We Home Schooled . . . Part One

We home schooled. 

For ten total years times two children two years apart less five years spent in a failed public school experiment with a side order of kindergarten.

And if you think that was hard to follow, you should have seen me teach my kids algebra.  Scary.

I felt like the most unqualified home educator on the planet.  When I first heard about the radical idea of home schooling, I said in a panic, “I can’t do that!  I’m not trained.  The government has convinced me that they alone know what's best for my kids!”

Silly rabbit.  Tricks aren’t for kids.

So, filled with trepidation, I entered the home school arena with my eldest, the five-year-old.  Those poor firstborns—we’re always testing our ideas on them.  Let’s just say, it was a less than wonderful year.  I got the wrong curriculum for the right kid who had an atypical learning style and wasn’t ready to ‘crack the reading code’ even though he was the age the government says every kid should be when they learn to read and he hated paperwork even though the curriculum said if I gave him enough of it every day eventually I would win him over to the joys of sitting at a desk with a pencil and he’d forget about the great outdoors and how much fun it is to run and jump and climb.

That’s a run-on sentence and completely unacceptable unless you write a blog—in which case you get to make the rules.  This is my blog.  These are my rules.  I like run-on sentences when they make a point and here’s my point:  incessant paperwork isn’t for five-year-olds and reading on their own might not be either.

Yet.

So we ditched the home school foray, convinced that we were not among the amazing few who could successfully pull it off.  And . . . the grandparents rejoiced, breathing a sigh of relief that we had, at last, come to our senses before ruining their grandchildren.

We maintained our senses for the next five years, fully supporting public education in our local neighborhood, serving as classroom helpers, field trip supervisors, class party chairpersons, and even PTO president. We were so well known on the campus even the janitors thought we lived there.

Ironically, though we put our son into school in the first grade without a mastery of phonics, we still were the ones who taught him to read. After enrolling him, I breathed a sigh of relief that somebody else would take over his education. Boy, was I surprised when his reading assignments came home with him every night and we still had to sit next to him on the sofa and force him to see Jack run.  In retrospect, what was needed was for us to ‘let Lee run’.  I’m amazed to this day, twenty-five years later, that he turned out to be a lover of books and knowledge after a tumultuous ride on that reading railroad.

Let me be clear—our kids had some wonderful teachers in their public school years.  They also had a couple of bad ones.  And sometimes the bad ones make a bigger impact than the good ones.  That’s the risk.  And the heartbreak. In second grade, I confronted my son’s teacher about her terrifying fits of anger unleashed in class, thinking that was better than going over her head to the principal.  I should have just gone over her head.  The next year we pulled him out of a gifted program after only nine weeks due to similar issues. Third graders shouldn’t have stomach aches every day just because they answer roll call.

Our daughter started public school in kindergarten, untainted by the failures of a fledgling home school mother, the year after we enrolled our son.  Unlike her brother, she learned to write her full name in class. (I’d only taught our son to write his first name when he was her age—hey, I knew who he was.) She loved school.  She made friends, Christmas ornaments, and good grades.  For the first two years, school was too much fun to miss.  But the first day of second grade, she came home with a dour face and prophesied to her dad and me, “This isn’t going to be a fun year.”  She still has good intuition.  And she was right—it wasn’t fun that year.  (Reference the “bad teacher” comment above.) 

So for a full year we researched better ways to take back the responsibility for our kids’ education than the one we’d chosen the first time.  We picked what was left of the brains of parents still in the trenches, watched them in action, attended seminars and conventions, and prayed.  A lot.  Then we voted as a family, made a unanimous decision, and went all in, never looking back.

It took three years before we caught our stride, found our comfort zone, built some confidence and began to understand the good, the bad and the ugly of curriculum.  Three years before we found our way into already established home school co-ops with other families in our area.  Three years before we stopped thinking we were out of our minds.

But it only took one day for the collective blood pressure of our family to return to normal after five years in a system that lost track of the souls of our kids and sold them out to mass production. 

Which is not to say that we didn’t have blood pressure spikes in the home school environment.  I once heard a speaker, i.e. home educator encourager, tell me and a bunch of other novices that teaching your kids at home is a whole new kind of pressure which squeezes out character imperfections so they can be dealt with – and your kids won’t be perfect either. 

Writing on the wall, baby.

Chickens Live Longer

We knew where they hung out.

Hidden by a low lying cloud of smoke, we couldn’t actually see them, but we knew they were there.  Right across from the high school, smoking together in the dirt every morning before school. Potheads, druggies, non-conformists. The few, the brave, the wrong.

They were the reason I learned to cross my legs in high school and skip potty breaks til I got home.  Everyone did.  To this day, I can detect the smell of pot from a hundred yards away, all because of the girls’ bathroom.  What amazed me was none of the adults ever did anything about it.  I guess they didn’t care as long as no one smoked grass in their restrooms.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not here to discuss the morality of marijuana.  In fact (and don’t suck in too much shocked air here), I have recently come to the conclusion that medical marijuana can be a good idea.  I know—let my red hair go curly, and the next thing you know, I’m ditching my conservative roots.  Not true.  I only ditched my gray roots. 

My dad was a narcotics parole officer in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in the late 1960’s.  He witnessed the birth of the deadly drug culture. We didn’t get   G-rated bedtime stories when I was a kid—instead, we heard about the glamorous lives of twenty-something junkies who slept off their highs in roach infested flats. I knew what a dirty hypodermic needle looked like when I was ten.  My dad had a display board full of them, all confiscated from free spirited heroin addicts.

So, what does information like that do to a young, impressionable mind?  Well, let me just say I never even smoked a cigarette when I was growing up. I didn’t have my first adult drink until I was way into adulthood. In school I had the reputation of being a ‘goody two-shoes’. The girl who was ‘pure as the driven snow’.  And it’s lasted into my adult years.  I even had a boss who leaned over my desk one morning and said he’d like to get me drunk sometime to “find out what you’re really like.”  I told him that was an idea doomed to failure—not because I’m that good at keeping secrets, as he surmised, but because I’m that good at staying sober.  Then I found a new employer.

I’ve always had an overactive conscience, which is both a blessing and a curse.  It’s kept me out of a lot of trouble.  And it’s given me a guilt complex the size of Trump Tower.  My idea of non-conformity is telling the kid at the Burger King counter that I am serious when I say I don’t want pickles on my hamburger.

So, I’m a chicken.  I’m not clever enough to figure out creative ways to maintain a criminal lifestyle.  I got pulled over for speeding a few months ago, and when the cop came up to my window I was already in tears apologizing for taking up his valuable time with my stupidity. I confessed my transgression before he even had a chance to explain why he stopped me.  See what I mean?  I suck at crime.

Yep, I’m a free range chicken—living inside a fence that restricts my movements very little.  There’s an irony in that.  Usually we think fences are constrictive.  The truth is, they give us security, making the boundaries clear so we can enjoy the freedom we have inside.

Next month I’ll be twice the age of rock legends like Janis Joplin,  Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse, whose personal demons secured their membership in the infamous Twenty-Seven Club—a list of celebrities who never made it to their   twenty-eighth birthdays thanks to their risky, self-destructive lifestyles.  If any one of them had found the security they desperately longed for, they’d probably still be around to blow out candles on this year’s birthday cake, too.

There’s nothing wrong with being a chicken.  Chickens live longer.

(Photo courtesy of Le Petit Poulailler's photostream, Flickr.com)

It's Gr-r-r-r-r-reat!!

It was the trip of a lifetime. 

We still talk about it and wish we could do it again.  What amazes us is we did this extravagant thing with  money squirreled away while we raised two teenagers on one income.  Wow.  We used to be good!

Eight thousand five hundred miles by car.  Actually, it was a brand new mini-van with two bench seats, one for each kid.  Awesome!  (Imagine sing-song voice here.)  With head jacks connected to the built-in sound system and rear air conditioning, even the kids thought our new Aerostar was cooler than a Hummer. 

We spent the month of October looking for a real autumn, and breaking in the van on a road trip from Arizona to New England and back.  When we got home, the van wasn’t new anymore.  We drove  through twenty-four states in four weeks, and even tip-toed across a little piece of Canada where we experienced Lay’s potato chips seasoned with sugar instead of salt.  If they’d put more ice in their soft drinks, I just might go back.

But the whole trip was nearly derailed our first week on the road.  After experiencing the beauty of Colorado, Wyoming’s obsessive antelope massacres, cheesy Wisconsin, South Dakota’s presidential profiles, and night terrors on the interstates of downtown Chicago, we thought we’d arrived, sort of.  Believing we were now seasoned road warriors with a few thousand adventurous miles under our steel belts, we decided to deviate from our AAA Triptik a little and avoid Detroit, Michigan.

Triptik knows best.  Make a note of that.

It seemed innocent enough. Even kind of cute.

“Hey, kids,” we said over our shoulders to the two hostages seated behind us, “let’s eat breakfast in Battle Creek and look for Tony The Tiger!  Whadya say?!!!”

They didn’t say anything.  Their headphones were conveniently plugged into the sound system. 

An hour later, filled up and plugged back in, we headed for Lansing, me in the Navigator seat and my hubbie in the Driver’s. And it’s here that I want to interject this thought:  Of the two people seated in the pilot/co-pilot positions, isn’t it logical that the one who most needs a good sense of direction is the Driver??  Oh, shut up.  What do you know?

I’m a good navigator, even without a survivable sense of true north.  I got us through Chicago at night, didn’t I??  All I have to do is keep turning the map the direction we’re going and I can get us anywhere.  So after forty-five minutes of driving east, when we began seeing signs for Battle Creek, Michigan—again­­—I came to the only possible conclusion:  Rob made a wrong turn.

Finally!  A mistake that wasn’t my fault!  Hubbie hadn’t asked me for directions since before we went to Battlecreek the first time, so clearly I was not to blame here.  Gleefully, I rubbed my hands together, thinking how fun it would be to tease Rob about his little faux pas and generously extend my empathetic understanding.

But, once again, I forgot who I was dealing with.  That cool-as-a-cucumber countenance he wears around every day is just a clever disguise for a calculating charlatan.  He calmly admitted making a mistake . . . when he let me be the navigator.  And the next thing you know, those turncoat children I gave birth to jumped ship and sold out to their dad’s side.  Wouldn’t you know they’d all turn out to be a bunch of McLeods, who like nothing better than harassing innocents like me.  I knew if word of this roundtrip-trip ever got out to the patriarch of the clan (who has always liked Rob best)—well, that unfortunate Strawberry Shortcake episode from years past would no longer bear any resemblance to humiliation.

Instantly I began to fast and pray.  To no avail.  I guess it was too soon after breakfast.

Let’s just say I no longer believe Tony The Tiger’s hometown is gr-r-r-r-r-reat! 

But I do know how Battle Creek got its name.  Next time, this navigator is taking us through Detroit.  They don’t have road rage there.

Always A Bridesmaid . . . Again

Second place is the first loser. 

I saw that on a t-shirt once, and instantly disliked it.  Seems like a good reason to see a therapist, but a crummy way to sell clothes.  But after my fourth failure in two years to snag first place, I’m thinking of buying the shirt.

Maybe I set my hopes too high.  Everyone thinks they have a winning speech or they wouldn’t even attempt competition.  And one of those people is right.  But what about the rest of us?  The ‘also rans’?  The ‘close, but no cigars’?  Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, you know.  It’s hard to argue with that logic, especially when I feel like I got nailed in the head by a horseshoe again.

What is a judge looking for?  It’s so frustrating to try and then tweak and try some more in a speech contest, only to fall short again with no earthly idea why.  While the phenomenal organization I belong to is brilliant at providing evaluations for speakers in clubs—and even offering evaluation competitions—the place it matters most goes unaddressed.  No evaluations are ever given following a speech competition of any kind.  Participants are thanked for rounding out the gallery of players, but never told where they need to improve. The result is that we all go home second guessing ourselves.  “Maybe I didn’t move enough or speak loudly enough or have vocal variety or make eye contact.  Was my energy down? Did I run over time? Was the speech defective or just my delivery?  Maybe I should stick to Scrabble competitions.”

If we’re courageous, we’ll try again in six months or a year with a new battle plan and hope this one is a winner.

I know.  This sounds like sour grapes.  And I’m not even much of a wine drinker.  Second place or third place or making it through more than one contest are all honorable achievements.  I just don’t know how to do better when there’s no venue for constructive criticism.  I feel like we’re shooting in the dark—one of us will come closest to the bull’s-eye, but we’re never allowed to view our own target.

Yeah, today I feel like I may always be a bridesmaid, but someday I think my prince will come.  Maybe if I wear one of those t-shirts, he’ll recognize me. 

It couldn’t hurt.

That's Entertainment

I hate sad movies.  I don’t want to pay fourteen dollars for two tickets and sixteen bucks for snacks so that I can go home without the makeup I wore to the show.

I go to the movies to be entertained.  It’s not entertaining to watch me blubber and blow my nose.  Just ask my husband.

Why can’t we have a love story, or an espionage flick, or a dramedy that doesn’t require knocking off the main character at the end?  Don’t movie producers realize that’s a criminal offense? It’s not romantic to kill people!  Otherwise, every February fourteenth  we should commemorate foul play instead of foreplay.  Of course, there was that Valentine’s Day Massacre. . .

Something has gone terribly wrong. And I can’t even blame Hollywood.  Most of my friends think sad endings make a movie “good”.  I ask you, was it “good” when Forrest Gump’s Jenny bought the farm one short year after she married him?  Was it “good” when the Andrea Gail went down in “The Perfect Storm”, taking George Clooney with her?  How about Guido, who managed to keep his son hidden and happy despite being in a Nazi death camp, only to lose his life right before the Yanks arrived, leaving his young son fatherless?  That one was called “Life Is Beautiful”.  See?  That’s how they suck you in—give it a feel good title and pull the rug out from under you when your popcorn runs out.

They should set up counseling centers inside movie theaters free of charge.  They owe us that much. 

I blame all of this on the 1993 movie, “Summersby”.  Jodie Foster and Richard Gere fell in love  during the Civil War  and, when it was over, Richard died for a crime he didn’t commit while Jodie walked happily through the town remembering him fondly.  As the credits rolled, I turned to my husband in disbelief and said, “I just lost two hours of my life that I can never get back.”  That’s the last time I ever watched a love story without looking up the ending first.  Talk about a plot killer.

Of course, my extreme sensitivities have severely limited my theater options.  I’ve never seen “Splendor In The Grass” (but that’s because I have allergies).  I skipped “A Walk To Remember”  because remembering plot catastrophes makes me depressed.  I avoided “Nights in Rodanthe” when I heard the romantic ending included Richard Gere’s demise in a freak mudslide.  The guy just can’t seem to stay alive—so far, he’s two for two.  Finally, I steered clear of “Autumn in New York” because the music was sad and I knew that meant either Richard would succumb in the end, or Winona Ryder.  Or, perhaps, the audience—who wearied of Richard’s womanizing ways and wished the author had knocked him off instead Winona.

All of this might explain why last Friday afternoon found my husband and me sitting in a theater with twenty other fifty-somethings, laughing until our sides split while Moe, Larry and Curly poked each other in the eyes and slapped each other in the faces. 

Now that’s a good movie.  Where violence doesn’t kill and the only casualties are the spoiled egomaniacs from the Jersey Shore.

Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck.

"Carma"

I think it could have happened to anybody.  I never expected it to happen to me, but that just goes to show how limited my imagination can be.

I’m a pielady.  And by that I mean, I bake pies.  I enjoy eating them, too, but most of all I enjoy making them.  What I don’t enjoy is watching them fall upside down on the floor. 

The first time it happened, I didn’t actually see it.  I just . . . felt it.  And I learned my lesson.  I really did.  Never put a hot lemon meringue pie in the back of a station wagon and break speed limits while delivering it to a fire station.  When I lifted the tailgate, the inside of our car looked like a giant yellow Nike swoosh. It smelled better than tennis shoes, but the pie was just as inedible. 

I continued to break speed limits, but never with a hot pie in the car.  Until last month.  Procrastination might come into play here, but that’s a blog for another day.  Let’s just say I should have made that fresh blueberry pie the night before instead of parking my chassis on the sofa watching American Idol.  Hot fruit pies don’t slice well, and this one was going to be served in about an hour.  But I figured if I put it on the front seat of my new Tahoe (you’re wincing already, aren’t you?) and aimed all the air conditioner vents at it, it would cool off enough to serve up beautifully to the ‘ooh’s, and ‘aahh’s,  and “hey, everyone, this pie’s still warm!” of my admirers.  Carma was about to kick in.

Baking lesson number two:  never let a good pie go to your head.  As I daydreamed about the compliments, I failed to see the brakelights of the van in front of me.  The good news is I didn’t have to meet that driver by accident.  The bad news is—exactly what you thought was going to happen—a blue Nike swoosh on the floorboard of my formerly new Tahoe.  And I was late for Toastmasters.

A couple of weeks later, my husband and I were in Florida visiting my sick father-in-law in the hospital.  Word to the wise: overworked nurses pay extra attention to sick patients whose family members bring them pizza and pies.  So on a warm tropical afternoon, I made two blueberry pies, one for the nursing staff and one for our fatigued family.

In retrospect, I should have paid attention to my instincts and baked apple pies instead.  The truth is, I was just being lazy.  See, apple pies are more labor intensive than blueberry. So I made two beautiful blueberry pies.  In cheap aluminum pie tins.  Slow down, I’m not stupid - just clumsy.  I put those gorgeous pastries on individual cookie sheets so I could carry them safely to and from the oven.  Sheesh.  You have no confidence in me, do you?

I put one of the pies in the oven.  But when I turned to grab the other one, I bumped the cookie sheet it was waiting on, and the whole thing did a reverse two-and-a-half pike and kissed the kitchen floor with flourish.  Tearfully, I scored it at 9.8 and would have given it a ten if it had landed right side up.

Now, at this point, I want to mention that I had a co-conspirator.  I’m not making excuses, I’m just saying that sometimes audacity requires a push.  My sister-in-law, who shall remain nameless but is the youngest of my husband’s siblings, was watching the culinary aerobics and quickly admonished me, “Don’t touch it!  We can save it!”  And, God forgive me, we scooped the fallen, but not broken, pastry up off of the recently cleaned floor (it was, it really was), scooped out the protected blue contents, made new crusts, and drove the resurrected dessert over to those deserving nurses in the hospital. I heard they really enjoyed it.  I’m so grateful we could save it.

Maybe that was the last straw.  In my defense, I did tell the truth to the family before I delivered that pastry, and they felt, too, how unfortunate it was that the gift pie hit the floor instead of the other one.  So, I don’t really think I should have been the only one held accountable by the “what goes around, comes around” law of life.

We flew home a few days after the last piece of blueberry pie was consumed by my brother-in-law.  It was an unusually empty flight which gave my husband the coveted aisle seat and placed me in my favorite spot next to the window.  Better yet, we  were able to set my computer bag with all of our electronics under the middle seat, giving both of us ample leg room.

Halfway through the flight, my panicked husband grabbed my arm and pulled my bag out from under the seat. I didn’t understand what was wrong until the woman in front of us freaked out--apologizing profusely--and a flight attendant handed us at least a hundred paper towels.  While walking up the aisle back to her seat, the plane lurched, the lady in seat 12C dropped her beverage upside down on seat 12D, and its entire contents funneled directly into my open bag.  My laptop, camera, and our phones were baptized with roughly eight ounces of tomato juice.

I still wonder if that woman worked in the nurses’ station on my father-in-law’s floor. I guess I’ll never know for sure. But she was wearing a Nike windbreaker. 

Carma.  It never gets mad—it just gets even.

Fearless

I tried to prepare for an empty nest. 

But I was not prepared for questioning my parenting career, my mortality, or my significance. I was not prepared for memory fades, heart palpitations or emotional freefalls.  They say growing older isn’t for sissies.  But I am a sissy! A whiner. A weakling! Even worse, a wuss.

And the irony of the empty nest syndrome is that it was the filling of the nest that made my courage take flight in the first place.  Am I the only one who wearies of paradoxes?  (Or is it paradoses . . . . paradi? It can’t be paradise.)

I remember clearly the day my fearlessness ran for cover.  It was my tenth wedding anniversary, and I sat shivering in a tiny tent on the edge of a sloping mountain in a torrential rainstorm.  Any minute I expected my husband and I to be swept over the edge of the Mogollon Rim, along with our soggy shelter, to our certain deaths below.  Our young children would be left, alone, to be raised by people who were not us, wondering for the rest of their childhoods what happened to their parents, while our petrified bodies lay crumpled in the desolate wilderness, undiscovered until only our teeth were left as identification decades later. 

Of course, that didn’t really happen.  Instead, we got in our unreliable vehicle which wearied of my whining and actually started up when Rob turned the key.  Then we drove safely down that frozen mountain to a warm cabin with a fireplace. 

But that’s not the point.  The point is, I didn’t want our children to become orphans.  And I lost my sense of adventure. As a matter of fact, in my little world, “adventure” is now the “A” word.  Don’t even think of using it around me.  I’ll smack you.

Still, I wish I could become . . . courageous again.  After all, my kids are grown.  The risk of leaving them as orphans now is . . . zero.  But the risk of mortality is one hundred percent.  Nobody leaves this earth alive.  I remember the day I first understood that, too.  A cold hearted doctor unexpectedly told me that I had a dangerous cancer on my arm and, poof!  Suddenly I had an expiration date.

Surgery removed the threat, but not the fear.  Fear lasts longer, it turns out. 

So, where does Fearlessness go to hide?  And how do I get it to reappear?  Will a friendly, “ollie ollie oxen free!” do it?  Maybe it’s afraid I’ll confuse it with adventurous and it’ll wind up with a black eye.  Just goes to show you—an empty nest can be a perilous place, full of homeless hormones.

I don’t know what the answer is exactly.  But it does seem like somewhere between fear and fearlessness lies a happy medium where new experiences beckon and seasoned experience discerns.

It’s ironic that even after the baby birds are long gone, the nest remains—guess it was made of sturdy material.  Maybe I’m not done yet.  And perhaps significance is a medal born of courage and tenacity. After all, we did launch those young adults.  They never were abandoned.  Could a nest turn out to be a launching pad? A safe place from which to pursue a new life, for both young and old alike?  

Maybe if I keep turning my face into the wind and lifting my wings, I’ll fly far above the tiny voice of fear below and wonder why I ever let it ground me.

So long, wuss. Hello, wisdom.  It’s time to be who I really am. I was made to soar. 

Oh, pooh.

My dog has an owner who needs to be walked.  So I rounded up my canine coach and outfitted her with a purple leash.  Then I talked to her before we left the house.

“Now, you’ve already poohed, right, in the privacy of our own backyard, so you don’t need to do it out in public like doggie trash, ok?”

She looked at me sincerely with uncrossed legs.

“Good dog,” I told her.

She lied.

I didn’t have a doggie bag.  She doesn’t have scruples.

Back up the grassy hill we walked to the Little Black Bag dispenser.  Then cross country over the grassy hill, searching for the two little nuggets she left for posterity.

“I’m shocked and appalled,” I told her.  “You should have done this at home like civilized people.”  And we headed back to the sidewalk.

She paused again in the grass beside the concrete walkway, and now four little nuggets shone in the sun.

“What?!”  I said sternly.  “Now we have to go up that hill, get another Little Black Bag, and come back down here so I, who did not make those messes, can pick them up with only this little piece of black plastic between me and absolute disgust.  This is the reason I don’t walk you!”

I carried the little nasty gram back up the hill, just like the one I’d carried five minutes earlier, giving her a piece of my mind the whole way.

“Well, this is just repulsive!  And humiliating!  Everyone can see what you did right there in broad daylight.  And now I’m carrying it.  Who’s the pet and who’s the owner?  Hmmmmmm??”

We walked purposely for fifteen minutes and then at an accelerated heart rate caused by significant irritation for another ten.  That’s three activity points on Weight Watchers.

I think I should get extra credit for bathroom duty.

Rain

I must be crazy.  It’s 48 degrees outside and 100 per cent humidity.  But it’s raining.  After three months with nothing, it’s finally raining.  So I had to come out here and smell it and listen to it and watch it.  At least until I’m cold.

Was that my breath I saw?  Okay.  I’m cold.  Going in now.

It’s quiet.  I’m the only one up except for our dog, the super sleuth.  And she’s sulking in the corner because her bathroom ceiling is currently leaking big time—if you know what I mean—forcing her to air dry.  Well, I’d be sulking, too.  I hate it when my hairdo gets wet.

What is it about rain that’s so comforting to me?  Some people detest it.  They love getting the drought-ending moisture, but they hate the gray skies and being on house arrest.

But the light still comes through the clouds.  It’s just not a blue sky.  And nobody should be looking straight at the sun anyway.  It seems to me that rainy days are safer than dry ones.  They’re just . . . wetter. 

Rain cools things off.  We’ve been flirting with summer this spring like a teenage boy on a college campus—we’re not ready for that much heat yet.  Slow down the Scoville train.  It’s gonna be one hot tamale around here soon enough.

Rain is peaceful.  At least, this kind of rain is.  Slow, lethargic, playfully releasing raindrops onto puddles just to see what new patterns it can create.  It reminds me of a picture taken of my daughter when she was sixteen, sitting on a rock next to cascading water, laughing as she dipped her toes in and out of the wet stream, watching the current flow around her feet and gently tickle them.

Maybe it’s just that I’m attracted to water.  Which doesn’t seem to make sense.  I mean, after all, I chose to live in the desert.  But one of my favorite things to do when we travel is to stand on a beach—once the sun leaves to go bother somebody else—and watch the waves while a cool wind styles my hair.  A couple of weeks ago we did that after sunset when all we could see of the water were the white outlines of the incoming tide. We stood in the sand, facing into the wind of an approaching cold front and looked at the stars.  You should have seen the hairdo nature gave me after an hour of that. 

I may never get to the bottom of my obsession with rain.  It just makes me take a deep breath and let go.  God is here.  He brings rain to the desert and comfort to my heart.  I can count on it as much as the rainbow that always follows a storm.  He never made a promise He didn’t keep, and every time it rains, He puts his signature on the blue sky to remind me of that.

I spell relief,  “R-A-I-N”.  Cool, cleansing rain always comes.  I just have to wait for it.

Detour

It's been a hard month in our Clan McLeod.  And to be honest, the sorrow impacting our family with the serious illness of the family patriarch has leveled me a little.  Taken the wind out of my sails.  Distracted me from the enjoyment I usually find in the indulgence I call writing.  I'm still here.  I'm taking notes.  I'll have a lot to say when I figure out a few more things.  Or maybe I'll just have a lot to say as a way of figuring things out.

But in the meantime, if you believe in prayer, mention my father-in-law, Bob, to my Father above, would you?  We love him so much.

Holding Fast

I married a McLeod.

It’s a package deal, marriage. You take them, they take you. If life smiles on you, it’s a Christmas package.

I sit here on their porch, soaking in the view of blooming pink azaleas, quenching my thirst for color in huge draughts only desert dwellers can understand. The awning window cranked open refreshes me with the whisper of swooning tree branches and cool, Gulf breezes. For over a hundred years this house and these trees have communed here together. Giant Live Oaks which tower above the hand laid brick patio and two story home--four ancient trees with a combined breadth that covers a quarter of an acre. They link arms in protection above the family who has lived here for more than forty of those years. Never once brought down by hurricanes or tornadoes, they’ve bent but never fallen.

This morning a new storm ravages both hearts and landscape. But the branches, iced with dripping Spanish Moss, nod in my direction, wise and experienced. They've withstood many storms together, this family and these oaks. Linked arms. Deep roots. Calm countenance. Here they raised and released a family, loved and laughed through more than fifty-nine years of marriage, and sipped coffee as they observed the ever changing tide of new neighbors who don’t realize they’re living next to royalty.

I marvel at their courage and strength, these Scottish pillars, and how they hold fast. They made room for me in the family circle, and I am forever humbled by my good fortune.

Many are proud to say they rub shoulders with these McLeods.

I am one of them.

Like A Tree Firmly Planted

Why does the willow weep?

Her face down low, hidden by a cascade of verdant tresses, she stands alone, solitary in her loveliness. Is her heart broken? Does she grieve for her loved ones? Or is she simply waiting, pausing, hoping for miracles from the Only One who can lift up her head?

Waiting in solitude at the water’s edge, she bows beneath the heaviness she wears like a cloak. It’s not the rushing currents that draw her, but rather the still, calm depths whose mirrored surfaces reflect back to her the serenity she craves.

Time stands still while she communes with her Maker. Deep calling to deep at the brink of despair. Yet she never falls in, never collapses. Her roots are established, thirst never conquers. Perpetually on the edge, she flourishes where the waters pool eternal.

It’s a mystery to the curious observer. Her presence is a paradox. Graceful, inspiring, from one perspective she appears jubilant, her plumage exploding—fireworks style—in stationary bursts of green. Perhaps she is misunderstood, and the impression of sadness is joy in disguise.

Nevertheless, her secrets belong to her while her tears are kept safe in the depths at her feet.

Why are you cast down, O my inner self? And why should you moan over me and be disquieted within me? Hope in God and wait expectantly for Him, for I shall yet praise Him, my Help and my God. Psalm 91:5

At the water’s edge. She waits.



(Photo courtesy of Kahala's photostream at flickr.com)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kahala/215539019/

Mogollon Monty

It’s a long drive between the Mogollon Rim near Payson, and Chandler, Arizona. Especially for a four-year-old who has to pee. But I was driving a fast car and, while I did my best to convince my young son that he could hold it, he was pretty sure he couldn’t. I had learned long before that he was the expert in that field. And since it was my father-in-law’s rental I was driving, I had no choice but to pull over on the Beeline, let my son run to the desert foliage for relief, and hope I could get back out on the two lane highway before that slower-than-dirt green Winnebago got in front of me again.

Our two men were ahead of us in my husband’s landcruiser, but with May temperatures in the desert soaring well into the 100’s, they let us have the air conditioned ride back home. And since my husband’s mom didn’t drive, I was the lucky lady behind the wheel of a really nice, very powerful car, enjoying every minute of it.

We cut it pretty close, but my little guy was a fast runner. He jumped back into the car, buckled up, and I yelled, “Hang on!” to my passengers as I floored it back out onto the road, getting up to speed and beyond, well ahead of the giant pickle closing in on our rest stop.

“I’m glad we didn’t get caught behind him again,” I said to my mother-in-law sitting beside me, who had a death grip on the armrest of her door.

“Yeah,” she answered, her Southern drawl lightly seasoned with sarcasm. “That would have been just terrible.”

With the crisis passed, she relaxed and we kept up a friendly conversation as I continued the drive home. I was well ahead of the traffic behind us, so I set the cruise control, and we settled in for the last hour of our drive.

"It should be clear sailing from here," I commented. Checking the rear view mirror after a few minutes, though, I was surprised to see the big motorhome rapidly closing the gap between us.

“Uh oh,” I thought to myself, “somebody got his widdow fee-wings hurt.”

But I was driving a fast car. And I was still ahead of him. On a two lane road.

Which was about to widen into four.

The spurned Winnebago took the first opportunity to pull into the passing lane as I moved to the right, still chatting comfortably with my husband’s mother. But as he pulled up alongside us and slowed, my keen intuition kicked me in the head, warning me not to even look out my window to find out why the giant pickle didn’t make his move and cut me off. I was pretty sure he had a message he wanted to give me that might involve gratuitous sign language, and I was determined to be illiterate.

Unfortunately, a driver’s intuition is only useful to the driver. And since I had to look straight ahead, keeping my eyes on the road and avoiding a collision with the sun-blocking rolling monstrosity on my left, I never saw the imagery displayed in full glory to my poor mother-in-law sitting next to me. I didn’t even know she was looking out my window. Not until she suddenly broke off her conversation with me and exclaimed,

“What is that. . . . .?? Oh My Gosh!!!”

Just then, the Winnebago took off like a rocket, satisfied that they had made their point and put me sufficiently in my place. They were wrong. They had put my mother-in-law in my place.

I did, however, learn my lesson about pulling out in front of gargantuan motorhomes on two lane roads.

There’s nothing quite like a full moon on a sunny day to enlighten a girl on the finer points of driving etiquette.

Call Waiting

I got my first Smart Phone last month. I didn’t want to. But my flip phone broke without warning one afternoon, and that was that. I pulled it out of the deep abyss I call my “purse”, and the industrial strength plastic around the hinges fell off. Then the phone refused to close, and suddenly I was thrown headlong into progress. I hate progress.

I had no idea which phone to get as a replacement, but there were only three flip phones in the Verizon store—rotary dial, at that—and I knew I’d have to enter the new millennium sometime. Which reminds me. Since when do we need an entire building devoted only to Polly Pocket-sized phones? And these stores are crowded! What’s so thrilling about shopping in a telephone store? I. Am.So.Old.

So I interviewed Smart Phone users. Owners with experience. Professionals. Ten-year-olds mostly. I needed to know which one of the nearly two million different Smart Phones currently on the market would meet my personal needs. The overwhelming opinion there was that I should definitely upload Angry Birds and Words With Friends as soon as the battery charged up.

However, no one told me the one thing I needed to know more than anything else—how to dial or answer my new phone. Which I now prefer to call my Smart Aleck Phone. The first day I had it, while attempting to place a call to my son, I somehow brought up the qwerty screen and couldn’t get out of it. So I texted him this frantic message: “Call me. At home. I don’t know how to answer my cell phone.” Of course, he lives in Kentucky and I don’t, so the communication gap wasn’t narrowed much, even with his help. And besides, he uses a Blackberry.

I spent the whole afternoon reading the directions tucked into my box from Verizon, as well as their shortcuts for dummies, trying with very little success to teach myself how to use my own phone. Until finally, at the end of the afternoon, I did it. I overcame the learning curve.

That little rectangle of frustration landed square against the wall in one straight shot—with no curve at all.

I may be old, but I have pretty good aim.

It's Just An "F" Key

. . . or, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Am I the only one who’s a control freak? It seems like a rhetorical question, but sometimes it’s a hard one to answer “yes” to. Once upon a time, someone told me that there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things. And, of course, I want to do things the right way. The problem, I’ve discovered, is that everyone’s got an opinion about what that "right way" is. And if you crave acceptance, you can’t risk marching to the beat of a different drummer. You’ve gotta toe the line, stay the course, not rock the boat, follow the yellow brick road.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not as free spirited as I may sound here. Personally, I’m getting pretty tired of the sounding gong of “tolerance at all cost”. It’s giving me a headache. Even the pressure to require no absolutes is still pressure to conform to an ideology. I guess that’s fodder for another forum.

I have discovered, though, that while some tasks in life must be done, there are multiple ways to do them. If there’s a town I need to visit, there are several ways to get there, even if it does force Gabby Garmin to “re-cal-cu-late”. (If it wasn’t so helpful when we drive to have GPS onboard, we’d dump her bad attitude at the next rest area.) If I like to eat food every day—and I do—I can decide whether to indulge in Italian or PBJ. Cleaning the house is always on my list of things to procrastinate about. But when the dust bunnies threaten a coup, it’s up to me whether to vacuum or wash dishes first—or hire someone else to give it their best shot. See? Choices. I. Have. Choices.

I remember the day this first dawned on me. And it led to the catch phrase I now use as a template for freedom. I was taking an Introduction to Computers course at our local community college. I didn’t know RAM was anything but an intimidating farm animal at the time. Or that booting up wasn’t just a habit for cowboys. I knew how to type. Period.

In that one semester, I learned there are at least five ways to carry out the same task. I could use the drop-down tool bar. Or right click with my mouse. I could open the menu at the bottom of the screen and find my desired device. Or I could press the control key and another key simultaneously. The choices were nearly endless! There may be others you use all the time. And today there are still “F” keys. Actually, at the time I first learned the computer, my instructor was in love with “F” keys, so that’s what I knew best.

But my husband, who had encouraged me to become computer savvy, had a lot more experience with the machine than either me or my instructor. Pretty soon we began to have conflicts over our home computer any time we’d be working on budgets or lesson plans together. He had a favorite way to cut and paste, while I was addicted to “F” keys. Each convinced that our way was best, we finally had to agree to disagree and let whoever had the keyboard do it the way they wanted to. All roads lead to Rome, you know. At the end of the day, a cut and paste can be done five different ways, and the reader of your novel doesn’t care which one you use as long as the story makes sense.

“It’s just an “F” key” became the means to ceasefire in our house—a way to end silly disagreements. And it’s one of the most freeing principles I’ve ever stumbled across. It’s helped us avoid wasting time on insignificant differences of opinion. It’s built my self-esteem. It has actually, surprisingly, taught me a balanced view of “tolerance”.

Most of the things in life that people disagree about are, in reality, “just an F key”. Or, as I taught my kids when they were learning to drive, “If you’re the one behind the wheel of the car, you get to decide which route to take.” It’s the privilege of your responsibility.

Now if we could just get that across to Siri.

Sting Like A Bee

It’s a fact—women get thinner as they age. Our lips get thinner. Sometimes our hair does. I know I’m more thin-skinned than I used to be. I think we’re losing weight in the wrong places. Most of the time, I don’t give these things another thought. Nobody ever asks me what size my lips are. Or if I need to fluff up my self esteem. They just stick weight loss brochures on my windshield and hope I get the hint.

But now, thanks to a few desperate housewives, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend. Fat lips on females are all the rage. If somebody gave me a fat lip, I’d press charges. But these gals are paying for it! Why do women ignore their character and focus on the size of their kissers instead? Who told us that pout trout is attractive? The fishing industry? Is this some new way of seducing guys away from the lake and back to the ladies? Personally, I’d be pretty offended if somebody told me I kiss like a fish. Although I remember feeling that way about my technique the first time I tried to kiss a boy. I never saw him again. See? That’s no way to describe lips.

You know what I’m talking about, right? Bee-stung lips. The kind that look full, red and pouting. Like Lucille Ball’s, but worse. They’re not natural. These are cosmetic enhancements. Well, I got stung by a bee once. I didn’t find it very enhancing and neither did the bee. What’s so attractive about looking like you let an insect commit suicide on your face?

But for reasons I can’t fathom, there are women who love to look like they’ve had an allergic reaction to Penicillin. So they’re paying physicians—physicians! who swore on their Hippocratic oaths to administer aid to people—to change the shape of the upper lip from a cupid’s bow to an inflated inner tube.

Is there no end to our vanity? And consider the cost! The most economical way to get bee-stung flappers is by injection, each costing between $400 and $700. Real bee stings are cheaper. I’m just saying. Or, you could—invest—in lip fillers. These are surgical and can run you from five grand to an amount unknown on the internet when you throw in the additional medical staff. At least there’s an upside—the results are more long lasting. The disadvantages are the side effects, which can include swelling. I don’t think that really qualifies as a side effect. It is the effect.

I blame all of this on old school Hollywood stars, like Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. Even Lucille Ball. She started out in the 30’s and 40’s as a cover girl for Max Factor, but found her niche in television comedy, “uglifying herself with clownish makeup to enhance her physical humor”. (http://www.wornthrough.com/2011/08/16/lucille-ball-style-icon-in-spite-of-herself/

As much as I love Lucy, her exaggerated lip line was drawn on purpose in the tradition of vaudeville. It was meant to accentuate her smiles and grimaces. At the end of a long day, Lucy wiped off that smile. I’m afraid some gals today don’t know how to take a joke.

I guess that, once again, it all comes down to beauty being in the eye of the beholder. As for me, I think I’ll skip the pout trout and focus on things that really matter. I’ve spent a lot of my life hiding who I am instead of being myself. Paying somebody to do that to me now seems counterproductive.

But I might still call that number from the flyer on my windshield. A little unenhancement, you might say.

I’m thin-skinned, but I can take a hint.

Hyperventilating

I have a love affair with Creosotes. Which might not make any sense if you’ve never heard of them before. Or if you’ve never smelled one. A scrubby, undisciplined desert bush, they’re usually dehydrated and not very pretty to look at.

But in the spring, after a nice steady rain, the desert finally greens up for a minute. And the uncoordinated, gangly branches of the creosote smile all over with little yellow blossoms that welcome the bees and remind me of my grandparents’ home in the desert. Mmmm . . . I take so many deep breaths on rainy days here, I nearly hyperventilate. All in an effort to smell the creosote.

Creosote is the aroma of Arizona. You can break off its tiny, waxy leaves, roll them in your fingers, close your eyes and swear that a misguided rainstorm just passed through. Even in the concrete-encroached city, the damp air after a rain shower will be heavy with the fragrance of creosote.

I read that some people don’t like the scent, but that's okay. I’m not fond of Chanel No. 5 myself. Perfume is in the nose of the inhaler. And to me, rainy creosote is the perfume of Arizona. You won’t smell it anywhere else. So now that I live in a rural farming/ranching/desert locale, I want my very own creosote in my very own yard.

But this is where Creosotes bug me—they refuse to be transplanted. They grow with abandon all over our Sonoran Desert without asking permission from anyone, but just try to dig one up and move it, and it’ll show you who’s boss. It’ll up and die on you just on principle. I love ‘em, but I hate that.

I just want one to live in my yard. I live in the desert. Okay, it’s a house in a development in the desert. But I have rotten desert dirt just like everywhere else in Arizona. Why won’t a creosote come live in my yard and let me smell it? Are they insecure? Do they hate to be smelled? Or do they hate living alone? If they need to be with their own kind, I could transplant a few more. We could have a whole creosote community here—I don’t mind.

I was convinced that if it would give me a chance, I could persuade a creosote to be happy at my place. So a friend gave me a young one from among all the hundreds growing wild behind his house. He put it in a can with its very own original dirt, and told me where and how to plant it. Then he told me it would probably die. He’s a botanist. I thought he was a pessimist. Turns out he's a realist. I think it was dead by sundown.

I just can’t figure it out. I heard desert plants thrive on neglect. And I’m a genius at neglect! I promise to stay true to myself and never water them. It seems to me creosotes and I are a perfect fit. We’re both Arizona natives. We’re both mavericks by nature. We both like to smell nice. It doesn’t want me to water it. I don’t want to water it. And for unexplained and illogical reasons, we both like the desert. I think we’re a match made in heaven.

Apparently I’m the only one who thinks that.

I get it. There’s no reasonable explanation for it. You just can’t transplant a creosote. It has its principles, after all. I guess I have mine, too. And I don’t want to move to another location just so I can have a creosote in my yard. Creosote habitats are also inhabited by snakes. And scorpions. And other critters with bad attitudes. I’m allergic to bad attitudes.

So, this is how it ends. A stand-off. Unrequited love. Nasal nostalgia.

It’s too bad, Creosote. We could have made beautiful music together, you and I.

But don’t worry. I won’t hold it against you.

After all. I still like the way you smell.