May 2010

May 2, 2010


In typography, “san” means “without.” As follows, then, a san serif font lacks the flourished, dependable baselines of the staid, traditional typeface Times New Roman or its classier, sassier cousins in the Palatino family. Frankly, it’s stunning that the san-serif font Helvetica could make it through a single day, more or less survive in an anorexic Monday edition of the latest Journal-Star. And so it is that I struggle with partisan politics, considering that the very term “part-i-san” suggests to me both incompleteness and instability.

I’m not being party-specific here. Rather, I extend this skeptical net across the current U.S. political spectrum, if, indeed, you can refer to anything in U.S. politics as being part of a spectrum, a term that typically requires an array of delineations. Granted, this journal entry was inspired by an essay penned by that most partisan of party girls, Sarah Palin, written in praise of her boorish brethren Glen Beck, but it just as easily could have been inspired by the hypersocialist hype of a Michael-Moore penned piece.

In my dumber days (I know, I know…is such a thing possible?!), I often fell prey to partisanship, that allure of the simple notion that “either you’re with us or you’re against us.” I remember refusing to shake the hand of a Republican candidate for U. S. Senate while feasting for free at Grandmother’s Restaurant with my Pius colleagues one long-ago day in the late ‘80s. Not only did I refuse to shake his hand, but I also felt the tinge of misguided pride in my doing so. What a knucklehead. And I’m not talking about the candidate. At least he was putting himself out there, seeking change, trying to connect with the people. Me? I was just trying to round up enough colleagues to order another pitcher of beer and, thus, earn another plate of free nachos.

My mental changeover began when I first taught at East High, where I worked with a talented group of newspaper students whose political leanings represented the antipode of my own. Over and over, I made two lethal mistakes that year: first, when they asked me questions I was not qualified to answer, I answered them anyway. Second, when they wrote from a perspective opposite my own, I tried to use my position of authority (small “a” all the way) and nudged those opinions out of the publication, or at least imposed punitive costs, if nothing else. Not surprisingly, I felt little satisfaction or joy in my job that year—two facts that rest upon me, not those students.

I’ll be honest. I became pregnant for the first time in my life that year. A month or so after that most wonderful discovery, I had a miscarriage and found myself looking at the bloodied remains of a life not to be lived, eventually flushing them down the toilet, like so much waste. And yet, it wasn’t waste. It wasn’t for naught. Indeed, it made me realize that I cut myself off from living fully when I closed my ears to certain others. Turned out, I wasn’t very good at choosing my battles or embracing the lessons that I had yet to learn from those with whom I disagreed. I liken that long, heartbreaking night of blood, sweat and tears to a session in a sweat lodge. It loosed within me certain hard and beautiful truths, and I emerged from that red tent invigorated and free.

I no longer fear or blindly react to those who stand in opposite corners. Rather, I try to look at them as someone with whom I can share a beer (or, better yet, a person whom might actually buy me that beer). I can hardly afford to turn my back on the friendship and wisdom of half the population, just because we happen to bubble in different circles in the voting booth.


May 5, 2010


Last night, I cracked open the bedroom window to let in a fresh breeze (seems there is always a need for fresh breeze in our house). The sounds of nightlife seeped in as well and I thought I caught the sleepy snore of a Western screech owl amid the low hum of traffic. I’ll never know for sure, though. Two or three nanoseconds into my mini nature moment, the testosterone-inspired throttle of three hundred and sixty really angry horses snorted its way into the experience.

While I have never personally witnessed a street race before (merely catching glimpses of them during summer-movie commercials on my cable-free tv), I know, without doubt, that plenty of people race cars on the street. It’s one of the few downsides of living close to “O” Street, these episodic evening surges of manhood, lived out between street lights.

Mark and I often joke about such brassy displays of humanity, be they really awful power ballads on the radio, idiotic examples of political leadership or the screeching blare of another street race. “Do you think a man or a woman is behind that?” And so the joke goes.

I really do like men. They represent a fair chunk of my friends and are batting a thousand in my “spouse” department. I like the way men handle problems, typically practicing the “head on, move on” philosophy that I, too, try to emulate. Women (well, maybe girls more than women) tend to fester like pesky cold sores, never quite healing from the slights, real or imagined. Many women seem to be expert in the field of passive aggression, wending their judgment like an invisible thread that eventually strangles. Men? They punch each other in the nuts then go out for a beer together. I respect that, if from afar and with my hands cupped around certain body parts.

The “rooster” side of men, though, remains a mystery to me. I don’t get the strutting, the huffing, the showy displays of toughness. Fortunately, I don’t know many men who practice these “arts,” but whenever I see one in action, I feel as though I am watching a nature show, mesmerized by the way the male prairie chicken puffs up its chest and flips over its feathers, quavering in anticipation of the flittering hump of a female. These witnessed moments of raw manhood, however misdirected and, frankly, kind of funny, seem to be the best proof that we indeed come from animal ancestors, some seemingly only a generation or two away from us.

In all my days as an employee, I can recall working with only one of these roosters among the brood. He had a cheap mustache and a certain swagger that seemed uncomfortably out of place. That he was a boss created within me the need to at least find some way to negotiate his persona. My wily female ways have seldom served me well. Perhaps because they are so flimsy and flaccid. . . .Regardless, I eventually found the key to working with this he-man among men.

I had noticed that he’d been gone for a week and asked others about his absence. Apparently, he’d been in the Sandhills, killing things with a gun. Therein lay my solution. And so, I essentially prostituted myself. I, lifelong nonhunter who has shot only Roman Candles and perhaps a pigeon or two when our old house was having trouble selling, walked into his office with the sole purpose of making a connection. And for the next fifteen minutes we talked about hunting. He showed me graphic photos of butchered deer, grunting approvingly as he fingered the protective sleeve of the photo album. I, too, grunted, taking my cues from him.

While we didn’t exactly become friends that day, we did make a connection, however tenuous. And, as I recall, I got some really excellent deer jerky from the exchange.


May 6, 2010


I claim to like an open schedule and, for the most part, I think I will stick with that claim. A weekend in which I need to consult a calendar is, for me, a problematic weekend. Ditto that for a summer week. I relish the first summer day when I wake up and have absolutely no idea what day it is. I had some of these days in college, too, but for different reasons.

Usually I am content to know that a summer day will consist of a bike ride along the trail, some time with a book, a post-lunch date with the hammock and maybe a little Scrabble or word jumble, just to keep it interesting. I say “usually” because the prospects of another summer have caught me by surprise this year. Last summer (and, really, the summer before that), I had the luxurious job of pondering a two-week trip to Italy, chunking out the details, each one an adventure in itself. Now that Italy has been relegated to an online book and a few pounds around the waist, I wonder what it is that will occupy my brain in the upcoming months.

For me, there is something pleasurable in the planning. Like Mark, who feels great satisfaction at a perfectly joined corner of wood, I feel something similar when planning a trip or constructing a perfectly mapped out grocery list. May becomes my list-making month, by virtue of its added activities. From final journalism deadlines to graduation parties, the annual publications pizza party at my house to state contests and staff breakfasts, I need to keep my poop in a group. And I do it with a well-constructed “to-do” list (which, I know, stands in shocking contrast to my belief that we’d be happier if we constructed “ta-DA” lists instead).

It is the very making of the list that offers me some comfort, though. First, for instance, I must choose the perfect pens and color combinations. I know that the list’s header will be written with a Sharpie. The question is “what color Sharpie?” After I’ve settled on that, I have to decide which Precision Point pen will have the honors of compiling said list. A smear or factual error means that another tiny tree has given its life for naught, since the mistake requires me to begin again.

I made a very beautiful list yesterday before leaving work. It had a nice combination of inks and colors and was constructed with both precision and a bit of creative flair. And yet, a part of me hopes that something new bubbles up today, something that requires me to remember, to construct a new list, to put it to paper so that it might be committed if not exactly to memory then at least to a spot on the calendar. Already, I find my mind wandering, considering new and daring color combinations, my hand feeling the satisfaction of a well-formed letter.


May 7, 2010


I’ve been peeking at the future a bit lately. Not mine, though. Eric’s. And, as is so often the case, it seems the more I look forward, the more I slip back in time. I rather like this see-sawing effect, vacillating between memory and imagination, both ends of it swimming in the love of a son.

Eric was a great baby. Our old neighbors, the Buckners, once accused him of having too many Happy Meals, metaphorically speaking. I think they were on to something there. He proved to be a most excellent teacher to two quavering idiots whom he gently and patiently transformed into “mom and dad.” I think fondly of those days (not so much the nights, though), still able to feel his fat fingers, still seeing his chubby face and quick smile as he peeked over the edge of his bassinet to find out what all the racket was about.

He is lanky now, and five times smarter than the cumulative GPAs of both his parents. He shines in his own quiet way, so unlike either of us and then, without warning, he is a shadow to one or the other, an exacting mimic in movement or phrasing. Above all, he is his own man and the world is a better place with him in it. This is why I am so willing to let him go. I know just how much this world could use an Eric Carlson Holt, someone who is infinitely curious about life and yet who could not be less interested in accolades or spotlights. Seriously, is it possible he really grew in me?

When I was a senior in high school, I mostly pretended to be pondering my choices. On paper and in conversation, I claimed an internal battle between journalism colleges. Missouri? KU? Nebraska? In reality, I knew that my roots would anchor me here, that I lacked whatever adventurousness was required from a new zip code. In the end, I’m not even sure I could call it a decision, attending UNL. I learned a great deal there, made good friends, took some fabulous classes and even had a few months in which I dreamed and thought in Spanish—most magical, indeed! But it was rather like a lucky turn of events more than a meticulously plotted path.

My son has become a heck of a generalist, as per my secret instructions to him, whispered at night, when he is folded into himself and lost to this world. He can walk with confidence and joy among all kinds of people, flourishing in and learning from a myriad of situations. His path, once he graduates from high school, will be very different from mine. It will be mapped out, but in pencil, to allow for new things to emerge. It will include a long side trip to Sweden, where he will test the veracity of the Rosetta Stone proclamation. It will be exciting and hard, beautiful and heart-breaking. He will leave this house, but not our lives. It will be an act of stepping into rather away from. And I, for one, will stand aside and let him go, however much I’d like to tuck him in just one more night.



May 9, 2010


As I was driving to Allison’s volleyball game today (I was VERY good, by the way, only doing the wave twice and barely making fun of praying-mantis girl), I was reminded of Dr. Seuss’s tale of the Star-Bellied Sneeches. In it, a clever man makes heaps of money convincing some Sneethes that a star upon their bellies will make them superior to their star-free neighbors. And then he reverses the concept, when he’s done making money off of that crowd. Essentially, it’s the story of public relations, in which one clever huckster can convince people—or Sneeches, in this case—to do just about anything.

What reminded me of the story was what I saw in my rear-view mirror, over and over and over again. People for whom driving should have been job one were busily talking on their phones or texting a friend, nary giving me, the driver in front of them, the time of day. These people are why I now spend as much time looking in my rear-view mirror as I do looking in front of me when I’m driving. Believe me, my mirror has become a vital link to my survival, and not because I’m applying my lipstick in it.

So, what, exactly, is “Sneechy” about talking on the phone while you’re driving? Consider the fact that, ten years ago, the only people with phones in their cars were police officers and tech dweebs who played Dungeons and Dragons when they were younger. And there really was nothing “mobile” about those clunky predecessors to today’s sexy, trim cell phones that dangle from so many ears. Bottom line? No one had a mobile phone because no one needed one.

And now? Now, my children are freaks because they don’t have their own cell phones. Granted, they might be freaks for other reasons, as well, but this cellular absence most certainly has sealed and sullied their reputations, perhaps beyond repair. It is so odd to me that people have been so easily convinced by corporations that they need to be accessible at all times and that they should probably carry their phones with them everywhere, so that every conversation may be disrupted, every telemarketer may make their quotas.


I’d love to start a neo-Luddite revolution, convincing people that there is greater freedom in leaving their phones at home than there is in strapping their phones to their belt buckles. I’ve already got a nice pool of cable-free friends, who, like someone living off the grid, are getting great reception for free, thanks to the 1950s antennae crammed in their attics, pulling in more stations than they’d ever imagine possible (I’m up to 18!). The only problem with my revolution, though, is that there’s not much money to be made in it. I don’t know how to convince these phone-friendly fanatics that it’s actually cooler not to have one. Where’s the buck or the bang in that?

If Dr. Seuss were alive today, maybe he’d do a followup to his Star-Bellied Sneeches piece, pointing out the absurdities of these plugged in, amped up, 2.0 lives we’re living. He’d find a clever rhyme that’d sum up the absurdities of our situations, showing us that we have become hypnotized by hucksters, dishing out our dollars as fast as we can pull them from our pockets, just so that we may not be left behind.


May 10, 2010


How can it be that, as soon as we get closer to whom we’re supposed to be, we cease to look like anything we can recognize? Last night, while watching “Stranger Than Fiction,” a most excellent film, I paid note to one of those cheesy “but WAIT!” commercials, this one peddling heel cream. Normally $20, if I had just called that 800 number, I could’ve been one of the lucky ones, paying just $10, plus shipping and handling, for TWO tubes of this magical goo! But WAIT! Call now and I can have a complete pedicure kit, to boot, worth over $40! That’s right! Sixty dollars’ worth of products for just $10 plus shipping and handling.

For a nanosecond or two, I pondered my options, committing to immediate memory those eleven telephone digits that would save me from my heels.

Ah, my heels, two of several body parts that have betrayed me as I’ve grown older. Some days, when I stare at my heels, I am transported to Canyonlands National Park or Bryce Canyon, so riveting and unworldly are the dried riverbeds of my feet. I imagine long-ago rivers etching their memories into the folds of my skin, only to be whisked away by dry sirocco winds. As much as I’m drawn to desert climes (at least in my readings, if not in my travels), I inevitably give up the tales and return to the drudgery of the cheese grater, working my heels diligently, watching their stones of time wear down under the pressure of stainless-steel ridges.

Maybe we would be better off, though, thinking of our bodies as landscapes responding to the toils of time. If we viewed ourselves in the same way we view the lands around us, perhaps we wouldn’t be so surprised by our changing landscapes, the gentle hills that have formed after so many storms and birthings. Maybe I’d learn to embrace rather than recoil from the sandy gulches of my heels, looking to them for stories etched in time, for long-ago memories of running barefoot along the hot, recently-tarred streets of my youth. Wrinkles would no longer be targets for Botox but rather archeological treasures, appreciated for the remnants of history that have penned them into our skin. And gray hair would be embraced for its evidence of a life long lived, prized for the hearty genes it bespeaks of.

And so, I resolve today to approach my evolving landforms with the eye of a geologist, reading the stories that each wend and fold has to tell, learning to love rather than loathe the fleshy storytellers, anxious to turn over the next chapter in my tale.


May 15 2010


I think I’ve been in a bit of a rut lately. As much as I’m a weather dweeb, part of me wants to blame weather for that rut. The low clouds and absence of thunder (minus a few nice storms) have weighed me down and left me a bit listless, I’m afraid.

That is why this morning’s bike ride was so wonderful. It was the tipping point I most needed, the one in which good things come flooding back into my life again and I am left feeling refreshed and ready to participate. Even the act of penciling a quick note to the kids (“On a bike ride. Love, Mom”) felt right, echoing the daily habits of summers past. Sometimes, when we lose our rhythm, it is the simplest of acts that brings us back again.

Pulling out of the drive on my glorious, flashy, over-the-top Purple Hawaii and heading towards Woods Park, my legs let out a little “waHOO!” of joy at being able to stretch and burn again, no longer confined to the dark, dank basement bike. A bike is the perfect mode of transportation, reliant solely upon human power and utterly silent in its operation, doing nothing to interfere with the happy mojo of the rider.

I felt at home, buzzing down 32nd Street, wending my way towards Capital Parkway and the bike path. Greeting the butts of two mighty camels as I passed the Zoo, my eyes turned toward the Waterworks Apartments across the street, where friend Morgan once lived, regaling us with stories of mysterious underground tunnels, where waterworks employees once wandered. Shortly after, though, I turned away from all things human and let my head fill up with the sounds of nature.

I scanned the tips of tall trees and the cellular towers, looking for hawks. Rabbits skittered in front of me, running across the path to what must be greener pastures, though I cannot imagine such a thing. Robins and chickadees, blue jays and cardinals went about their business of luring mates and dissuading the competition. Even a lone Baltimore Oriole cajoled me with his slow-tongued, Robin-like song, flashing me his most awesome orange breast. I stopped only once, to inspect my fat, flower-tread tires after passing over some broken glass. Even that task didn’t discourage me, since it gave me extra time to enjoy the Oriole’s song.

And so, with this hour-long, early-morning bike ride, I find my life again moving forward. I am refreshed, re-centered, returned.

May 17, 2010


I’m trying to make sense of numbers today.

29
I heard a coal miner being interviewed on NPR today, saying he hoped they’d find out what happened in the mine, where 29 of his friends died earlier this spring.. What does the number 29 mean, in terms of humanity?

I will try to make sense of it by writing the names of 29 people in my own life.

Jill Simonson, Kristie Pfabe, Allison Goering, Susan Hertzler, Jennifer Cashmere, Jeff McCabe, Andrea Kabourek, Cheryl Wilkins, Kevin Wilkins, Cathy Wilken, Barb Murray, Mark Holt, Allison Holt, Eric Holt, Nancy Erickson, Pat Leach, Jerry Johnston, Julie Harder, Laura Runge, Laurie Fraser, Kari Luther, Morgan Tyner, Bill Dimon, Jody Kellas, Tim Brox, Mary Kay Kreikemeier, Patty Beutler, Sally Raglin Marshall, Cynthia Holt.

Twenty nine’s a much larger number than I ever imagined.

$43 billion


Also while listening to NPR today, I heard that GM is really bouncing back, after having to borrow a lot of money from you and me just to stay afloat. Apparently, they’ve had such a good quarter that the company has worked down its debt to the U.S. government to a mere to $43 billion. No doubt, Toyota has helped boost sales of U.S.-made cars, but I suppose it’s also possible that GM just learned how to run the business a bit better.

But how much is $43 billion?

A billion is a thousand million. Forty-three billion, then, is 43,000 million. That’s larger than the gross domestic product of 110 countries, according to the International Monetary Fund’s records.

The moon is about a quarter million miles from earth. Ralph Cramden could send his wife Alice to the moon and back about 86,000 times if those were miles, not dollars.

If a person counted, non-stop, a number every second, it would take almost 32 years just to count to a billion. Even the longest-living of the Biblical characters would be hard pressed to find 1,376 years for that kind of job.

Fourteen Days

I will hang up my “teaching” hat for the year in a mere 14 days. While that sounds fine and dandy, it’s not exactly a cakewalk. In school terms, 14 days represents to the typical high-school teacher 70 more class periods, averaging about 30 kids each period, for a total of 2,100 remaining hour-long exposures to zitty, cranking, foul, impatient, sagging teenagers. Think about it. When you go to the dentist, you get special gear to wear when they expose you to radiation for a few seconds. And, even then, the dental technician runs out of the room and hides in the hallway while she zaps you. School teachers? We get nothing. We just walk into it, time and again, like the fools that we are.


May 22, 2010


This past week, I have paused, if not actually reflected…

I have paused just long enough to remind myself that spring is the wildest of seasons, when humans are taken in by the beauty of nature, overlooking the deviousness and violence that rests just underneath those natural good looks. Somehow, we manage to find peace in the midst of this most desperate and horny of seasons, mistaking flowers and bird songs for solace and contentment. Alas, the truth is much darker.

The real reason those same flowers and trees pop out their finest siren songs, filling the nearby air with the allure of Chanel No. 5, is in hopes of luring in a wandering, lusty bee who mistakes their pistons for something else entirely. If all goes as planned, perhaps said bee will leave with goldenrod reminders attached along his abdomen, ripe with promise of more flowering trees in the future, if not with fond memories of an actual date for the evening.

And most of those bird songs, if not actually pornographic in nature, are ghastly reminders of the violent if not feathery pyramid that exists among our flying friends. When not hopping atop each other or eating someone else's eggs and babies, all too often they are squawking out desperate warnings of enemy fliers overhead, sharp-shinned hawks flying inches above the ground, looking for a snack along the way. Really, it’s ironic how much pleasure Spring brings to humans, given the life-and-death situations our flora and fauna are facing.

I also have paused just long enough this week to consider what I see as a fault line in our country’s current education system. When green cards become poison and celebrations fall to the wayside of implied hatred or at least serious misunderstanding, I find myself wondering why we expect better of people. After all, we live in times of second and third chances, when parents and adults and educators frantically wave a serious finger at the first sign of trouble, warning that, if said trouble erupts again, we may, in fact, do something about it. In this way, our warnings become veiled permission for once again doing wrong. Why, then, should we expect our offending students to understand this backlash, this odd insistence that something should be done as a result? We do people a great injustice when we don’t expect them to own their words and actions.

Finally, I have paused this week just long enough to ponder menopause, something that seems to be a knockin’, even as I type this tome. What else could I blame for my beard, my spare tire, my broken sleep? While I’ve gotten into the regular habit of taking tweezers to chin as I read each night, I now think I would be more successful if I simply stepped aside and let nature take its course. That way, when I have grown tired of neighborhood children running amok along our front lawn, I wouldn’t need to use harsh words to chase them away. Rather, I would simply step outside, silent, and jut out my strong chin, letting my waggling, wandering chin hairs frighten them into submission. I would become legend among the neighborhood young, that old, bent over, hairy woman whom brave, brave kids would attempt to lure outside with a heart-pounding ring of our doorbell.

This, I believe, will require just a bit more reflection, as well as some self discipline, if I’m going to make it fly. Tonight, I will find the strength to ask daughter Allison to hide away all of the tweezers that adorn our bed stands. Or not.

May 23, 2010


Mark’s dad Dale was one of the finest people I’ve ever known. Kind, quiet, funny, seemingly without a judgmental bone in his body, he did the profession of preaching a real service simply by waking up each morning and going throughout his day with a loving and gentle spirit. For most of his years in Lincoln, Dale’s ministry made its way to the people through the sleek tubes of the television, often framed against a mouse sidekick who gently reminded kids to shut off the TV and go to church. More TV personalities should take after Dale, nudging people to turn them off and go out and live a bit.

Dale finally got a church during the last few working years of his life, taking over as pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in Walton. Mark and I, and, eventually, Eric attended Grace through Dale’s years there. It was quaint and simple, filled with good folks and basic truths. Today, I returned to Grace for the first time in 14 years, for the dedication of a new cross made in honor of Dale. Mark made the cross out of wood, one of three artisans who worked on the project, which included a beautiful stained-glass backdrop.

It was fun to see familiar faces and to be in a space where I’d spent some good years. I think Dale would be quite pleased with this tribute, though he would have been embarrassed by all the attention. That was his way.

I love that his dedication was on Pentecost, a day of quiet renewal and incomprehensible happenings. While I'm not one to choose favorites in a church calendar, Pentecost has always bubbled its way to the top of my list. That said, I approached this church service more as a stranger than as a member, and the experience proved to be a bit contradictory for me.

It has been 14 years since I’ve sat through a Lutheran service. I was surprised by the many similarities it seemed to share with the Catholic masses of my childhood, though I preferred the songs of my youth over the Germanic dirges we endured this morning. Throughout the service, the congregation and pastor took part in several call-and-response readings. Like the blues, but without the rhythm and soul. At least that was my observation as a now stranger. And I was sorry to see that Ezekiel’s vision of a valley of bones took center stage for the Pentecost sermon. Such a desolate setting for something so astounding and inexplicable. As I watched him throughout the service, it seemed to me that the minister was more dry bones than spirit, and I felt sad for him.

During the sermon, I found myself thinking of yesterday, and the great, heaping winds that blew throughout it. Not once during that day was I able to forget those winds. I tried to imagine how a Nebraska minister could have lived through yesterday without even making a mention of the metaphor of God’s holy spirit as wind. And on Pentecost, to boot.

And yet, I found God’s spirit this morning, not so much in the service or the sermon, but rather in the fine lines of the newly dedicated cross, in my niece’s recollections of her beloved grandfather, in a meal shared with old friends and new acquaintances down in the basement of a tiny church in the country. I suppose that's the way of things, isn't it? Finding God and love in the parking lot, our church clothes daubed with dribbled barbecue. Renewed by the warm breezes that welcomed us outside, as we uttered goodbyes both temporary and permanent.


May 24, 2010


Since the weather went all “summer” on us yesterday, I decided to return the favor in kind. And I am reaping the benefits of my decision, even at 4:56 a.m. the next morning.

I began my Sunday well, and should have known my internal clock was happily turning forward when a flock of cedar waxwings descended upon our neighbor’s tree while I was doing the Sunday crossword. They lollygagged just long enough to let me retrieve the binoculars and get some “bird” time with them, before alighting for another berry-filled snack shop. The crosswords themselves even offered signs of hope, the New York Times one actually revealing its dirty little secrets to me before heading off to church in Walton.

The drive to Walton also seemed to be directing me to “summer” mode, especially when we passed 84th and “A” and watched the country unfold before us. I felt more joy than envy when I saw the bikers wending their way along the trail, because I knew I could join them—on any given day—in just a few weeks. Before the day was over, I, too, would be on a two-wheeler, if not a human-powered type.

If a person has to eat bugs, I think it’s best done at 38 mph, with the wind whipping through the few hairs that have found a space next to the helmet big enough to squeeze through.

I rode the old Big Chief yesterday. Pulled it out of the garage (not for the first time this season, but it had been awhile), dusted it off, checked the oil and gas and put a little spit shine on the one remaining rearview mirror. When I turned the key, a belch of white smoke and low rumble told me that I would be victorious in Scrabble, for who could not win that game when escorted there by 49 c.c.s of sheer pony power?!

Coming home from Scrabble, with an hour to spare before a fun family birthday fish fry on my sister’s back deck, I saw summer itself, in all its lazy glory, wrapped contentedly in the body of a 7-year-old neighbor boy. As I rounded the corner of Woods Avenue, post-Scrabble victory (as per my prediction and, dare I say, my cocky predilection?!), I spied him, laying on his stomach, feet in the air, picking at dandelions with one hand while the other rested under his chin. He looked as though not a single thought was bothering him, the breeze carrying away any danger of expectation or exertion. He had answered summer’s siren song and was at peace with his decision. He was everything I desired to be.


May 27, 2010



As we were leaving the Lincoln High spring concert last night, I was once again reminded of the joy that is seasonal amnesia. Making my way across the small, graveled parking lot that abuts Antelope Creek, I was grateful that not every crevice of my brain was occupied with thoughts, leaving just enough room for one, lone, musical synapse to occur. Unlike the Mozart I’d just heard, with its boisterous strings and even a French horn or two thrown in for good measure , this was a simple riff played alone, a chirrrrrrrrr that easily would have lost out to just about any audible competitor.

There is something magical about the harbingers of a new season, that first cricket song, the kickoff light show of a lone lightning bug, the low rumble of thunder ushering in a new page of the calendar. For each, I am the ultimate audience, the kid who is hungry to see Barney belt out all those songs I’d heard a thousand times before, convinced that, with each performance, I was hearing it for the first time.

These reminders of a new season make me new again, which is nothing and, at the same time, something to take lightly. I lingered a bit longer on the front porch the other night, following the finale of a favorite show. It wasn’t the plot or the cliffhanger that anchored me there so much as the belief that, if I stared long enough into the darkening lawn, I would see a lightning bug. Turns out, it was a bit early to start looking, and yet I wouldn’t trade those moments for anything.

There are not enough “What if—and why not?!” moments in life to be frittering them away with thoughts of other things. It is for this reason, then, that I will disrupt a springtime conversation to spy the Cedar Waxwing that teases me with its deceptively simple song, or the lone cricket that has emerged from its long, cold winter still chilled as it warms up its legs. It is the forgetfulness of my days, coupled with the promise of something both familiar and brand new that leads me to disrupt the flow of a walk to take in yet another noseful of peonies or to salute a long line of ants wending their way across the sidewalk.

These days and nights are transformative times, filled with moments in which nature, using its tiniest, most insignificant forces, reminds us that we are not in charge here. I take great comfort in that fact.


May 28, 2010


Ode to the End of School
By Jane Holt

Buh-bye crabby parents who lambaste our annual
For leaving out one son, whose first name is Daniel.
--As though they don’t have others.

So long pesky bells that beckon each hour
Like sheep, we move as one under its power,
--Bleating for our mothers.

My mind on dog days, I’m tired but happy.
Next Thursday’s so close. Let’s make it snappy
-- A long list of “nothing” is calling.

One more bubble sheet to fill with future predictors
Not so sure that the spoils will end up with the victors
--So fast are some grades falling.

Visions of Patio parties now fill my mind
Where drinks are served—the bubbly kind!
--Three cheers to this summer!

Away go the school bag and Jane-green skirts
Swapped instead for much-loved t-shirts
--As for “real” work? Now ain’t that a bummer!



May 31, 2010


I yank myself inside, away from this most perfect morning—still, blue, crisp—drawn in by the sound of a distant mower. Its grumbling “whirrrrr” reminds me that there are far more important things to do on a perfect morning than take care of business.

Why is it that adults feel compelled to make the most of their free days, mistaking blank spaces for lost opportunities? I dare say that a blank calendar aligning with a calm morning is a mandate to live rather than to do, to make the least of rather than the most of. After all, how can a person properly acknowledge a day called Memorial Day if they leave no room for wandering, for remembering?

The last few Memorial Days have been my best ever. Before moving into a neighborhood buttressed by two cemeteries, I never gave this holiday much attention, beyond the thought that it might include some decent potato salad. Now, though, I find myself looking forward to the long, slow walk through both cemeteries, one in which my dad and brother huddle around a fine piece of granite, recalling past antics.

Before I set out to reconnect with the dust of the earth, though, I forage through our collection of river rock that cradles the most excellent hammock in the universe. Underneath its steely girders, I look for the perfect rocks, the ones that remind me of my brother and dad. I am satisfied with today’s finds—a gnarled, complex, sassy knob of quartz that beckons of Mike and a rosy, egg-shaped piece of granite that reminds me of all the plans my dad used to hatch. Placing these at their graves is the closest I come to an official Memorial Day ceremony, and yet, it is enough.

This is not a day for calendars. It is not a day that requires email reminders or wristwatches or cell phones set on vibrate. No, rather, this is a day that requires an open mind and heaps of fresh air, taken in and then returned to its original owner. It is a day of bike rides and porch time, of kneeling down in the garden to spy the newly hatched grasshopper no bigger than a seed. It is a day for looking inward by going outward and living. It is a day of reaping as well as of making memories and I, for one, plan on following that agenda to the “t.”

April 2010

April 2, 2010


“A man can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.” --Goethe

I understand what Goethe’s getting at, but sometimes I think we are too quick to label something “ordinary,” when, in fact, there is much evidence to the contrary. Certainly, most of us who work would take a hectic, fast-paced, jam-packed workday over one that dwindles, even if that package comes with a little stress. But I also think that when we label something “ordinary,” it speaks more of our own lacking than it does of the lacking of our days.

And so, I ponder some of the unexpected events of recent days.

The last day of March brought with it a birthday for one of my Newspaper students, Kelsey. She did the right thing and brought cookies to celebrate the occasion. We, for our part, ate her cookies and sang to her, mostly in tune. We also tossed her the flea-bitten birthday cap, which she wore on her head just long enough to count but not so long as to give the lice a new place to call “home.” While we were eating cookies and eating in the back room, several of the girls were laughing about their jobs as hostesses at local restaurants. The laughter turned into fake telephone rings, each of which was “answered” by one of the hostesses aping the schpiel she knew so well.

“HithisisKaitlynthanksforcallingValentino’sgrandbuffetat70thandvandornwheremothers eatfreeonmothersdayhowmayihelpyou?”

We laughed and laughed and then topped it off with a speaker-phone call to Cheapest Damn Cigarettes, holding our collective breath that they, too, might have a standard schpiel when answering their phone. Sure enough, our patience paid off.

“This is Tom. . . Cheapest Damn Cigarettes.” Music to our ears!

Two other, unrelated unexpected events marked this last day of March. Twice that day, someone blew me a kiss, a gesture I hadn’t seen in a long, long time. First, it was a funny fellow named Eric, who’d been frequenting the school library lately. When I pointed out how clearly important we’d become in his life, he smiled, turned his head towards us and blew us a kiss. Very fun and refreshing!

Later that day, on the neighborhood circuit with Mark and Hobbes the Hobo Dog, I noticed a woman, arms out like lowered wings, weaving slowly up the sidewalk a block ahead of us. We easily caught up to her, when she turned to tell us that she’d lost her way. She was looking for an address on the street just south of us. We pointed her to the correct intersection and repeated the directions to this address. Neither of us expected she’d be able to get there on her own, certain she had Alzheimer’s. We ended up walking with her, grabbing her bony elbow at the curb, steadying her gait to help her make the step up to the sidewalk. By the time we were at “L” Street, we asked her what her name was.

Francis Reiner, she replied.

And our minds flashed to a half dozen memories, all rooted in or connected to this woman, now let down by a faulty mind. Frances Reiner, author of “Bloody Mary,” a well-known account of a local woman of lore. Francis Reiner, teacher extraordinaire who touched hundreds of young lives as a vital, much loved teacher at Randolph Elementary School. Francis Reiner, second wife to my former professor Paul Olson. Francis Reiner, mother of Danny Reiner, comedic actor who’d delighted us through his gift of theatre. She brightened when we made the connection to her son. “He’s a great person, isn’t he?” We agreed enthusiastically. And then we walked her to her driveway.

“I’m so glad I got the chance to spend some time with you,” I said.

“I’m glad, too,” she answered. And then she put her hand to her lips and blew us a kiss of gratitude as she turned to go into the house she’d lost just a few minutes before.

Finally, yesterday, April Fools’ Day, a day of all days when the unexpected should be expected. Not a joke made its way past me, though. Only one, rather lame at that, passed my own lips, when I apologized to Allison for waking her up an hour late. Not. And so the day passed without any sign of the unusual. Sure, my friends Joan and Loy broke it up with a wonderful, candy-filled visit to the school they’d served so well in the past. Yes, it’s true I broke up the routine of sack lunches with a little Greek food. I suppose I could have opened the school email with the subject line “Phones down,” but I didn’t.

The unexpectedness of yesterday, then, didn’t fall upon me until this morning, when I learned that my mom was home, weak and confused, and my sister and stepdad Dick were trying to figure out how to reach people, how to help her feel better. How to get an ambulance to their house. Certainly, they tried to reach me. But I was unreachable, as was much of Lincoln. And I hadn’t opened that email, the one that would have explained a silence I hadn’t been concerned about to begin with.

It is odd to find out your mom has been suffering, is in the hospital, had trouble making a call that, even as youngsters, we knew how to make. It is a bit disconcerting to wake up, exercise, read the paper, make a piece of toast and then read an email that explains the unexpected day these beloved family members had while I sailed through one painted in the ordinary.

Despite the scare, I am confident, knowing my mom is where she needs to be, knowing that I can reach her. That she will answer.

I don’t know what today will bring. I do know, though, that it will not be an ordinary day.


April 3, 2010


There are love songs that elicit tears of joy, and there are love songs that elicit tears of pain. I am a champion of the latter. Or should I say that my buns are the champions of the latter?

I cannot count the number of early mornings when, roused by a good dream or just a bit of extra gas, I have called out to Mark with the mournful wail of a really good fart. I cannot count those times because I am not a mathematician by trade.

What can I say? I grew up in a family that was weaned on Mad Libs, each of us anxious to one up the other with a fresher, more startling synonym for “poop” or “toilet.” That, and I seem to eat a lot of foods that keep on giving.

Just last night, as Mark was giving it up for the dream world, I sent him on his way with a new orchestral piece I’d prepared throughout the day. It included the “boom” of the timpani, a touching, quiet piccolo solo, and several movements that I will not recount here, for fear of losing my Facebook status. Like any good conductor, I lifted my wand, which had been resting under the sheets, so that the music might make its wafty way to my intended audience.

While I consider last night’s performance an opus, I was disappointed by Mark’s reaction, which was silence, broken by the occasional sniff of slumber. I felt like Beethoven, snubbed by a roomful of students at the local deaf-mute academy, utterly ignored aside from the shift of bodies in uncomfortable folding chairs.

Alas, I will not let this disappointment stop me from trying again. In fact, I feel another song bubbling up from within. This, more of a heavy metal piece than last night’s symphonic hat’s off to a spicy dinner. I can only hope that my audience might be a bit more appreciative. . . .



April 5, 2010



I smelled rain on my walk today. It was like I’d stumbled upon the Odorific machine rolled out in “Harold and Maude,” inhaling this scent that is hard wired in my brain. How do you describe the smell of rain to someone without using the word “rain” in the description? It’s this weird commingling of science and nature, rolled up in ions and dirt, and delivered on the breeze. And it’s absolutely intoxicating. Like a scented fireworks display, the smell isn’t pervading but rather reveals itself at its own liking. “THERE! Do you smell it? Turn your head and you’ll get it.” “Oh, THAT’s it! Breathe in, breathe in!”

No surprise here, but I’ve never been a perfumed person. At least not the kind that buys my smells. I may generate a scent, but I generally don’t pay for it. Ah, but how artificially beautiful I smelled on my fourth day of backpacking the Grand Canyon, thanks to my mom. I was a college senior and had decided to do something I’d never done before—sign up for a trip to somewhere I’d never been, traveling with people I didn’t know. It turned out to be a wonderful experience, hard and beautiful, trying and smelly. Except for that tiny bottle of perfumed lotion my mother had sent along.

I’d overlooked the bottle when packing, no doubt to my mother’s delight and relief. This classy, good smelling woman had been trying to soften and sparkle me for 20 years, albeit nominally successfully. Perhaps she thought that backpacking would elicit a kind of desperation and body odor I’d never known before, pushing me to find something—anything!—that could mask the musky scent of hard work and neglect. My mom is nothing if not patient and forward-thinking. Indeed, I did stumble upon the tiny, white bottle that read Chanel No. 19. I fingered it with my filthy hands, tuckered from a day of hiking, wondering how on earth my lone remaining pair of clean underwear would see me through the final three days of hiking.

On a whim, I twisted open the cap and stuck my nose within striking distance of the lotion. What struck me first was the realization that I was a stubborn, tom-boy fool. Could it be possible that I’d spent 20 years consciously avoiding such a treasure? Like an idiot walking past a chocolate factory with its doors wedged open, somehow, I’d spent the first 20 years of my life ignoring this, Chanel’s finest (took 18 prior tries to get it just right), despite its siren song of scintillating scents. Honestly, I’d never felt more beautiful than I did that moment when I daubed a bit on my wrists (hey, I knew enough to know where to put the stuff!), there among the scrubby pines and cottonwoods.

The other day, Allison was cleaning out her room and had left something on my dresser. It was a 15-year-old bottle of Chanel No. 19 that I’d requested for a post Grand-Canyon birthday. Its constitution a bit wobbly now, I almost hesitated to twist the cap and take a whiff, knowing it might disappoint. Like the scent of rain, though, it aimed to please even without meaning to, and I was transported to the Bright Angel Trail, my calves stiff with memory, my head full of beautiful images. My skin once again beautiful to take in.



April 9, 2010


I love trees, those solid symbols of hope that just stand there and take it, no matter what “it” is. Where men would crumble, trees persist. Against torrents of rain and howling winds, through brutal winters that show no sign of ending, trees endure. And I appreciate them for that.

Beyond just enduring, though, trees whisper “hope” this time of year, uttering promises of great things to come. Each day, I’m amazed at the changes my woody friends have gone through since I passed them just an afternoon before. Today, a river birch called me over, waving at me with its slowly greening fingers, pointing out two cardinals at play in the shade between houses.

Across the street, a forsythia shook its yellow swag at me, daring me to be appalled by its showy garb. Instead, I just felt a little sorry for it. Like a teenaged boy with no sense of self control, this poor bush had blown its floral wad at the first sign of spring. By the time the crab apples are in their full glory, this forsythia will be depressed and naked, holding nothing but a vague memory of one very good week.

I love to watch a tree start to leaf out. It’s like one very long, most excellent stretch. . . I literally can feel it in my muscles when I measure the progress of the Golden Chain tree out front. This exotic showpiece almost got the axe when we bought the house. With the grabby tendrils of a lilac, dying off one long limb at a time, it seemed rather weedy in late August when we first moved in. Thank goodness we gave the tree a year to show us why it was there. Come May, this now naked tree with only a hint of buds and leaves, will burst forth like one long fireworks display, spewing heavenly-scented chains of yellow flowers, like waterfalls. Cars will pass slowly, fingers pointing from half-opened windows, the occupants yabbering amongst themselves, trying to give a name to something they’d never seen before.

My life is seldom on display, but for a few weeks each year, this quiet, certain, surprising tree puts the spotlight on us and makes us feel just a little big magical, sitting near enough to breathe in its most fine, yellow-scented breath.

April 10, 2010


I have grown tired of men behaving badly. Yes, there’s Sara Palin, that feisty filly who teeters on the brink of full-fledged membership into this festering fraternity, but she is another topic entirely.

Now is the perfect time to turn to the lessons learned from the field of science. We need look no further than man’s best friend—specifically the golden retriever—when digging for reasons that we might not want to surround ourselves solely with slightly altered versions of those same selves.

Given the history of the oft-inbred golden retriever, I’d expect to start seeing an outbreak of hip dysplasia or eruptions of certain kinds cancer among some of our highest-profile radio announcers and politicians (both right- and left-leaning). Given that few of them seem to be limping, and fewer still have shown signs of rapid balding, though, perhaps those lessons are better learned from a good dose of common sense.

When we surround ourselves only with comparable cohorts, we risk hubris. We also tend to shut off ourselves from the opportunity to evolve into better, more adaptable versions of “us". Quite simply, while our puppies may be desirable and sell well in the puppy-mill circuit, our own futures become fuzzied with a flurry of far-flung, narrowly-focused feelings. On this path, it is likely that we will wake one day and consider it absolutely natural to circle the wagons rather than open up our hearts to conflicting, confounding, compelling ideas that challenge our own status quo.

If the truths on which I base my life indeed are capital-t Truths, then they can endure the scrutiny of others. Perhaps even thrive from it. Really, we should have more faith in the tenets that coarse through our veins, confident in their ability to hold steady and shine forth, regardless of the company we keep or the eyes that fall upon them.


April 12, 2010


I have lived in a cave world too long this year. That is why I was going to grill my dinner tonight, even if I’d planned on having spaghetti and meatballs. There is something quite satisfying about standing around a metal box of flames, burning the very life out of something that already is dead, nudging the flesh with a long-tined fork, testing the give, peeking at the color of the discharge.

While I was grilling the chicken tonight, Hobbes the Hobo Dog and I watched a sharp shinned hawk preen itself on the limb of the neighbor’s tree. Like us, he seemed unconcerned about what time it was or who might be watching him, oblivious to the chitterings of the nervous grackles next door. I got out the binoculars while the chicken lost the last of its moisture to the coals below, hoping to catch a glimpse of, well, frankly I don’t know what. Maybe an aerial death scene, like some martial-arts flick in which the characters seem frozen in midair. Instead, I watched as a blue jay finally got up the balls to swoop in and cuss out the hawk, who haphazardly loped along to another tree down the block, bored by it all.

I never grow tired of spotting a circling hawk in the sky. And I always feel a bit sorry for them, as well, despite what must be a really good view. Like the herons I also love so much, I think a hawk must live a pretty lonely life. Often alone and seldom unpestered, their days seem to me to be a mix of chasing and being chased. That’s why it’s so wonderful to see them, like pinpricks, high above the earth, unfettered and free, if only for a bit.

My neighborhood was brimming with at least temporarily unfettered and free people as well, today. Like a person awakened in the middle of the night, they looked a bit confused and out of place, but otherwise well rested. A loping bike ride through Woods Parks brought with it all kinds of pockets of people, each trying to remember how to work a swing or fly a kite or throw a Frisbee, battling only their memories and the waning light of the day. It was mighty nice to see so much life in so many forms, taking such pleasure at shaking off the cave days that most certainly must be behind us for good now.


April 16 2010


I’m reading Bill Bryson’s terrific “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid,” a memoir of his young years in Des Moines, so my mind is on the past these days. And , mostly, happily so. This morning, I had trouble finishing my biking exercise, so titillated was I by his horrified description of his grandmother’s use of the “N” word. Certainly seems like a generation blip on the politically-incorrect screen, and one that I suppose many of us can recall.

None of my grandparents used that despicable word, though each had his or her own way of causing me some degree of embarrassment, to be sure. I remember going to the Cooper Theatre with my Grandpa Shepard when I was an 8th grader. Really, we could have done just about anything together that year and I would have either been shamed or disgusted, simply because I was a 14-year-old girl at the time. (That makes it sound like I had some sort of gender-bending operation shortly thereafter, which, indeedy, I did not). Regardless, I found myself with my Grandpa one afternoon at the Cooper for a matinee showing of “1776,” a musical set in, well, 1776. And what 8th-grade girl WOULDN’T want to see this film?! Music! History! Funny costumes! Old man sitting next to me! It really was some kind of alignment of the planets that day when we pulled up to the lot on 55th and “O” streets.

As we waited in line for the tickets, I perused the other customers, as any normal 8th-grader would do. I saw some kids from my school—none of whom looked too pleased to be there—as well as a couple of teachers from my school, including two who had been at the top of the rumor-mill heap as a potential, secretive couple, now outed in the orange-coated surrounds of the Cooper Theatre! Egads! Already we’d enjoyed some controversy! And we didn’t even have our tickets yet, more or less a tub of popcorn, which I suspected never would materialize. Perhaps this day wouldn’t be a bust after all. . .

Finally, we wended our way to the front of the ticket line (I wonder now, as I type this, who the heck wanted to see this film that there would be a line at all!). That’s when my grandpa reached into his back pocket only to discover that –GASP!—he’d left his wallet at home. That’s when this whole afternoon became one long, painful payback for something that apparently was so awful that my penance would be suspended between the hours on the clock, rather than their stubby cousins the minutes. After realizing he had no money to get us into the movie—HEY! Don’t’ look at me! I blew all my detassling money on that stereo from J. C. Penney!--, my grandpa did what any decent man would do. He began begging absolute strangers for enough money to take his darling granddaughter to a film she would later wish had never been made.

He pointed to me, like some sort of tawdry prop, as he went into his fevered “money” pitch. “That’s my granddaughter, there, and I was hoping to take her to a movie today but I have no money. Would you be willing to. . . ?” Can you imagine a worse scenario for a self-conscious, pimply-faced, flabbergasted teenaged girl than to be pointed at in a public place, as some sort of token award for the highest bidder?! Potential bidder after potential bidder shook their heads and avoided eye contact with my grandpa, as we watched the line wend down to the last few patrons.

Finally, one guy, utterly fed up and disgusted with this whole display, reached into his wallet and literally threw a ten-dollar bill towards my grandpa. He cut my grandpa’s speech short, nipping it in the bud the same way a person might toss aside an undercooked burger from the local drive thru. At this point, I felt a bit like an occupant of the island of misfits, wondering if I’d ever again be able to look my classmates in the face, more or less the sexually-charged teachers who’d eyed me with pity as they grabbed an extra large tub of buttered popcorn for god-knows-what as they entered the dark theatre.

And so, my grandpa and I finally sat down in the dank, cool, dark bowels of Cooper Theatre, just moments before the film began. While I thought that I might find some solace and psychological boost in that dark, quiet room, I learned too quickly that my punishment was hardly over. For the next two hours—have you ever heard of a 90-minute musical?!—my grandfather, who was a bit on the hard-of-hearing side of things, bellowed side comments the way a carnival barker utters insults at passersby, with ear-bleeding volume and brassiness, and not a worry in the world. Oh, how I wished that it really was 1776, a time without electricity or movie theatres, though I suppose grandfathers still had some kind of daily role. . .


April 17, 2010


In the past week, several people have asked me what I think about the decision to allow proper nouns in a British version of Scrabble. The fact that several people asked me this question tells you something rather sad about me. Before I depricate myself, though, I’d like to take a minute to express my amazement that such an announcement—from the manufacturer of a board game, for Pete’s sake!—should make international news at all. I found the media coverage at once refreshing and bizarre. Forget volcanoes and earthquakes, tea parties and space exploration. . . let’s talk Scrabble!

As someone who has spent much of her life writing in all capital letters, I was a bit flummoxed by all of the attention a few proper nouns were getting. After all, based solely on my handwriting, I’ve nary given a sideward glance to the proper noun in over 30 years! Why, then, would I care if a board game opened up itself to the taller, more regal cousins of common objects?

But then I started to think about my students. More specifically, about my classroom rosters and all the nutty names that are sprinkled throughout them. If proper nouns were to be allowed on the Scrabble board, then what’s to keep Sedarias or LaKeisha , Kaytlin, Huong or Mary-Kate from sullying my weekend board-game getaways? I mean, do I really want the poor spelling and unfortunate choices of first-time parents to determine what words I can and cannot form from the seven wooden tiles sitting in front of me?

As much as I love Hobbes the Hobo Dog, I don’t think it should be right—more or less encouraged!—to use his name while playing Scrabble, unless, of course, I’m in need of administering a good belly rub between turns. Now that I think about it, though, I realize that two of the four humans living in my household have names that are at once both common and proper. More than once, I have placed the tiles J-A-N and E on the board. I don’t even know what “jane” means but it’s in the 4th edition Scrabble dictionary, so I’m using it, by God! And heaven only knows how many times the squares M-A-R-K have found a place amongst their tiled brethren.

Looks like I’m a hypocrite. . . now that would be a really nice word to play!


April 18, 2010


Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to bring together 7th- and 8th-grade girls from throughout the city to play some volleyball? And this “genius,” (whose initials are Y.M.C.A.) who came up with the idea then lets parents sit along the edges of the gym in squeaky folding chairs and watch the debacle. I cannot imagine a more self-conscious, awkward group of earthlings than 8th-grade girls. The fact that they snarl and paint their eyes only makes the ordeal more surreal.

Heaven help me that my sister Ann joined us at Allison’s first volleyball match a week ago. God knows I tried to be good. And then the nicknames started pouring from my sister’s beautiful, profane mouth and, well, it’s just never a good idea to let the Raglin sisters sit together. I tried to ignore Crouching Tiger as long as I could. After all, her mom was coaching the opposing team. But the girl did make a spectacle of herself and my sister’s name for her was spot on. I can only be grateful that my sister’s husband Wayne was sitting on the other side of Ann and poked her ribs at the appropriate times.

We really were mostly good, but, the thing is, once the nicknaming, nitpicking, nincompooping side remarks begin, it is very, very hard to clear my head again.

I thought a week off would do me good. I also thought it was rather clever and perhaps even a bit adult of me not to inform my sister of the time or location of this week’s match. Granted, a peanut could’ve figured out these details, but I wanted to at least create the illusion of “lessons learned.” Secretly, I had all my fingers and toes crossed that Ann once again would cross onto that maple-floored arena of a thousand laughs. She is always good company.

In Ann’s place, though, was our equally dangerous, sometimes snarky friend Big Al, who is pretty much family, too, now that I think about it. She’s the kids’ number-one fan, even though her side remarks more often than not teeter on number two. Though these remarks are never aimed at our children. Only other people’s. . . This is why we love her so much, though. She makes us feel good, occasionally at the expense of others.

It didn’t help that Mark worked a little long on Saturday so that he, too, could return to the scene of the crimes. And so, three bad adults sat shoulder to shoulder to watch—and make fun of—a dozen or so perpetually peeved teenaged girls who were waivering somewhere between absolute disgust for one another and utter embarrassment that they were even there. "Look at ME! DON'T look at ME! Why AREN'T you looking at ME?!"

What did I learn from today’s match? That the oddly shaped girl on Allison’s team is a textbook example of the power of genetics. Indeed, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in that family. Though, in her defense, she has a nice serve and dove for quite a few balls, which is more than most of the girls on the court did. I also learned that the tallest girl on Allison’s team establishes a pose just before the opponent’s serve that looks surprisingly like a praying mantis just before it eats its mate. And yet, despite my side comments, I love going to the games. I love the sport. I love that these girls sort of kind of show up to play.

That’s quite enough learning for one day, don’t you think?


April 21, 2010


We fool ourselves everyday. I know that. For the ten or so years that I was taking my kids to school each morning, I would utter the same thing each day as they opened the car door: “Have a great day!” And then I’d peel off, hoping my words would act as Teflon, deflecting the really bad stuff for some later date when they were more able to handle it.

As a parent, I swallow great heaps of lies and concern and continue to push my kids into the world “out there.” Because, if I don’t, if I start to think too much, I’d have to quit my job and home school them, fearful of all the bad that floats around just outside our doorway.

Most days, though, are great days. Most days end in happiness, with relatively few glitches and those of mostly minor consequence. When I rush home and put away the car for good each afternoon, I holler “hello” with a mix of fatigue and confidence, certain that some young person will holler back in a silly voice and a dog will come running to greet me.

There is a price to pay for all this false living, though. It comes in the form of occasional bouts with a harsher reality. And by then, I’ve grown so accustom to fooling myself—and my children—that I fear our skin is not tough enough to tough it out.

Monday afternoon proved to be one of those days. “Those” days often don’t even need all 24 hours. They can compact the tough stuff into little microbursts of hardness that, like a time-release capsule, stretch their wearying effects over long periods of time. First, my friend Scott mentioned at lunch a meeting he would have with our principal. A bit of a hush came over our normally talkative group as we wondered if it would prove to be “the” talk, the one in which our school district’s ever shrinking pool of funds would fall on the doorstep of someone who is both very talented and very human. And to think such possible news would have to be delivered by another very talented and very human entity, it made my heart heavy. Seriously, sometimes I think this district, which has not fully funded our school in well over 10 years, should change its current mantra of “What’s best for kids” to “What’s easiest for taxpayers.” But that is another, more dangerous piece of writing. . . .

A few other strange things came to light that afternoon, but the weight of all of them accumulated in an email I received from my daughter’s school. One of her classmates, a girl I had never heard of, had been in a car accident and she and her two siblings had been hospitalized. Their mother died in the accident. Reading that email made the tiny veil of lies simply vanish into the air. Those words proved too much for the thin veneer I’d spread over myself, the one that’d made everything seem a little shinier and a tad bit happier. Thinking of that young girl and her siblings waking to find out that they were alive—that they survived this, damn it!—only to discover that they’d have to go it alone, well, it was more than this stranger could bear. I ached for my own children, knowing that hard things awaited them, things that lurk in the corners of life, only to pop out when we least expect them.

Despite the harshness of that recent afternoon, when I pulled up into the garage that day, more defeated than grateful, I realized that I still wouldn’t live in any other way. I have always valued the positive perspective, the belief that, while tough things are out there, good will indeed be able to bubble up once again and put a little shine on everything. And so, I will continue to utter “have a great day!” even though I know that the hard stuff lurks out there. To leave my nest each morning, already defeated, more convinced of the bad than the good, well, that’s more than I can bear. And so, I stick with my lies, I slather on that shiny veneer and I walk into this world looking for the good, confident not in the bad that is out there but in the stars and the light that can still manage to weave their way through that badness and make me feel new again.


April 21, 2010


My college Econ professor Jerry Petr taught from the TANSTAFL playbook—There Aint’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. Turned out, those were wise and accurate words. Especially if I found myself in a church basement, where deviled eggs and Wonder bread both seemed to find the true meanings of their names.

Nonetheless, I still seek out the occasional bargain, certain that I’ll dodge the downsides of a lesser product or service. One of the most expensive cheap ventures I ever made was moving into a house on 13th Street with my friend Jill. The rent was dirt cheap, even for a single occupant, and became almost nominal when additional bodies were thrown into the equation. I threw my own body into it for a few months one year, drawn to the locale by friendship and really great ice cream within walking distance.

This was an incredibly cheap time in my life, shortly after college, when I lived on Top Ramen noodles and cans of refried beans slathered onto tortillas. Jill’s sense of frugality was no different. In fact, at one point, we had two T.V. sets, mistaken for luxury only from afar and when turned off. The reason we had two was because each was free and one only provided sound while the other was good only for a picture. Stacked atop each other, they provided us the latest—if not the greatest—in local news and entertainment. This was the time in my life when I knew every local bar that offered free food on Fridays, and I was acutely aware of virtually every sample fest in all of the local grocery stores.

No surprise, then, that we chose an ambling, cadaver-grey rental to call “home.” The landlord was an icon of “cheap.” In fact, if you looked up the word in the dictionary, you’d see a photo of him. His penny-pinching tendencies made their way into virtually every unsquared corner of our apartment, mostly in the form of what was absent rather than what was present there. Apparently, our place was lovingly referred to as the Minnegasco special, because of its complete lack of storm windows. And I now know why the kitchen floor had such a shine—it was the extra layers of polyurathane that his lackeys had painted onto the laminate. Granted, no one had ever put polyurethane on laminate before, but no one was quite as forward thinking as this landlord and his lackeys. How do I know these things? Because my husband Mark was one of those lackeys.

Shortly after I moved out, I think I finally realized that you really do get what you pay for and there really isn’t such a thing as a free lunch. I really don't want to relive my days in that crap heap on 13th Street. If I want something nice, I should be willing to pay for it. Frankly, I want a nice city to live in, one with well-maintained parks and libraries, a city that is both safe and accessible. I want opportunities to enjoy live music and great bike trails. What I want is a town worth paying for. Like they say in the L’Oreal hair products ads: It costs a little more, but I’m worth it.


April 24, 2010


So, a stranger will be in my bedroom today while Mark is at work. And I must say that, while I am concerned about dust bunnies and the general odiferous malaise that has settled upon my digs, I could not be happier about this prospect.

It is a weird thing to sell a mattress. It is far stranger, though, I suppose, to buy a used one. What will this woman and her husband do when they knock on our door this afternoon? Will they be in their pajamas? With reading materials? Or scented oils? And how will it feel to all of us as I lead them up the stairs (which will, come hell or high water, be cleared of all of Allison’s detritus…void of lone shoes and crumpled notes to self, stripped bare of library books and boxes of nail polish), preparing them for the big moment?

It seems only right—and yet, a bit wrong, too—that I leave them to themselves in our bedroom. If I were them, I’d want to simply lay on this prospective newest family addition for a good 10 or 15 minutes, seeing how we’d do together. Perhaps they’ll prop up their heads with our extra pillows, reach down to the floor and grab “The Year of Wonders,” reading a chapter or two just to get comfortable.

I hope they won’t rifle through our drawers, though, those private places filled with commingling his-and-hers underwear, nothing “brief” about a single pair in the bunch. I shudder to think of them poking through my knotted collection of necklaces, like a bejeweled snake ball, one no longer distinguishable from the other. And God knows what I’ll do if they open my bedside stand drawer, its contents covered in a half inch of dust formerly known as heel. I suspect I’ll know when they do, though, by the shocked and unintended “eep” that will escape from their lips.

And yet, I could not have been more thrilled this morning to have heard from a stranger, via that mysterious Craig and his never-ending list. I’ve already dusted the living-room furniture, have kicked the piles of papers underneath the couch. I’ve scrubbed last night’s meal off of the dining room table and even put on an extra swath of deodorant. Next up? Tackling the mattress itself. Preening and primping its corners, so that they might conjure up images of military preciseness. I will build up the sagging crater on which my buns have rested these past 9 months, and scrub clean the spot of blood that soaked through one night when I’d nicked myself shaving.

Perhaps this experience of selling a used mattress is preparation for next year, when Eric will begin to look for a college to call “home.” Perhaps we will gain insight into how to present an imperfect but still perfectly good product (this child of mine), with newly-shaven locks and a tie that’s mostly on right, holding him up to the highest bidder, the one most able to look beyond the wrinkled shirt and worn shoes and see, instead, a bright and shining future.

Then again, maybe that's a little too much to ask of a used mattress.


April 26, 2010


For something so small, incremental change is a powerful thing. When delivered on a slippery, nearly imperceptible slope, we tend to ignore it until it reaches a tipping point. While incremental change isn’t always a bad habit in the making, for me it often is the result of my compromising “Why not?” nature.

By the time I left my cave this winter, I’d found myself thicker around the waist. While I suppose I could justify my new poundage by pointing to the body’s ancient hard wiring for survival, its desire to puff up in response to the elements, that argument quickly falls on deaf ears (or perhaps I should say it spills over tightened waistbands) when factors such as adequate housing and digitally-programmed heating schedules come into the equation. The truth is probably closer to this—“Oh look. It’s snowing again! Let’s make cocoa and have some cinnamon toast!” Like the instructions on a shampoo bottle, I’d gotten good at “rinse and repeat.”

Truth is, I’m not a very disciplined person. Oh, I can go through the motions and create the illusion of daily good habits—downing my glass of tomato juice before leaving each morning, walking Hobbes the Hobo Dog each afternoon, and doing a number of things in between that feign maturity and good practice—but, really, I’m pretty content to let things be. In some circles, under the right conditions, such an approach may even be enviable. It comes off as “easy going” or even “balanced,” when, selfishly, there is something more couch-bound there, too—the complete lack of desire and discipline to actually commit to something else.

Most mornings, I wake up, go to the chilled basement and do a little writing and stationary-bike riding long before my neighbors have reached for the switch of their bedside lamps. While that may sound impressive at first, what follows isn’t really worth a hoot, because it means I’m pretty much done with my day’s disciplined routine by, oh, 5:20 a.m. each morning. For someone who put on a few this winter, there’s only so much room in me for conscientious and healthful incremental change. The rest? The rest is reserved for the haphazard results of just winging it.


April 27, 2010


I am all atwitter as I stare at my new squirrel underpants and gin-and-titonic ice-cube tray. These gifts that Andrea and Julie gave me are cradled in the brightly colored gift bag sitting under my desk, peeking out from the blue tissue paper, saying “Who died and made you queen for a day?!” Indeed, I am a lucky person, and these silly gifts stand as proof of that.

Seems to me that this is the real job of a gift—to shine a light on the recipient so that all may see their good fortune to be alive in this place, right now. This is not to say that the squirrel undies will be viewed as good fortune by everyone . . . .

I delight in all things silly and irrelevant. I admit that there are days when the only reason I hope for life after death is that it might afford me the chance to work at a 24/7 Avant Card outlet on a nice tropical island. I can spend hours in that store, running my hands across things that serve no purpose beyond evoking laughter. It is there where I found Andrea’s blow-up hairdo and Molly’s extra offensive birthday card, hiding amongst an entire wall of fart-themed holiday cards. It is in the aisles of Avant Card where I discovered the Hail Mary Holy Toast Maker and the burning cigarette pen, the rebel-librarian temporary tattoos (Read or DIE!), and the Hello Vinnie Tampon Case. My life is more complete because of these things.

Of all the great gifts I’ve received, no one can hold a match to those chosen by my brother Mike. Few served any purpose beyond lighting up our faces. And he never once disappointed. I still have the leather bag with his wisdom teeth—far longer, far wiser than most. The knock-off luxury watch he bought on the streets of New York long ago died (it’s possible it didn’t make it through its first day, in fact), but not the memory of it. That Christmas, each Raglin made a prediction as the next “Mike” watch was being unwrapped. Would it be a Gucci? A Cartier? We felt like we were on Monty Hall’s Let’s Make a Deal, longing to see what was behind Door #3.

It was Mike who gave me ribbon candy and a 3-foot-long box of chocolates. He’s the one who gave me perhaps the world’s only example of Formica sculpture, complete with his Kitty’s whiskers in one of the drawers.

It is a relief to come from a family that revels in the silly gifts, rather than ones in which the price tag determine the reactions. My pocketbook certainly is grateful. . . oh, alright, I don’t own a pocketbook, but, if I did, it would be happy. And I, too, feel a deep contentment knowing that, on my birthday, there will be a tube of Pringles with my name on it. Maybe some peppermint Eclipse gum, if I’m lucky. And it’ll be wrapped in the Sunday comics or a recycled gift bag that some fancy person gave to us at one time. The joy should be inherent, not dependent. I’d say our family has got that lesson down pat.

April 29, 2010


Like most jewels, I happened upon the most beautiful of songs this week with nary an idea of what I’d found. “Forgiveness” by American composer Joseph Curiale is like an aural definition of its title. I don’t think I have ever heard a more beautiful, more apropos rendition of what it means to forgive and to be forgiven. The crisp, heartbreaking notes, held in tow only to break loose in the end, reminiscent of the spirit-cleansing effects of an “I’m sorry,” speak with the accuracy of well-written nonfiction.

I’m not sure if I’m superstitious or just naturally inclined to believe that things line up and work out with amazing consistency, but this song found its way into my life at just the right time. The end of the school year is like the frayed end of an electrical cord—raw and a bit dangerous if you get too close. . The potential for fireworks and injury seems always to be held at arm’s length by the most frail of structures. For some, failure has heaped itself upon failure, poor choice amassed upon poor choice, heartache upon heartache, fear upon fear. No time of the school year is more naked than this, its final curtain. No other time of the school year is more in need of great helpings of forgiveness than its last month.

This song reminds me that we all are incredibly vulnerable, so in need of the kindness not only of strangers but perhaps especially of those who know us best. Just as important as giving forgiveness is knowing how to receive it well, with both generosity and openheartedness. Whatever role I play in the occasion, if done freely, I am set free.

This week, I have seen dark words spill from the mouth of someone I love very much, words cloaked in the poison of mistaking humanity for something less than it. I thought of the complicated power of words to either build up or tear down. I thought about the words that I could produce in response, scrambling for ones cloaked in love rather than indictment, encouragement rather than shame.

Sometimes, a love letter is a very difficult thing to write. That doesn’t mean you don’t write it, though. It just means that you write it with kid gloves, hoping that forgiveness and fresh beginnings may bubble up from it. Like the notes in this most beautiful song, I hold up the words in my letter, asking them to transform us all, to steady the ground beneath us and let the wind refresh our tired, imperfect souls.

March 2010

March 1, 2010


I made it almost four days before I ate some candy last week. And I don’t know what’s going on at the Brach’s factory, but they are cranking out some crap where they used to produce a mighty fine Fiesta Chocolate Malt Egg. By the time I finished the whole bag, I knew this wasn’t the Fiesta Egg of yesteryear, a thick, burly, sassy egg swimming in a fine layer of chocolate. No, I had to endure some sad second cousin to the once-great Fiesta Egg, probably produced at the same plant that wrecked the Girl Scouts’ Lemon cookies. . .

It used to be that I could blow Lent in real style, happily gnawing on the magic of a Marathon Bar, the caramel tickling my chin as I asked God’s forgiveness again. I know times are tough when I blow my eternal wad on something that doesn’t even hint at the glory days of candy bars.

I recall my years-long pursuit of the hallowed Mallo Cup, one that spawned an Odyssean adventure of epic proportions. I will never forgot how, after a fifteen-year Mallo drought, I walked into the Ben Franklin’s at Piedmont, a desperate and broken 25-year-old woman wondering what the hell had happened to the glorious cups that cradled both coconut and marshmallow-crème filling. That’s when I saw the lone yellow package, the 50s font shouting “Here it is! The very last one in the world…AND IT’S YOURS!” I very nearly cried when I paid for that Mallo Cup.

What do you do when you run into someone you haven’t seen in years? If that someone happens to be wrapped in chocolate, you rip it open and devour it before the car’s in reverse. Lapping at the chocolate crumbs on my shirt, I caught a glimpse of myself in the rear-view window. I looked like a heroin addict who’d found herself in a poppy field. Wild eyed and empty handed, all I could do was think of where I could get my next Mallo Cup. Jonesing for the next fix, I fingered the package, sniffing it when no one else was looking. That’s when I noticed the small print. Boyer Candy Company Altoona, Pennsylvania. A kung-fu focus took over as I made my way home, bleary eyed and hopeful.

I pulled out the Smith-Corona, carefully feeding a fresh piece of paper through its rollers. And I proceeded to construct the most beautiful love song ever written. I told the company officials of my relationship with the beloved Mallo Cup. I mentioned the cruel truth that teased and taunted me at the local Ben Franklin’s. I included a check, hoping they could help me.

One week before Lent, a package arrived in the mail. Thank God it wasn’t a hot day, for neither my roommates nor I got to the mailbox before dinner. And oh what a dinner it turned out to be. Like all good addicts, I ran to my room and slammed the door shut, happy to spend my time alone, with my spoon and lighter, warming up the factory-fresh sugar smack, tapping my veins to find just the right one. And then I proceeded to eat five Mallo Cups in a row, sometimes without even chewing. As a waivering yet still hopeful Catholic, I did what I needed to do. I ate every one of those 24 Mallo Cups before Lent rolled around the next week.


March 2, 2010


I’m a bit of a leisure hound. It’s made for some very nice weekends that leave absolutely no trail of accomplishment in their paths. I have my Scrabble playmates, Jill and Kristie, who also are willing to carve out time to have fun, though not every game of Scrabble has been fun for us, especially when there’s a glut of vowels or too much layering. Still, I recognize that these problems don’t register on most people’s “hard times” maps, so I try not to complain too much.

Because of this leisurely attitude that pervades my weekend soul, I have been struggling a bit at work these days. As I think about this school year, one filled with really fun kids and enjoyable work mates, I realize that I have never worked harder than I’m working this year. You’d think that, after 20 some odd (some very odd) years of teaching, I would have figured out the formula of how to work less rather than more. Not sure, then, why my workdays are so packed but they are. And what gives in this scenario is the thing that I really do need—the leisurely moment.

I miss roaming the hallways to chat it up with my friends. I’m lacking in moments that have nothing to do with homework or planning or (the most loathed word I know of) pedagogy. Seriously, I really hate that word. I can’t hear it without hearing Alex Trebek’s voice, uttering it with such elongated snobbery that it very nearly makes me vomit. Would I be willing to spell it in Scrabble? Dang straight! But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t cringe a little.

In this ode to 9-to-5 leisurely moments, I recognize that some might think me lazy. That’s entirely possible. Like most lesser species, I’m always on the hunt for the path of least resistance, the limping prey that requires nothing more than a simple shove to put it in the oven. But I also think that there’s real validity in creating play time at work. I think I’m more efficient when there’s a pause in my day for a noon-time dance or a really bad pun or maybe even a School of Silly Walks moment or two. I’m certainly more refreshed, not to mention that such moments build up my resilience to humiliation, a strength of mine that wavers on the Herculean.

So, I’m going to do what I can to build in some downtime today. Heck, I may even pencil it into my calendar…”Fart at 10:15, then invite Andrea in for a chat.” I think it will do me good. Maybe not Andrea, but certainly me.


March 4. 2010


Mark and I were talking music yesterday—not a surprising subject for us, given how freely the tunes flow in our household. Many a late afternoon has been spent in high-drama music mashups, in which we take turns playing great songs, looking for nougats in the previous one that seem to hook into the next. And always, our selections are cloaked in secrecy until the first notes force themselves from the speakers. When these events are in high gear, dinner almost always takes a backseat.

Yesterday’s focus, though, was on the role of music in our lives and Mark made a comment that stuck with me. He said that, these days, he mostly needs music to comfort him. Now it’s possible he was trying to tell me something about the state of our union, so to speak, but that’s not how I heard it. Instead, I just nodded my head in agreement. While I still pop on the tune whose sole purpose (or maybe even soul purpose) is to pump up my jam, pump it up, most songs I choose to play because they scrub me clean.

Since getting the “new” car in January, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to choose more than just my radio station. For a Holt, this car came to us with all the candy—electric windows (they go up and down!), four hubcaps (classy!), a fully-mounted rear-view mirror (no Gorilla Glue!) and a CD player (goodbye 8 track!). I now have this precious pile of pre-selected tunes burned on colorful CDs with Sharpied titles like “Star lit” or “Drive Time” or “Funky Fiddlesticks,” each assigned a specific role in my life. Almost always, I’ve got one of the soul scrubbers in cue each morning I drive to work. And I am convinced that these songs make for better days at work.

Given the weather conditions, I roam through the selections for the one that feels right. Each of these jewels has moments in it that break my heart or lift my spirits just a little. There are single notes that completely blow me away, daring key changes or minor chords that leave me speechless. I nearly drive off the road each time they get to the chorus in “Be Thou My Vision,” convinced that I might be able to fly. And kd lang fills me with such longing when she sings “After the Gold Rush.”

In what might seem a gruesome turn, many of the songs on these soul-scrubbing CDs are nominees for my funeral song. Again, it must feel that I obsess about death, but really, I just want a good theme song. For a few years now, the top nominee, with its clunky name but unbeatable key changes, is “Cider House” from the film Cider House Rules. It is simply a beautiful, perfect song. My days are always better when I pop in one of those songs for the 10-minute drive to work. These songs do their job well.



March 5, 2010


“Full Frontal Crudity”

We seem to live in a culture in which “full frontal crudity” is both acceptable and expected. I remember growing up in a liberal Catholic household (I know what some of you are thinking…is that the same thing as a Fun Run or Military Intelligence? Well, no, as a matter of fact, it isn’t). In my household, I was free to share my opinions at dinner, in between courses, even though I was the youngest. Yet there were unspoken rules that dictated our conversations. For instance, no one could swear, except my dad. And maybe my sister, who had a wonderful, frightening grip on the slang vernacular of the day. Regardless, while we often piggybacked on each other’s opinions or input, we generally were a civil group. Heck, while I relished the chance to be included in the nightly dinnertime conversation, I was, at the same time, too embarrassed to pronounce “mature” correctly (emphasizing the first syllable, rather than the second), when playing Monopoly with my friend Barb, convinced that “mature” was just a half step from something so sexually deviant as to be unutterable. (Author’s Note: This paragraph, I believe, represents the longest paragraph I’ve written since delving into the world of journalism 31 years ago. Right now, I’m checking my skin to see if I have broken out in some sort of Faulknerian rash. . . )

Despite what I believe is my generally open mind these days, I really do still maintain that there are limits to someone’s self expression, even if I can now pronounce “mature” correctly without blushing or checking the location of my bra strap. I think about our school’s library, which is a welcoming place, even for people I would never invite to dinner. Some days (and those “some days” seem to be the days I’ve experienced recently), there are so many “f” bombs dropping in there that the first thing I do when I get home is to lift my shirt, certain that I have taken some verbal shrapnel to my midsection. And I can’t tell you how many teenaged cracks I’ve seen this month, mostly because recalling that number might, in fact, void all the good that my visual therapist did me recently.

Teens did not find this crudity on their own. Rather, they are simply following the lead of their well-honed adult mentors, who think nothing of libeling their perceived “enemies” by tossing at them the kind of poo that zoo monkeys usually fling at the people who stare into their cages. Seriously, it is this fact that really brings me down—our teens are simply aping adults when they sag and shag and brag their way through each hideous utterance or fashion statement. How on earth can we be mad at the young’uns when their elders are so stinking foul themselves?

March 7, 2010


Who’da thunk that hell on earth would come with a name like Westfield Shoppingtown? And yet, twice in the last two weeks, I have found myself face to face with Lucifer, masked as a bubbly salesclerk in name-brand clothing.

I try to be a good mother, but Allison’s interest in shopping and in having clothes with other people’s name on them present to me a challenge I simply am not prepared for. But there I stood yesterday, in the middle of a mall, shunning the sunshine that had finally returned, turning my back on all that is good and right with this world in exchange for some jewelry taped together by child laborers in a place where pennies are gold and humidity is a given.

I knew from the moment I found myself searching madly for a parking spot that this would not end well. Even before we entered the belly of the beast, I found myself sneering at a posse of pre-teens so intent on preening and posing that I had to fight off my gag reflex. We passed through another gaggle of gangstas at the entrance, each one trying to outdo the other, fanning his foul feathers like peacocks on parade. I was reminded of the upscale mall in London that pumped in a high-pitched tone, unheard by older customers, yet so unbearable to young ears that it sent the teens to the exit signs in droves. I must remember to send that mall manager a letter of admiration.

I felt like Richard Leakey yesterday, not participating in humanity so much as observing it. And what I observed frightened me. The frenetic pace, the desire to be seen, the obsession with Obsession by Calvin Klein. . . and that mall air, like air leaked from an old balloon, stale and false and probably not good for you. By the end of our 45-minute trek, I expected Allison to treat me with the gratitude reserved for relatives who donate an organ so that you may live longer. Seriously, I made her buy me a cookie at the Cookie Company and then kept waiting for her to fall to the ground, prostrate in humble thanksgiving for this, my eternal gift of consumptive opportunity.

By the end, I felt like Robert Johnson at the crossroads (make that Crossroads Mall for me), both of us choosing to walk with the devil. But he at least got the blues out of it. Me? I just got depressed.


March 8, 2010


I pity the wrinkly, brown Caucasians who have wended their way west to stake their sun-baked claims on their waning Golden Years. Even with an inch of snow in Thursday’s forecast, I know that I cannot live without the seasons. Period. Speaking of periods, there are single days in my life in which I go through two or three seasons before the sun even sets.

Seriously, if I were God, I would have mandated four seasons for all living creatures, regardless of latitudes and longitudes. And don’t even get me started on the Prime Meridian. . .

Seasons are like class periods to a teacher. Each holds a different promise, a new beginning, the chance to reinvent oneself and start all over again. They are invigorating, exhilarating, exhausting and flabbergasting. They scrub us clean, just when we can’t imagine one more day spent in those tan pants and that green sweater. Living in a climate with four fully delineated seasons is like running my brain through the demagnetizing device at the library—by the time thunder returns to my consciousness, I’ve all but forgotten about its sassy wankitude, the way in which it jolts me awake in the middle of the night, certain a Mack truck is blasting through my window.

Each year, I am reintroduced to Robins, who seem somehow unique and unbelievable to me. Each spring, I have a few evenings in which the eerie honk of geese manages to break through the inky blackness and dares to reveal the birds’ ghostly grey outline against the night sky. Each year I am completely blown away by the first sighting of a lightning bug pulsating its way across the lawn. I still can’t imagine the child-like delight of my neighbor Jody's California friends, when they saw their first lightning bug a few summers ago. . .

For me, the true beauty of the seasons is the opportunity that they offer us to rediscover. . well, of everything. The first fall sky, with its clouds stretching their long, thin legs across the horizon, reminds me that these clouds have little in common with their beefy, bold cousins who fills the summer skies like bags of toppled marshmallows.

Having four seasons makes me strong and appreciative, patient and introspective. It lets me return to childhood, wide-eyed with amazement as my feeble mind is reminded once again of the tangy taste of the first tomato of summer, the joy of pointing my sled downhill after the first snow, the ache that always accompanies the turning of the leaves, the pleasure of smelling wet dirt again.



March 13, 2010


Oh, I have taken a very long bathroom break from writing this week! The danger there is that someone might mistake “away” time with the production of a quality piece, which would be a disappointing and devastating conclusion for all involved. . .

Every branch of my immediate family tree (which is more like a sapling at this point) is in town this weekend. It’s odd, because, while I came from a relatively large family (I am the youngest of five kids), the Raglin and Shepard forests in which I reside are really quite small. A couple of my dad’s brothers remained single throughout their lives and my mom’s siblings have lived much of their adult lives on some coast or another, putting the few cousins I have out of my reach for much of my life. Considering that I only know my mom’s sister as “Aunt Weedy,” I shouldn’t be too surprised that her offspring have remained mostly off limits to me.

Lucky for me, though, that cousin Paige—my age and fun, to boot!—has lived in Colorado for much of her adult life, allowing me to spend some quality time with her every so often. Otherwise, my understanding of extended family rivals my understanding of lychee nuts or curling. . .

Such a sparse connection to and feeble existence of relatives, then, always leaves me flabbergasted when I hear about someone planning a family reunion in which they expect over a hundred people to attend. They will talk about t-shirts and contests and multiple cabin reservations, pounds of potato salad and slideshows filling their stomachs and minds. I simply can’t relate. Literally. The Raglins are like angels in that respect. We could hold our family reunion on the head of a pin, that’s how few of us there are.

And yet, when all of my siblings and their offspring gather together, I begin to understand why it might be enough that we can all fit in one room at the same time. We are a brash, brassy, boisterous bunch, vying vehemently for air time, leaving our spouses and children wide eyed and wasted on the couch in the corner. Maybe there’s only so much room for this motley crew and we should be glad someone made room for us at all.

Me? I’ll take what I can get of my family connections. I love that each child of Jim and Sally Raglin is so different from the other, that we bring such different things to the table, both intellectually and nutritionally. Like all families, when we gather as adults, it takes about three seconds until certain childhood traits emerge once again, yet we are a more forgiving bunch these days, probably because we are no longer able to hide our own warts and all. I will always relish, then, a chance to bowl with the bros and my sis, to eat microwavable bacon at my mom’s house—despite the sinfulness of such a product--, to let Alexi and Melina and Sam show me what it means to be a child in my sibling’s households. It’s all a gift, really, and one that I open with relish. Pickle relish, to be exact. . .


March 15, 2010


For the most part, I have lived a life void of religious fervor. I like God a lot and have mostly been glad to have God in my life, but I have held no parades for him nor have I cast stones at those who see God in different ways or outfits or skin color. I figure that God is so big, so beyond my comprehension that it does me no good whatsoever to find a box to put him in.

While I’ve gone through various religious stages in my life, at times embracing the deity and doxologies, the doctrines and distant respect, I think that I am most content these days in the spiritual clothes that I wear, having come to the simple conclusion that if it isn’t love, it isn’t God. Oh, I tried the Unitarians for awhile but wasn't sure they even believed in themselves, more or less God. I even went to some church that seemed to embrace snakebite evangelism but was worried it would nullify my Zoo membership, so I only went once. Ultimately, I'm not much of a shopper, though, so when I found my current church, I called it "good," which, indeed, it is.

No longer burdened by to-do and don’t-you-dare lists, I find that both God and I are enjoying ourselves, others and each other more these days. It’s really quite freeing to realize that because religion is a human spin on the divine, too often it is destined to fall short and risk defamation rather than come off as knowing very little about the one who created us.

Why is it we feel we have to figure everything out? I, for one, enjoy the mysterious journey. I don’t want spirituality or God or the universe to be explained away in some sort of divine quadratic formula. Instead, I want to be blown away by the simple revelation of waking up each day still with ten toes and ten fingers, by golly! There is so much in this life that is unknowable—unknowable!—ihat it seems we would better serve ourselves, each other and God by coming to terms with that incredible mystery and being content by being blown away.

That said, for the first time in my life, I attend a church that gets under my skin and whose ideas comes spilling from my lips in the fashion of an evangelical. I am never sorry that I go to a service, yet I also am not fearful because I have missed a Sunday to work through a particularly difficult crossword puzzle. There is no guilt, just contentment and amazement.

Yesterday, we had a guest minister, a Quaker who has just written a book titled “What If the Church were Christian?” He had the voice and storytelling manner of Garrison Keillor, without his face for radio, thank God. He spoke softly, with humor and poignancy, acknowledging that there were so many things we could never know and wouldn’t it be something if church didn’t bombard us with rules and regulations but rather just invited us inside for the ride together?

He recalled a story about William Penn, who was drawn to the Quaker faith but still liked to carry around his sword. When he asked the founder of Quakerism about carrying around his sword, the founder's answer was profound--"Wear it as long as you can." Ah, take it off when God moves you beyond that point, but don't do it because I tell you so. . . It was a powerful idea, one that would free far more people than it would doom. One that put more trust in God than in a silly set of rules some people had written long ago.


March 17, 2010>


Sometimes I stand in the hallway between classes and just look at people, seemingly detached from them yet peering intensely, as though I’m looking for a clue that would explain Why. I see kids whose names I don’t know and I tuck backs stories into their hulking bags, just behind the Geometry book that peeks out.

I am most fascinated with the quiet kids, probably because I am not one of them. I wonder where their resilience comes from, ponder how long it’s been since they’ve talked to someone other than an adult who elicited an answer last hour, despite the fact that they’d never raised a hand. It’s odd seeing so many kinds of people who are expected to divvy up their days into 50-minute chunks of learning, each of whom is assigned a navy blue locker that sometimes opens with three turns of the wrist. Sometimes I feel guilty, as though I am part of the problem, pointing out the absence of an ID badge, nudging them along as the warning bell sounds, willing them in the direction of their next curricular appointment.

I don’t know that we are supposed to live so systematically, that we could possibly expect someone to thrive in such a setting. Yet I close my door each hour and absolutely expect a little magic to take place. Like a CSI, I pull out my tools and dust for fingerprints, looking for something that resembles success or acknowledgement or life or hope. The spittle of my disappointment rarely falls upon these people, because they typically rise to the challenge. I do wonder, however, what the cost is of that rising. How much of themselves do they leave behind each school day in order to maintain status quo and, with any luck at all, escape the day undetected?

Who am I to think I can save a child? Who am I to show up each morning with the expectation that my plans, my requirements should go accordingly? What is it in these plans, these cat scratchings, that will nudge joyful life and surprising results and signs of humanity from these sleepy, tow-headed children? We are just doing our jobs. I think I do mine best when I take the time to look into their eyes and ask a question that has nothing to do with content and everything to do with them. I find myself best when I lift up my own cover and share a tiny shred of my own back story, showing them the tragicomic realities of my own imperfection.

March 18, 2010


Sometimes I wonder if just a tad bit of Rich Little didn’t leach out of the grave and into my bloodstream. I don’t know what it is with me but when I talk to many of my friends, I tend to switch my voice. These aren’t even worthwhile or admirable change ups that I make, and yet each acts as some sort of audible recognition system, like a retina scanner for the voice box.

For some, their given names are like flags that they wave, while others wear them like a hair shirt, physically pained each time their name is uttered. It's true that some people have such awful names that you wonder if you should call CPS or not. But a loving nickname, or a name uttered with a stupid accent,. . . well, that is something entirely different. These are like proclamations that say "I've been noticed! And someone likes me well enough, thank you!" That is why I love to mangle a name.

Walking through the hallway at school, I sound like that creepy girl in Go Ask Alice, who kept on donning new personalities. Is that Kevin walking my way? Then go deep, push chin to collar bone and utter “kEV.” Almost like a question mark at the end of it.

When it’s Jeff who’s caught my eye, my chin drops, a la kEV, beginning in a basso “jeF…” but then building up to and finishing off with a little Winston Howell the Third impression as I utter the big finish “FREY!” One more time: jeF-FREY!

I don’t even say Kristie’s name at all anymore; rather, I just let out a guttural grunt. It’s how I leave messages on her answering machine, in fact. I just grunt. Even on her Wesleyan professor’s phone, I grunt, though I do try to do it with some restraint and class. Regardless, she knows what that grunt means.. “ Scrabble at 1. My house. “

Can’t remember the last time I called Jill ‘Jill.’ Naw, she’s Brillo. Then again, I’m Draino. I don’t know which is worse—being called a coarse scrub pad or a container hair-eating poison, but somehow they feel like an audible hug, rolling off the tongue or vibrating on my ear drum.

Sister-in-law Jennifer on the phone? She gets the good, old-fashioned scream. “JENNN-IIII-FEERRRRRR!” Always a pleasure to hear from her, though she doesn’t call as much as she used to. . .

Barb gets the lilting BA-harrrrrrb, always a pleasure to deliver, whether live or in an email greeting.

And then there’s the general bastardization of names, that spills from me with the ease of drool from a baby. Jules, Kabourabakewell, Lillith, Chica, Marco Polo, Bean and Jerry, Fer, Eric Bo Dereck, Allisonian, Big Al, kday, BillllAY, CherylBarrel, Smorgasborgs . . . seriously, uttering these nicknames and using my stupid voices is my own version of a sonnet, a love song to my friends and family, and one I never get tired of reciting.

March 19, 2010

My favorite poem for you!

The Peace of Wild Things By Wendell Barry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

March 21, 2010


Adam Lambert made the New York Times crossword puzzle today. He was 65 across, to be exact. And it’s not like today is a Monday, when most of us can find some nougat of self respect by getting an answer or two, maybe even bypassing the pencil altogether. No, today is Sunday, and this is the New York Times, the nerd equivalent of bicycling’s Tour de France or meterology’s perfect storm. There he is, that cross-dressing, gender-bending American Idol Season 8 runner up, batting his mascara-laden lashes at every befuddled word nerd in the nation, all of whom had thought themselves otherwise safe and sound in their dens with an afghan around the legs.

Yes, I watched and even admired Adam Lambert, sometimes downright giddy as I wondered what odd twist he'd bring to last season's shows. While I'm not sure Johnny Cash would want to share a meal with Adam after his brilliant and bizarre take on "Ring of Fire,"I do know he'd appreciate this guy's musical cajones at least. While I admired him, I never actually called in my support for the guy. Or anyone on the show. Rather, I took them in the way I take in coconut kisses, one right after another, with nary a memory of a single one after a few minutes had passed. That's why Adam's mention in this morning's puzzle was so puzzling to me.

I try to imagine puzzle creator Will Shortz making that decision, bypassing biblical greats, grizzled 70s T.V stars, and former presidential duos to settle upon this infant of an icon whose star status is as uncertain as clear reception on my portable AM radio. Frankly, I struggle to form and hold such an image in my head. Surely, there is a logical explanation for this undeserved nod to that lanky bod, a bacterial bug that festered in Shortz’ stomach this week, fuzzying his logic and flaming his formerly well-behaved behind. Even Shortz, I tell myself, can come up short sometimes.

My feeble attempts at atonement, though, fall far short of making me feel better about all of this. The fact is, Adam Lambert has not come close to earning a spot on this coveted crossword. He has not lived long enough, died long ago, nor reached the kinds of epic heights required of those for whom the coveted ink is spilled. And so, in protest—a protest I know will neither tipple the axis of the earth nor cause hordes of people to flood the streets with rocks in hand—I skip 65 across and will reveal its answer only if those clues whose paths cross this way make their answers known to me.

I have, after all, at least some shred of dignity, even if no one’s seen it for some time now.



March 23, 2010


Today represented a perfect storm of good things for me—an ultimate combo platter of time, opportunity and temperate conditions, served with a side of family and fun. I accomplished a pile of good things before the 5 o’clock news could rev up, and realized that, for the first time in a very long time, I was a part of, rather than apart from. . . .

Maybe that’s the true first sign of spring for me—the realization that I am engaged in this life, rather than stuck observing it (even happily and most certainly sleepily so) from a cozy, fleece-filled observation deck in my home. I type this with chilly hands and red cheeks, remnants of happy outdoor living, signs of having done something in the midst of fresh air and change. I feel alive today and it’s a mighty nice feeling.

For someone who is on vacation—and for whom to-do lists are blacklisted from her weekends—I was amazingly efficient and accomplished today. In a very specific and concrete order, I read the paper, exercised, washed the dog, went to the library, helped daughter Allison buy a bike, revisited our investments, dropped off stuff at the Goodwill, cleaned out the garage, made hummus and enjoyed a beer with Mark. And the smile that is smeared across my face is there for a while at least, a sign of good and grateful living.

I didn’t realize how much I needed this pause in my professional life, how much I longed for days filled with. . . whatever and whomever. It’s as though I’ve taken a bracing shower after getting my hands dirty. I can’t shake this joy I feel, realizing I have made it through to this point in my life, that I am here and I can do as I please for a few more days at least. I have communed with the chickadees and cardinals, welcomed back the turkey vultures and crocuses, reintroduced myself to the hot tub and grill and I am rewarded with the buzz that says that I am indeed alive and that, perhaps, the world is a more interesting place with me in it.


March 24, 2010


Wended my way southwestward this morning, a lovely, rural drive to Cortland where lifelong friend Barb and her steady canine stead Lobo awaited me with muffins and music, conversations and lunch. I can see why Barb is such a joyful sort, each day getting to spend time among the trees and fields that too often have been chased out of the city for concrete dreams. I never hit the speed limit, wanting to languish a bit as I moved through the country, keeping my eyes peeled for flickers and hawks, deer and broken down pickups scattered throughout the fields.

Among my rural sightings was a sign that spoke of hands thrown up in compromising despair: “For Sale: Farm or Acreages.” I imagine someone painstakingly counting his pennies, reviewing his investments, talking with people for whom money is a business, a commodity, something to be harvested like milo in the fall. . . and ultimately, painfully, agreeing to add the loathed word “Acreages” to the sign.

It must have broken a hundred rural hearts to see that sign and all that comes with it—namely, rich city folks who want just a sliver of the country life, not too much land that it becomes unmanageable, but just enough to say “I live in the country…on an acreage.” Along with excellent and dependable utilities, good schools and decent roads.

I then realized there was evidence of both compromising and uncompromising behavior scattered throughout the countryside. About a mile past the “For Sale” sign, for instance, I spotted a turkey formerly known as Tom, his black-and-white tail feathers standing at attention between the strips of pavement making up this split highway. Blood and gore disguised by his still handsome dress, one thing was still obvious—either the turkey or the driver refused to compromise, leading to the gobbler’s ultimate demise. Had Tom refused to look both ways before crossing, or was the driver unwilling to swerve in order to miss him? Like most situations in which someone is uncompromising, there was road kill in its wake.

Maybe there was a time when I was uncompromising, or some issue on which I would not sway. I can’t recall either now, though. I am, for all practical purposes, a compromising individual. I don’t like conflict, I lack the strength of rock-hard convictions, and ultimately am too practical to see something through to the bitter end, if it means the end of friendship or work or something else that is both tangible and loved by me.

By being compromising, I suppose I’m also a bit compromised, too. I’m the late-model Ford that threatens to remain on the lot, generally overlooked because of the worn tread on my tires, the rust along the doors, the general sensation I give off that I’m not really all you’d like me to be.

But there also is, I believe, a danger in being uncompromising. Those who wave flags of indignation (and indignation most often is the flag of the uncompromising…too heavy and noticeable for those compromised individuals such as myself), unwavering in their beliefs, can cross that thin, almost imperceptible line into something more absurd than pure. Just tonight, on the evening news, the reporter uttered this headline, seemingly unaware of its inherent irony: Senators Receive Death Threats from Pro Lifers.

Sometimes, Tom’s not the only turkey in the road. . .


March 26, 2010


The Journal-Star was digging for stories today (a practice that seems more and more common in that paper), asking readers to share April Fool’s Day stories. Got me thinking about the important role that pranks and jokes have played in my life.

My dad was a very funny man. Well liked by Democrats and Republicans alike (which, in itself, might be kind of funny these days), I think his appeal had as much to do with his sense of humor as it did with his common sense, two things he had an abundance of. We always knew where we stood with our dad, although we couldn’t believe everything we saw. I will never forget the family dinner (all of our dinners were family dinners, an important element in my life) when he announced his impatience with the mustache he’d worn for a year or so. After the pronouncement, he grabbed the corner of his mustache and ripped it off. Who can remember what we had for dessert that night, given this fantastic and unexpected second course he’d served us?!

More than once, he used his newspaper job to his advantage. He sent UNL Track Coach Frank Sevigne fake articles about a 7-foot-tall runner from Alaska, tempting Frank to the point where he lifted the phone to make a recruiting visit. He taunted the meter maid who worked the parking meters in front of the paper, having found a meter that had pried apart a bit, leaving just enough room for a handful of 50-cent pieces. He was a merry prankster and we were his band of worshipful followers.

I can’t tell you how many allowances I wasted as a kid, pouring over and purchasing the latest gadgets and tricks at the downtown Joke Shop or from the Johnson-Smith catalog. I never let shipping fees get in the way of idiotic genius. Like the time I threw a plastic light bulb at the art teacher, who also happened to be a former governor’s daughter. Gut buster, I tell you, watching her drop a tray full of art supplies! Or the talking toilet I installed in the middle stall of May Morley’s bathroom one April Fool’s Day, absolutely beside myself imagining someone’s surprise when, upon sitting for a bit, would hear a man’s voice. “Hey, I’m working down here…phhhhwAAAATTT!” Priceless, and a bargain at $10.95!

How many fake cigarettes have I puffed while riding the city bus line? How many vomit Frisbees have I tossed on cafeteria floors? What about the fake names uttered (Merdith Goopling and Sarah Sanklemeyer being my favorites), when ordering a pizza or reserving a table? Or what about the time I actually got Jill, who is a devious master of these dark arts, thanks to a “form letter” I’d written on fake Near South Neighborhood stationary, informing her that the city was reclaiming five feet of her front property to widen her street? Word on the soon-to-be-widened street was that, fuming, she made it three houses to the south in her slippers and robe, rousing neighbors’ interest before she got the news it was a joke.

Really, I’m not nearly as clever or quick as I wish I were. But I am a good recipient of others’ quickness and deviousness. I’m still finding wallet-sized school photos of my workmates tucked away throughout my house, in books and behind outdated salad dressing. “Stay as cute and sweet as you are. Love, Chuck.” That was a brilliant prank. Just today, I received a note ON OFFICIAL PAPER, nonetheless!, pleading for my help in shipping clandestine clementines across international borders. Still have Susan Gourley’s note, too, asking for a taco.

I don’t have to “get” every joke to get every joke. They are like love letters, sprinkled with itching powder, reminders that I am a pathetic slob, and a loved one, at that. And I embrace each one, even if it means I have to change my shirt or find a new route to work or get a new phone number . . . .



March 29, 2010


I’m an early riser. Always have been. And now that Mark works weekends, his clock set at 4:50 a.m., any chance of me sleeping in until, say, 6:15 is pretty much shot anymore. I don’t really mind being up before the sun, though. I just wish I could stay up past 9:30.

Saturday morning, I awoke at 4:44 a.m., immediately alert, thanks to a shocking dream. Despite the fear the dream filled me with, a smile eased across my face when I saw the time. See, the number 4 is one of my favorites, so, in geek terms, I derived at least some pleasure from this numerical trifecta. Mark’s clock, though, read 4:50, a disparity that has always baffled me, given that our clocks magically set themselves when you plug them in. Makes me wonder where ours get their information.

The whole notion of a self-setting clock is both baffling and magical to me. When I bought a new clock radio last fall, I had an experience similar to the one I had when I bought my 1997 Nissan Sentra eleven years ago. At that time, both Mark and I assumed that things such as automatic windows or built-in CD players were what rich people enjoyed when they bought cars. We had no idea that, since the last time we’d been in the market for a car, such things became standard fare. Same with the radio. I hadn’t bought a clock radio since we first got married 20 years ago. When I picked up this cheap model at Target last September, I was stunned—STUNNED!—by all of its features. It has a 5-day and a 2-day alarm, so that I don’t have to remember to turn it off Friday evening. And I was utterly flabbergasted when I first plugged it in, watching the numbers frantically flittering across the panel, finding themselves, righting themselves by some unfathomable mother clock somewhere out there. Seriously, this is a concept I simply cannot begin to grasp.

Much like the concept of time, in general. I don’t know who decided that, after watching the sun move for a succession of days (and who knows where days came from), there would be 24 units marking the movement from and ultimate return to its astronomical home base. Why 24? And where did 60 come from? Why 60 minutes in an hour or 60 seconds in a minute? It absolutely baffles me to think of time. And yet, I am very much a time-driven person. If you want to drive me crazy, just make me late for something. Or show up late yourself. This is my idea of hell. Someone invites me somewhere, offers to pick me up, and then shows up ten minutes late. That’s my hell. That’s how deadline driven I am.

Actually, most of my family is deadline driven, intent upon being on time to things. I remember when Mark and I first got married and were heading to our first Raglin Christmas. We walked in my parents’ door at 8:35 a.m. Christmas morning, only to find my dad just hanging up the phone. “Oh, I just called, wondering where you were.” Five minutes between beloved child and spouse and one less gift under the tree.

Brother Jack spoke of a couple he knows back in Indiana (where Daylight Savings Time may or may not exist), who live by circadian rhythms, those alleged hard-wired built-in human clocks that monitor and adjust us. Neither one of these people will teach a class or attend a meeting before noon. Why? Because they have their internal clocks set to circadian standard. I have a name for these people. It is not a nice name, but I feel safe uttering it in the morning, when they are asleep. Or at least not around.


March 30, 2010


Despite not paying attention much of the time, I did cull some good stuff from my high-school years. It was in A.P. English where my teacher Jim Holechek introduced me to T.S. Elliot, for instance. I can still locate and be moved by entire lines of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” or “The Wasteland.”. It’s a line from Elliot’s “Ash Wednesday,” though, that speaks most closely to my heart: “Teach me to care and not to care.”

It is there, in those powerful words, where I find balance to my days. It is there, in those seemingly disparate words, that I find my capacity to love more by letting more things go.

I don’t know that I ever consciously committed myself to those words, but, clearly, that idea of knowing when to pay attention and knowing when to walk away and trust others to care has permeated much of my life. It’s not a permeation I talk about much, because the idea of not caring has a callous-sounding tone to it. Indeed, there are times when this stolen slogan of mine does feel a bit brutal or selfish. But I think, for the most part, it is faith in others and an understanding of my own limitations that make this a holy and healthy way for me to live.

Like everyone, I have found myself at different times in my life swimming in a pool of poo, hardship and sadness lapping at my feet. There are times when I don’t think I have the capacity to hear one more tragic tale, even if that tragedy is cloaked in the skin of someone I love very much. In those times, I want to put out a mental advertising sign that pronounces No Room at the Inn, Please Try Down the Block. It is during these times when my caring-and-not-caring practice can wrack me with guilt, even when I put on a good face and drop by with a dinner.

Mostly, this caring and not caring serves me in my daily, hum-drum life, that part of my days and nights that is mostly filled with okay things. By freeing myself from caring about everything, I don’t feel compelled to solve every problem, more or less understand each one. It gives me a protective coating of aloofness, a healthy distance that says “I trust that there is someone else out there—far more talented than I am—who cares about and will tend to this fill-in-the-blank.”

It might sound as though I’ve justified myself right out of participating, but I think I could make an excellent argument that those people out there who are deeply affected by every happening, who can’t seem to not join the next committee or stand behind the newest cause have, either intentionally or inadvertently, become less trusting in others. Or even in God. Even Jesus had to occasionally tell someone to back off and not worry about something.

As long as our filters are clean and functioning, as long as we are paying attention and loving the others in our lives, I think we can trust and benefit from the idea that sometimes life can just take care of itself.