. Our bodies are made up of trillions of good bacteria—one hundred trillion of them. We are more bacteria than we are cells—there are 38 trillion of those. We’re designed by God to have strong immune systems that fight off viruses, and He’s given us good foods that will strengthen the microbiome in our gut which, in turn, protects us. He’s also given us strong minds and reminded us not to make ourselves vulnerable to fear. What He hasn’t done is force us to believe the truth.

Vaccines are not our best defense. There is no vaccine for the common cold, which is another coronavirus. The best defense is a good offense. Eat and drink probiotic foods regularly which feed and build your biome which strengthens and protects you. 

And here’s another amazing thing. Every time you give a hug to someone, not only does it reduce stress and lower blood pressure for both of you, it passes on your good bacteria to strengthen them. Eighty million of them with every handshake. Social distancing does exactly the opposite. The only thing it passes on is fear and suspicion. Good is always stronger than evil, I was just reminded—and that goes for bacteria, too.

Surrounded by an ocean of fear in the face of a respiratory virus, news like that is a breath of fresh air to me. I’d rather take my chances with healing hugs any day.




With thanks to New Media Consortium for the use of the above photograph. The original can be viewed at :
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nmc-campus/2073233284/in/photolist-26mUZJ1-7Qxr2B-8t7psY-9TBDxz-JM3ndx-m7mnQa-bcxibg-KyrCGf-bcxi8i-7Ry1v1-aqBDBX-Zhg3Y-cRPNW3-7FVYb-ocyFgH-23E8Vx-4acS2s-4acSsh-4acTgf-4acSSq

Finding My Tribe

Ever since I heard that my maternal great-grandmother was a full-blooded Creek Indian, I’ve been looking for my Tribe.

You know what I mean, right? We all have one. Your Tribe, your people, your homies. It’s the scattered collection of human beings who love the same things you love, laugh at the same jokes as you, vote for the same liars, or vape the same e-cigarettes you vape. They might read the same books, go to the same superhero conventions, or stalk the same food trucks where you like to eat. Which might actually mean they’re stalking you¸ but that still proves they’re in your Tribe.

I’m intrigued by the idea of finding my Tribe. From everything I hear on podcasts and read in books, all of us need one. They’re the people who “get you.” They’re your cheerleaders, your comforters, accountability partners, and your community. When you’re around them, you feel included. You belong. If you don’t show up, they make it their business to find out why and help you come back to your Tribe. It sounds so . . . claustrophobic.

Okay, here’s the truth. The real reason I’m on the hunt for my Tribe is because I’m a writer, and a writer needs readers. Lots and lots of them—just not all in the same room at the same time. I’m also an introvert which makes membership in a Tribe a little tricky for me. I like you, but I need my space. I need close friends, but not all at once. I’m a good listener, but please take a number. Exhausting, contradictory stuff like that.

It’s not important to me, as a writer, that the members of my potential Tribe reside in the same zip code. Or county. Or even the same country. They could all be scattered across the worldwide web—that works—and read my blog posts or my nearly finished but yet unpublished novels from the privacy of their own homes and then leave comments in cyberspace about what I’ve written and why they sit with baited breath each and every day hoping for one more published article from me, their introverted, invisible, but wildly talented egocentric Tribe member. That’s the same thing as community, right?

So far no one has responded to my offer for membership in a Tribe like that.

So, I’ve been researching how to be a better Tribe-ist. Here’s what I learned.

1.     Your vibe attracts your Tribe. That means that if you are yourself, you will attract others who are like you, no one has to pretend and feel uncomfortable by being in the wrong Tribe, and everybody wins. The obvious problem here for me is the members of my Tribe are probably all introverts who don’t want to be found.

2.     You must engage with your Tribe. Here’s what that means to me. I write a book. They read it. Nobody has to attend conventions or wear funny badges or drink bad coffee. Low expectations will be the hallmark of my Tribe. Introverts unite, separately.

3.     Always be positive – the health of your Tribe depends upon it. That kind of defeats the purpose of having a blog site to throw up on, though. It makes me feel like I can’t be myself. That nobody will accept me for who I really am. If all of that is true, the only way I can be a part of the introvert Tribe I’m searching for is if I’m an extrovert. If you ask me, that little piece of advice isn’t positive at all.

You can see why I’m having such a difficult time with this. That and the fact that my writing hobby is relatively unknown. That’s why I need a Tribe. To bolster my flagging spirits, tell me how much my writing has changed their life, to buy my books and support the lifestyle to which I’d like to become accustomed.

It’s time I faced the facts. You can’t have a Tribe if you’re an introvert. With ulterior motives. And average writing talent. Not only that, you can’t have a Tribe if you’re not Native American. It turns out my great-grandmother wasn’t even a full-blooded Creek Indian. Or a half-blooded one, though she did have the normal nine or ten pints we each have. When I sent in my spit test to Ancestry.com, they wrote back and said there is no evidence anywhere that my freckle-faced, red-headed DNA contains a single drop of Native American blood. I’m not even a blood relative of my blood relatives.

The only hope I have left is that if you made it this far, you recognize sarcasm as my native tongue, that sometimes it physically hurts me to hold in sarcastic comments, and I have sarcasm moments that are so advanced people actually think I’m stupid.

I may have to give up on searching for my Tribe and just be content to be an unknown blogger, wannabee novelist, lover of sarcasm, and collector of memes. There’s no shame in whiling away the hours online laughing at other people’s humor, reading their copycat recipes for food truck fare, and collecting political pundits to pin on my cyber boards. Even if I did borrow some funny phrases here, it’s worth including them in case they help me locate my missing community of introverts.

Ohmigosh. I did it. I think I just found my Tribe. “Pinterest.” Social media at its most social.

I might be an extrovert after all. 










With thanks to Steven Miller for the fun photo included above. The original picture can be viewed on his webpage by following the link below.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/aloha75/14586957695/in/photolist-odZYjB-2hQ1d9S-7kgLz4-as5KAo-WCQCDv-H288A-6ywoNb-NFRsVG-is9MLA-qp5dtR-8w5rQN-6MX1zv-62TA2s-vzMWw5-2ecrBsv-BjUr9v-8nQWub-34stk-jwfDf-8w2r1x-nh52DP-NmgXcH-Uand99-4kf3Vd-6Rr4AE-8w5rKW-is9vUg-8w2oE8-62Pkuz-kgHfzS-jwfXq-UkaEdb-yHMAzp-dMXhcc-hBHaEW-6aXsgz-jwfV4-9UwSiu-pAkc7c-jwfmw-62TAaA-62PjBD-8w5rdA-29r8pKP-8QUg7K-2dqjKz6-62PkXa-62TAis-isapKt-NT8Qxh

The Suitcase

It was just a beat-up old suitcase, tucked away in a dusty corner of a second-hand store behind a tower of crates overflowing with discards. The handle, long ago ripped from its top by an overly zealous taxi driver, had been replaced by a stiff arch made of hemp rope, knotted on the inside of the lid. It wasn’t pretty, but neither was the suitcase. Somehow, with its battered leather sides covered over by layers of souvenir travel stickers, the brown luggage and rough rope handle suited each other. They were gnarly, but they were tough. Survivors. Overcomers. Connected by necessity, they seemed stronger together, ready whenever the need arose.

Which seldom happened anymore.

Once upon a time, the classic beauty had been new and luxurious. Fitted with hardware both polished and sturdy, its secure latch inspired confidence. Light blue flowers flooded the pattern of the silken lining inside its roomy compartments. It commanded a high price, in the beginning, and even a few jealous glances from those whose own luggage had seen better days.

Following its first venture into the outside world, it returned home with black scuffs on one side. “No matter,” the owner said, unworried. “We’ll just cover that with this travel sticker from the Grand Canyon.” The case was still strong and mostly undamaged, and everyone thought the addition of the brightly colored decal gave it character. As time went by and the suitcase was called on again and again, it returned home each time with more character, more disguises, more masked evidence of careless luggage handlers and the brutalizing wear and tear marked by years on the road. Soon, the stylish leather exterior was practically unrecognizable, covered from stem to stern with a confusing assortment of labels including “Hotel Havana,” “Virginia Is For Lovers,” “Jamaican My Bacon,” and “Nixon For President.”

“That’s just the price of experience,” the owner said with a sigh, the day the handle first tore loose. “A little duct tape will fix that.” But just in case it didn’t, he bought another suitcase, a newer version with hard plastic siding and spinner wheels while its well-worn predecessor was relegated to second place, packed up with towels and shower shoes and packages of Ramen noodles on its journey to a tiny closet inside a university dormitory.

By the time the hemp repair had replaced the missing handle, the suitcase gapped at the top, allowing moisture from a passing storm to leak in rain. Soon a musty odor infiltrated anything stored inside. The blue flowers long ago lost their bloom and the inner stitching had pulled loose following a tug of war battle with a victorious coat hanger. “Why don’t you get rid of this smelly old thing?” someone suggested, filling its stained interior with other castoffs also destined for retirement.

Late one afternoon, a donation truck drove up that familiar street where the leather bag had once been a proud member of the family, all its souvenir charm fading in the sunlight. Carelessly tossed in the back, it landed in a heap with all the other has-beens that suddenly seemed long past their prime, if not their expiration dates, relegated to the dusty corners of last chance stores where one-eyed dolls and matted teddy bears kept them hidden from the dismissive waves of those who preferred pristine purchases.

Until the day a young woman with an eye for quality reached beyond the chaotic stash of cast offs and retrieved the rejected suitcase. “Perfect,” she announced, tucking the worn, weathered portmanteau under her arm to take home. Alone with her purchase the following afternoon, she studied the collage of identities attached to its exterior over the years. One by one, she pulled them off, discarding them layer by layer, until the original, chestnut-brown leather could be seen again. Beneath the bright light of discovery, she carefully removed every bit of adhesive evidence that suggested anyone had ever attempted to cover the beauty of the suitcase. Oiling the neglected leather, she buffed it until its luster exceeded its original sheen.

Then she turned her attention to the inside where moisture and dust had disintegrated the lining. With an eye to the future, she cleaned away all the years of neglect and replaced the stained fabric with crimson taffeta. Soon, a fresh scent bloomed from the rosy inlay carefully glued in place and trimmed with gold braid.

“Now,” she said, admiring the renovation, “about that handle. This rope will never do for a beauty like yourself.” She tossed the raveled hemp in the trash with the rest of the artificial repairs used to disguise the suitcase and opened a drawer in the mahogany desk she’d once rescued from a hot, humid greenhouse. “Just the thing,” she proclaimed, attaching a sturdy brass grip to the long side of the luggage. She gave a brisk buff to the antique latch and carried her resurrected treasure to the front window of her store where it sat on display for thirty short minutes before another woman with discriminating taste paid top dollar for the vintage case and proudly brought it home to the admiration of her husband.

“You are a shrewd judge of character,” he told her.

True, it had been made new again, but on its worst days it was always more than “just a beat-up old suitcase.” Its underlying beauty had simply been distorted with identities that belonged to someone else, suffocated by ill-fitting fixes. Underappreciated and misunderstood, its significance undermined by carelessness, the original splendor it contained was nearly lost forever. Whether sentenced to a garbage dump or repurposed at a flea market into another portable bar, its worth hung in the balance of whatever price one was willing to pay for its discovery.

None but the Lover of castoffs knew what lay hidden under the layers of judgment the suitcase wore for most of its life. And none but that same Lover knew how to restore it. The gift of unpacking its beauty lay in the hands of the One who rescued it.

It always had great worth. And it was always worthy of greatness.

“Perfect,” she had pronounced, though it lay broken and discarded in a dark, dusty corner.

And it was.

Dinosaurs

“Always be yourself unless you can be a dinosaur, and then always be a dinosaur.”

The sign hangs in a spare bedroom decorated for my grandson whenever he spends the night at our house. Blue dino footprints march up and down all the walls and a stuffed tyranno rests against the pillows every week in between sleepovers, keeping guard and waiting for the seven-year-old who will soon outgrow the ferocious fascination he has for all things extinct and move on to something more realistic, like Star Wars.

It’ll be a sad day when that happens, just like it was a sad day when he told me he was over Thomas the Train. It’s not just that I’d finally gotten the train decorations in that room right. My heart broke because it was a kind of graduation. Grandkids grow up faster than my children did, I’ve discovered, and no matter what I do I can’t slow it down. I guess the real heartbreak behind all of that is the knowledge that every time they get a little older, I do, too.

Nothing brings that into focus more than when I take a hard look at the culture we live in today and realize that I don’t recognize anything anymore. Listen, it’s not that the era of my youth was anything worth being nostalgic about. When I was a kid growing up outside San Francisco, it was the Drug Culture, Make Love Not War, LSD tripping, Vietnam War debacle, throw-everything-that’s-ever-had-value-out-the-window culture. It was the Sixties, not Happy Days. I don’t look back on that period of my life with fondness, let me put it that way.

I realized the world as everyone knew it was a’changin’, and it could go from bad to something more bad. (Even grammar was biting the big one.) But I had roots in something deeper than the shallow culture of the time and I was used to swimming upstream, rowing against the flow. Like a puzzle piece from the wrong jigsaw, I’ve never fit in comfortably. Uncomfortable. That’s generally how I feel when my life is put in a lineup with all the other lookalikes while an unseen judge on the other side of the two-sided mirror determines who the real phony is.

I finally know who I am.

I am the dinosaur.

For example, I believe—and please don’t take offense at this—that the best people to raise children are the parents of the children. Yes. I know. Gray areas abound here. Life is expensive. Homes are headed by single moms. Some homes are horrible environments, not even worthy to be called home. There are plenty of sad scenarios about families on the extreme edge of survival. That’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about priorities. About the over-swing of the cultural pendulum, from “a woman’s place is in the home” to “I am woman, hear me roar.” We are no longer under the thumb of men, in general. Glass ceilings still apply, I realize.

Women are capable of doing it all. Bring home the bacon, fry it in the pan. Sixties graduate here, remember? I agree, women have been suppressed. I am a woman. Believe me, I know. It takes sacrifice to stay home, make ends meet on one income, and change every poopy diaper a baby--and society--can throw at you. I’ve been hit by a lot of poop. It takes creativity to come up with entertainment on a budget while all around are other young families who provide every cost prohibitive toy the industry can dream up so the family will have fun memories. It also takes a healthy conviction that money doesn’t equal fun. Just look at the fallout of celebrity lives who have more money than God and end up destroying their own lives with it.

Now there’s an out of place puzzle piece.

Last night we watched the Super Bowl and the highly anticipated half-time show, or at least five minutes of it. Maybe it was ten. I don’t know. I was busy trying not to feel nauseous and wondering why there hadn’t been a warning to families that it was R-rated. I know that’s not a popular perspective—lots of people on facebook told me so this morning. I’m too much a dinosaur to have seen it for what it was. An exciting display of feminine power. Extreme athleticism, especially since the stars were both middle-aged. And, above all, it was the first time that two women headlined the entertainment spectacle, particularly two Latino women. Double.Edged.Sword.

Here’s where my creaky bones try to knit together in Ezekiel’s wilderness of scattered skeletons. Just that afternoon, while working on another writing project, I’d read a list of words worthy of use in describing the strength and beauty of women. The internet page also listed words that are often confused with complimentary expressions for females. Guess what word showed up on the List of Oppression? Sexy. The very thing that highlighted the “entertainment” millions of people tuned in to see last night.

The internet article stated that women are not sex objects. The Super Bowl begs to differ. The women who performed last night see things a little differently, too. I agree that they were in superb physical condition. That they are very flexible. That their conditioning puts a lot of twenty-year-olds to shame. Actually, it doesn’t. The shame is when women of power take the opportunity to headline something as big, and supposedly family friendly, as the Super Bowl and use it to teach young girls that seduction is entertaining, modesty is stupid, and talent is only appreciated if it makes men salivate.

I warned you. Dinosaur here.

I know this is pointless. I’m either preaching to the choir or speaking in pig latin. I learned that on facebook this morning, too. Here’s the thing. Something went wrong at the beginning of my generation, about 1960. I know that’s hard to believe when you realize that Barbara Eden was forbidden to show her belly button on I Dream Of Jeannie, and that Ricky and Lucy and even Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore slept in separate beds as married couples on my black and white television set. But don’t be fooled. That was all smoke and mirrors. The evening news and popular music and Haight Ashbury and mini skirts and free love, they all told the truth. That there was no longer truth. Its expiration date had come and gone.

Like the dinosaurs.

I have granddaughters who will inherit the earth we’re leaving to them, and I am afraid for them. I have grandsons who will do the same. I’m afraid for them, too. I know when people stop to analyze whose fault it is that our blue marble has spun out of control on many levels, the finger will point at us, the Baby Boomers. We should have stopped the culture wars. We should have been more tolerant. We should have minded our own business. We should have been more involved.

Don’t worry. I’m not bitter. It’s the same criticism every generation lobs at the previous one. And I’m sure every generation on its way to its eternal reward has worried that those they’re passing the torch to are ill-prepared to run the race. It’s just a pendulum swing. Nobody trusts anybody anymore. We’re all just getting what we can while we can. Until something catastrophic happens and climate change occurs and we bury all the truth we don’t believe in anymore beneath the ground we walk on.

Like the dinosaurs.

That's What Christmas Is All About, Charlie Brown

I couldn’t help myself. It was a steal. Practically half price after the discount and a register receipt coupon I found at the bottom of my purse, I left the drugstore in delight, my very own authentic Peanuts Nativity Scene in hand. Sure, the grandkids are a little old for the toddler-sized toy, but I didn’t pick it up for them. I picked it up for me.

“I’m gonna set it up on the buffet,” I gushed, as my husband stood in the kitchen watching me try to unwrap my unwrapped gift to myself. I cut through layers of tape on the box and pulled out the two-level plastic display, complete with its cardboard replica of painted snow against a starry, dark blue backdrop, all its characters held securely in place with straps lest any sticky-fingered, curious five-year-old try to kidnap them in the middle of CVS.

In the painted firmament, a Snoopy Sheep stood beside the Angel Sally Brown and Wise Woman Peppermint Patty, all of them gazing lovingly at the Holy Family below—Charlie “Joseph” Brown, Lucy “Mary” Van Pelt, and a baby bundle in a bright yellow straw-filled manger resting inside a plastic star-adorned stable.

It was Peace on Earth behind a layer of molded plastic. I couldn’t wait to pull out each cast member and set up their cartoon creche. So I could play, I mean, decorate with it. It was an unbreakable, adorable display comprised of seven simple, symbolic, childlike characters. And, by a cruel twist of packaging fate, every one of them a hostage.

“Do you want some help?” my husband asked from a few feet away while I tried desperately to set the captives free from the police-grade plastic ties securing them to their cardboard platform.

“No,” I grumbled, slicing through the transparent clam shell that covered the whole theft-proof collection. “Whoever invented this stuff,” I whined, using both hands to shove my kitchen scissors under the strapping, “should be arrested.” Cut. Snap. Exhale. I set Mary and Joseph on the table while I tried to release the Baby Jesus from his confinement. “It was easier for Mary to give birth than it is to set this baby free.” Grunt. Groan. “They’re all a bunch of criminals.”

“The Holy Family?” Rob asked, his brows knit together.

“No,” I said, pushing away the razor-sharp edges of constricting plastic. “The people who came up with this packaging.”

Moving up to the celestial plastic floor, I tried in desperation to slide the tip of my supersized scissor blade under tiny plastic straps beneath the Angel Sally so she could take flight, but all I managed to do was knock down the Virgin Mary and send the Baby Jesus flying.

Way past frustration now, I moved Charles Joseph to a new spot on the table where he fell over in exhaustion. Delivery room father, I thought, rolling my eyes. I didn’t know why he was so fatigued. I was the one doing all the work. Flat on her back still, Mary’s frozen smile was aimed at the ceiling, while her faceless baby slept away in the security of his upside-down manger. In the heavens above, three more characters waited—immobilized by fear—for their turn at emancipation.

I dropped the scissors on the table. “I don’t know how to cut the rest of these guys loose without the risk of a piece of jagged plastic slicing through one of my arteries,” I mourned, trying to remove the clamshell. “They’re all stuck in the firmament and I’m afraid to get them down.”

“Let me help,” Rob said, reaching past me to pick up my uncooperative scissors.

“See what I mean? Criminals. Now the guy on blood thinners is risking his life to pull an angel from the starry, blue sky,” I muttered. While I put my head down on the table, Rob, aka Coumadin Man, released the Celestial Sally Brown and set her in front of me where she maintained a prayer posture over the disabled parents.

“It’s starting to look like a crime scene,” I mumbled. “Or an explosion. There are body parts everywhere.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Rob said, clenching his teeth while he released Snoopy from his shackles. “Everybody’s fine. Nobody died. I’m not even bleeding.”

“It shouldn’t be this hard. Listen to this,” I said, staring at my phone. “Google says the best way to cut thick plastic is to drill at least 6 holes through it first. It’ll weaken the structure.”

“And puncture Peppermint Patty. Stop worrying. We’re almost done here.”

Finally, after fifteen minutes of dramatic struggle, they were all free and unharmed. I set them up on the antique sideboard, appropriately placed beneath a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree, its single red ornament dipping in deference to the victorious group below. 

It seemed so easy when I first saw them. Buy them, make them mine, set them up to shine in all their glory. But then there was that problem with all their constraints. A major complication. A huge time investment where I had to call in the rest of my support team to pull off their liberation. It took a village to set their village free.

Very symbolic when you stop to think about it.

I’ve heard people say that God sacrificed His Son when he sent Jesus to earth. It’s true. It was an unbelievable sacrifice. But it was also a covert rescue operation devised by all three of its key players. God was in Christ Jesus, the Bible says, reconciling the world to Himself, not counting our sins against us. The story of Christmas is one of cooperation between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, all working together to buy back what was stolen from them in a long-ago Garden. Us. They loved us so much, together they gave up everything to make us their own.

I thought the little scene I wanted to display on my sideboard was all about a miraculous birth when, in fact, it was all about what it took to set the captives free. I had it wrong for years. As warm as the Nativity story sounded, I couldn’t get past the heavy price God paid to buy us back. I felt guilty when He wanted me to feel loved. If I’d read past the condemnation most preachers want me to hear, I’d have seen where God said He did it for “the joy set before Him.” That joy was us.

I looked at the happy little group on display in my dining room, not even focusing anymore on how difficult it was to release them. I just loved seeing them stand in their freedom.

Merry Christmas. And in the words of the Angel Sally, “Peace on earth, good will from God to men.”

Debbie's Note

“You’re killing me, Smalls,” I told my husband as I handed him his debit card. I swear, our credit union needs to offer those things in a necklace version that Rob can wear around his neck. Two weeks ago was his birthday and I gave him a virtual gift—one of those fancy new propane griddles to replace his grill. Our son-in-law has one, our son just got one, and all the grill loving males in my family think they’re the best thing since kobe beef. “Did you order your grill yet?” I asked my husband a few days ago. And yesterday. And this morning, when I found his debit card abandoned on the desk in the office where he’ll never remember he left it once he’s in the checkout line at Walmart.

“No,” he sighed, getting up from his football game on tv to head into the office. “I’ll take care of it right now.”

Kinda shot myself in the foot there. I was already set up at the desk in the office to spend the morning writing. My coffee cup was there, steamed to just the right temp, my computer glasses were ready at just the right distance from the mouse, and now I had nothing else to do but . . . wait for my husband to order his birthday gift on the computer we share.

I wandered around in circles for a few minutes trying to decide what to do, sat down at the other office desk, and did a little tidying up. Random papers out of the way, busted rubber band in the garbage can, move the coaster to the other side of the laptop. You know, important stuff while I waited.

The second desk is actually my desk. I’ve abandoned it in favor of our main computer while I write that book I’ve been working on for five years. But my antique desk is pretty. It’s a parade of framed photos of my family, inspiring words of encouragement, pretty candles, and a large photobook I left out to remind myself of another project that needs my attention.

Recently, for my sixtieth birthday, my daughter contacted almost sixty of my friends from over the years and asked them to write a note to me about our friendship. She found photos of many of those people, compiled all their letters and pictures into one beautiful collection, and gave it to me at my party so I could cry in front of all my birthday guests. It was the most touching gift I think I’ve ever received. It took me three days and two boxes of Kleenex to read through it. But many of the writers of those letters weren’t there to see me open it. Even the people who were at my party didn’t have time to read through it or find their own letters in print.

I decided I need to write thank you notes to each of those people. All fifty-something of them. A tall order for someone who hates to even send post cards anymore. After a couple of months of writer’s cramp, I stacked the first twenty thank you cards on top of the photo album on my antique desk and never looked at any of it again except to dust it all. But in my warped way of thinking, as long as the whole thing stays there in plain site, I believe I will someday finish the other forty thank-you’s and eventually mail them all out.

“Eventually.” It may be the saddest word ever included by Webster in his dictionary. Synonyms include someday, sooner or later, one day, finally, and the worst of all, in the end. More often than not, someday never comes. It’s a word for the future, not for today. We live in today, not in someday or eventually. I shuffled the stack of written and unwritten thank you cards around so they’d look a little neater where they sat abandoned on my desk, then I shuffled through them in curiosity. None of them had addresses on them—another bad habit I have. I do all this work, I thought, rebuking myself, lick the envelope and label it, but fail to find addresses or stamps and eventually, even if I sent the note out, the recipient will have forgotten the nice thing they did for me.

Halfway through my shuffling, the name on one of the envelopes made me pause. It was written to my friend of thirty-plus years, Debbie Alldredge. I dropped all the other cards, holding this one in my hands as tears of regret filled my eyes. She never got to read it because I never sent it. I thought about it for a few minutes, opened the envelope I will never send, and read the note I’d written to her. Then I looked up what she’d written to me in the photo album my daughter made and cried a little.

Debbie passed away this summer. The good-bye I said to her was supposed to be temporary. I’d see her when we returned from our vacation. Suddenly, everything from the last few hours I spent with her became etched into my mind as I listened to her husband tell me on the phone that she was gone. I’ve never lost a friend like that before. She was probably the funniest woman I’ve ever known. She was also wise. Patient. And the very embodiment of faith in her God. But honestly, the gift she kept giving me was her ability to make me laugh. I told her dozens of times to please write a book about her life—the world needs another Erma Bombeck.

I couldn’t take away the disease that was robbing her of her life. I didn’t have wise words to say. I wasn’t even the close friend I wish I’d been. But when we were together, Debbie told stories and we laughed. We laughed at her illness. We laughed at the fear. We laughed at frustrations. It was like making fun of the fearful disarmed it. So we laughed.

I wish to God I had mailed that note on time. I’d love to say I’ve learned my lesson and will never procrastinate again. That I’ll always be there for everyone I love when they’re hurting at exactly the right time so I’ll never have regrets. But I’m just a flawed person like everyone else. I lose my focus. I forget to pray even though I promise I will. I put off phone calls. I even—gasp—misplace my debit card sometimes.

But I learned something from Debbie. If you can laugh at life, you can get through anything. If she were here, she’d just laugh at the way I wrote out all those thank you’s and never mailed them. So, this morning I held up the note I wrote, open-faced in my hands, and I asked Jesus to show it to her. I know He will. And I’m pretty sure when He does, she’ll have a good laugh about it.

Life is too short to regret all our flaws. There are too many of them and, anyway, I kind of think we need them—fuel for the fire and all that.

It’s just a lot more fun to laugh. Debbie taught me that.

Old School

I’m old school.

And I kind of hate it.

Inside, I’m still the same girl I’ve always been—insecure, naiive, gullible, as optimistic as an ostrich with her head in the sand (if I can’t see it, it’s not really there.) By now, judging by all the gray hiding under my faux red hair, I should be halfway to Methuselah in the wisdom department, but I’m not sure there’s enough evidence to convict me of that. 

I don’t actually know if Methuselah was wise, anyway. The smartest thing he figured out was how to live longer than the rest of the world. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be 969 before I kick off. Who’d be around to come to my funeral?

I know. You’re dying to know my age. Fine. Sixty-one and a quarter. Old, right? I used to think so. When I was young, I sometimes perused the obituaries in the morning newspaper . . . what? You don’t know what a newspaper is? I’d roll my eyes at that, but my optometrist told me there’s so much mileage on them they might get stuck up there. A newspaper was the internet printed on a piece of paper so big that, with clever folding, it could be repurposed into a pirate hat.

So, obituaries. I always checked to see how old people were when they died and sixty-five was about the average. “Yeah, that’s a pretty ripe old age,” I’d think to my twenty-something self, figuring I had about a hundred more years to live before that happened to me. Then I’d fold up the newspaper, wear it around the house for a while, eventually toss it in the trash, and never stop to wonder what kind of neurosis I had that made me wear pirate hats made out of obituaries. 

If sixty-five is a “ripe old age,” then this spring chicken's nearly cooked. Logically, that would mean I only have another three and three-quarters of a year before my eulogy winds up in somebody’s cyber trash, too. Do you have any idea how fast the years roll by now? It even feels like I’m on the downhill side of life. 

Yesterday I was halfway through my thirties and homeschooling my two kids. That afternoon I stood at their graduations. Still clearing the clutter out of their old bedrooms, I bought a new dress to wear at their weddings, and by the time the day was over I had seven grandbabies. And I accomplished all of that while I still felt thirty-five. I mean, I was tired¸ but I was still really young. In my mind. Where it counts.

You’re confused, aren’t you? Maybe you should try some of my coconut oil. Really clears out the cobwebs. What I’m trying to say is that my body is doing some weird things that I’m not prepared for simply because it thinks it has the right to after sixty-one years. But my heart and my mind and my brain and my second brain all think my body needs to get a grip and start acting as young as I feel, which as I said before is thirty-five.

I had a friend who warned me the year I was thirty-nine and seven-eighths that when I hit forty my body would fall apart. First of all, I rebuked that in the name of Jesus. Secondly, I unfriended her from my address book. And finally, I had to wonder what kind of cruel cosmic joke started with a time bomb going off in my body right after I was scheduled to blow out my birthday candles? Who says my body has to fall apart just because I graduated my kids, married them off, and transformed myself into a grandmother in one long day?

And this is my point. The reason it took me over six hundred words to explain. There is no freaking school for people like me who are about to get old. There actually is no “old school.” It’s a lie. Because if there was a school designed to prepare us for menopause and manopause, aching joints and flabby arms, trifocals and colonoscopies, cardiologists and eight-year-old checkout clerks who call me “honey” but still bag my groceries with soup cans on top of my tomatoes—sweet thing, I’d be the first in line when that school opened for business.

It’s not fair that old age can sneak up on us while we’re still young. I feel like I’ve been set adrift in a Sea of Senility. And let me be clear—I did not book this cruise. Somebody has let down this generation of Baby Boomers, and I suspect it’s either the government’s fault . . . or aliens.

That’s all I have to say. Good luck when sixty-one and one quarter comes your way. Maybe by then there’ll be an Old School diploma hanging on your shiplap-covered living room wall right above your mid-century modern lava lamp and antique laptop. You’ll survive old age, too. Just remember one thing—soup cans go on the bottom, tomatoes on top.

I need a nap.

Thanks to Michael Coghlan for his nostalgic photograph of the actual pencil sharpener I probably used fifty-five and one quarter years ago. The original photo can be viewed through this link:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikecogh/37188127474/in/photolist-k6TeEL-YEbSFC-bEr6BG-TKNW7K-8vtfkP-29Dxti-4Ei4E2-4EaEpT-abaV4e-7RaMBm-6cJRoH-dipEZj-3gS6JT-njahZN-RjpCHg-tYv65-bvhBpj-46SjoU-5XLjT9-8DPos1-EnkfA-H2wjLw-5y3zwE-opURkC-6jeTq9-EZktGg-23CvyjW-281Qy19-CWfSpD-23c57Fr-JexA67-251mgrF-23hh4da-23aPT7M-46Ne8z-72fDJj-5GEL1t-BoAxH-21Nptpo-opE7ze

Sweet Defeat

“What is that?” he asked, pointing to the white casserole and its murky brown contents.

“Apple Crisp,” I told my guest, trying to sound confident. “It’s our dessert.”

Actually, it was an experiment. I just didn’t know at the time that’s what I’d made. It should have been delicious. It was full of homegrown apples, Irish butter, unprocessed sugar, sea salt, the best cinnamon you can buy online, and flour. I’ll bet that’s what the problem was. The flour. It wasn’t organic.

I couldn’t blame him for his fearful question. I wasn’t sure I wanted to eat it either, let alone serve the weird-looking concoction. But I knew the ingredients were stellar. And since I thought my normal tried-and-true recipe for apple crisp was too simple and old-fashioned, I figured I’d google something better, my friends would be wowed, and the evening would be a complete success. So, I went online to find someone else’s superior recipe to finish off the comfort meal I’d made for my neighbors. And that’s when it happened.

The internet lied. (Well, it couldn’t have been operator failure.)

“This is the best recipe I’ve ever found!” the author gushed in her too-long post in between all the flashy ads that broke up every paragraph. “I tweaked it and made it better. You’re gonna love it!”

I’d have had her arrested for fabricating evidence, but I threw the proof in the trash and blocked her on my computer.

I blame myself. I don’t even know who that blogger was. Why did I trust someone I’ve never heard of before? Why did I believe her when she’s never once cooked a meal for me? Even more important, why do I keep practicing new recipes and serving them to my neighbors?

To add insult to injury, she raved about her homemade browned butter salted caramel sauce. That ridiculous enticement cost me a precious hour in the kitchen, one of my favorite Pampered Chef spatulas, the first batch of ruined caramel sauce, and a second with a very distinct hint of scorch.

It was supposed to be the finale to a fine dinner. The piece de resistance following a satisfying meal. But more than all of that, it was supposed to bring my friend and me victory if the cards weren’t going right. That was the plan—it’s always the plan. If Lady Luck is flirting with the boys, giving them all the breaks, we retaliate with sugar and inject our opponents with enough carbs to put sucrose in a coma. That’s how we win.  First, the four of us eat dinner, then the men cheat at cards, we break for dessert, and finally we show ‘em who’s boss.

Apparently, that only works if the dessert is delicious. We lost six out of seven rounds and half of us went home with a headache.

So, thanks a lot, internet, for failing to taste test all those recipes you let just anybody put up in public. I used to think you had all the answers, but now I know you’re just in it for the pop-up ads. From now on I’m going old school. Back to my worn-out recipe box. Next time I need a tasty treat, I’ll look up the right way to make it in one of the hundreds of recipe books gathering dust on my shelves. And if that fails, it’s back to vanilla ice cream and store-bought chocolate syrup.

Winning at cards is too important to risk gambling on homemade salted caramel sauce.

Selah

Selah.

I love this word, which is weird because definitions are important to me and nobody knows what "selah" really means. It shows up 71 times in the Bible and once on my foot. Where I had it tattooed. The word with no meaning. It makes people ask questions. People like my eight-year-old granddaughter, Tully.

“That’s pretty, YaYa,” she said a few weeks ago. “What does it say?”

“Selah.”

“What does that mean?”

Well, that’s the question of the ages, isn’t it? Since it’s found almost entirely in the book of Psalms which was the hymnbook of its day, most people think it’s a musical direction. It’s a place where musicians pause to take a breath and let the instruments take over for a while. A pause or a rest. That’s the reason I bit my lip for ten minutes while a talented tattoo artist needled it into my skin last year. Because I need a reminder, in a place I often see, to rest.

I have another tattoo, my first one, that actually is a musical quarter rest. “Is that a bat?” a friend asked me when I showed the healed version to her. In the months since I got that one, only two people have ever recognized that it’s a quarter rest—that zigzageddy shape which, when you view it sideways, resembles . . . a bat.

So, I have this hangup with the word, “rest.” I love it. I need it. I crave it. Not the kind of rest like when your bones are weary or your brain is bored and you plop into a chair to watch Gilligan’s Island reruns for a while. I need the kind of rest that refreshes my soul. The problem is you can’t be a worry wart and rest at the same time. Oil and water, that one.

Six years ago, I found out I had cancer. It was terrifying. I didn’t know for a while if this was my final curtain call or if I’d be around for a few more performances. Six years ago. It was not my curtain call. But after my surgery, it took a while to heal. I often sat and read in my favorite chair, my feet crossed and propped on an ottoman, where I had a view of a plaque across the room, a promise inscribed on it.  A promise which carried me through that entire experience. “The Lord will fight for you,” it reads, “you need only to be still.”

It was my literal lifeline for months. Years. Actually, it’s still my lifeline. Just to know that the God of the universe thinks enough of me to literally fight my battles for me, to fight for me, is overwhelming. I sat in my chair with one foot crossed over the other, looking at that promise on the plaque on the wall, and I decided I would someday tattoo that verse on my propped-up foot—a picture of the physical rest forced upon me, symbolic of the spiritual rest I craved.

I thought about it for five years. I wrote it with a pen on my foot. Which tickled. And I made an important decision. Thirty-eight letters is too many to tattoo on any part of my body. Especially when it’s your first tattoo. Which is why it took five years to get that little quarter rest on my left forearm. I couldn’t figure out how to condense all those letters into one.

Until the rest. The one that resembles a bat when you look at it sideways.

Somehow, it wasn’t enough. My sister, who is the instigator of the whole tattoo idea though she’d never had one either, decided to get one of her own once I took the plunge, and wanted me to come along. I spent a few weeks looking at the blank spot on my resting foot where I really wanted that tattoo in the first place. I'd chickened out because everybody said it’s so painful to get one there. Now I made up my mind. Five letters was better than thirty-eight. We made an appointment together, Lynette got her first tat, and I my second.

It’s beautiful. It’s right where I wanted it. It, as well as my bat tattoo, both remind me to rest because God thinks I’m worth fighting for.

“YaYa?” Tully said, breaking into my thoughts. “What does it mean?”

“It’s from the Psalms,” I began. “It means to, like . . .”

I had to figure out how to explain it in language an eight-year-old could understand without all the drama of cancer and surgery and weeping in a chair for weeks while I wondered if I would live or die. Condense it, Eula. Just like you condensed that verse in Exodus to five letters in a tattoo.

“It means to pause, to take a breath. Stop and think about how good God is.”

She nodded like she understood and didn’t know why I’d had such a hard time explaining it to her. “So, it means to just calm down,” she said, in all of her eight-year-old wisdom. Now I was speechless.

I paused.

I took a breath.

I thought about how smart eight-year-olds can be.

And I didn’t have anything better to add to her definition of the beautiful tattoo on my right foot which reminds me to kick fear and terror to the curb while God fights for me.

“Yup,” I said. “It means to just calm down.” Finally I know what all those Bible translators have never figured out. But one word is still better than three when it comes to biting your lip in a tattoo parlor.

Selah.

Frayed Edges

Guilt.
Shame.
Condemnation.
Jesus took it all away.

But it still gets my attention. Somehow, it’s easier to tune in on the droning, repetitive voice of the accuser instead of the voice of my soul’s Lover. Why is my selective hearing selecting that?

You will not need to fight in this battle. Take your positions, stand still, and see the deliverance of the Lord Who is with you.

I know He is. But still I fight. Still I fall. Still I fail. Still.

Then be still.

Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud.

Yeah. That’s what it feels like. Compressed by the pressure of a low-lying black cloud. Pretty sure that’s not the abundant life.

A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

But what about moral standards? My expectations? His expectations! What about those? And judgment from other people. What about that? What if I mess this whole thing up and people point and say, “I knew she was a faker.”

It’s a dead end to obsess over self. If you want to find the way out into the open and a spacious, free life, turn your attention to God.

So, I’m pretty self-focused here in this game of moral living—that’s what you’re saying? That’s why I keep listening to the wrong voice and agreeing with it?

For you who welcome Him, in whom He dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you experience life on God’s terms. When God lives and breathes in you (and He does, as surely as He did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life.

It feels dead when I cave in to condemnation. “Life on God’s terms.” Interesting. I’ve been living on my terms thinking that was what pleased God. You know, keep a log of sin, apologize a lot, grovel if necessary, crawl around believing I’m a worm He let in to His kingdom against His better judgment.

Okay, well, that’s messed up. Don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent? There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!

I get really tired of hearing the accuser’s voice. He’s pretty good at pointing out my inabilities and disfunction.

I’ll bet.

I keep trying to protect myself by always doing the right thing. You know, keep the law with the help of God’s Spirit.

How’s that working for you?

Pretty wormy.

Listen, God went for the jugular when He sent His own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In His Son, Jesus, He personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.

But what about the greatest Commandment and the second greatest—and the other eight?

The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.

“Simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.” I don’t know what to say. That’s the best news I’ve ever heard, even in church.

Sad. Now I don’t know what to say.

So, I don’t need to search my heart to see if there’s any wicked way in me?

You’re out of your league if you do that. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God!

Then it really is finished. He doesn’t expect any self-improvement efforts from me?

How can you improve on a plan that cost God the life of His Son?

You’re right. I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope.

The perfect place to be. Maybe it’s time to let go.

It’s been a pretty lousy rope, now that you mention it.

This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike, “What’s next, Papa?” Like I said, a new power is in operation. God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know Who He is, and we know who we are: Father and children.

When I look inside at me, I forget who I really am. That’s where the downhill slide begins.

God knew what He was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love Him along the same lines as the life of His Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity He restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in Him.

So, when I focus on Him, then I’ll see the real me?

The real you.

Even on my worst days?

Even then.

I’ll still be His?is

Still.

So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing Himself to the worst by sending His own Son, is there anything else He wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us?

No, I guess not.

And who would dare tangle with God by messing with someone who belongs to Him? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—Who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us.

That’s not exactly what I’ve heard from the pulpit, either.

Maybe you’ve been facing the wrong pulpits. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us?

Well, now that you ask . . .

There’s no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not threats, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture. None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us.

I guess I didn’t look at it like that.

I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.

Not even if I get in His way?

Seriously?

Right. I guess that covers it.

It covers it, heals, renews it, settles it, transforms, empowers, secures, and holds it.

Nothing can get between me and God’s love for me—not even me.

Not even you.

So, the best thing to do when the accusations start . . .

And they will . . .

Is just be still?

Every single time.






A conversation with Paul in Romans 8 (via The Message Bible) and the bold promise of 2 Chronicles 20:17.

Thanks to Al Levine for the use of his photo of this frayed rope. The original photo can be viewed at https://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/26240804093/in/photolist-6VFVAJ-LvDypq-pEDbEm-3adyAF-oZhG4u-64oSDk-Tn93Sb-cePW8S-FYNYQM-aSKssM-71NkLC-2pSgZz-9xMavz-5rQ313-aURRp4-mqJhv-PH8Tg-2ehya2z-EagMd-7LzVG9-y8bkpY-KW2GdR-3Qzy2-4xPcae-3ky4Y-o5L1Wg-6NWd32-cJJtr1-nd6CTz-23vh7E-7DVbfs-3ePfSp-aRpG1i-8ie4tL-8rurbu-7wJwuR-88xVkL-4E5tXw-n6UY9z-5hN2Fa-BtFzgD-7ckqvQ-aEyX2H-27YR3V-QpZLmg-QzR4i7-J5Jsxp-bYFtQ-ot51xR-dNpXFG