Crazy Wilma

She’s off her rocker.  Or more accurately, she’s on her scooter.  She makes her way through town, sometimes weaving sometimes zipping, on a bright yellow scooter, her salt and pepper hair saluting in the wind, her long coat soaring behind:  Crazy Wilma.  For the longest time I didn’t even know if her name was really Wilma, but that’s what the kids called her, so I just went with it.  I don’t think there’s a soul in the Snow Globe who doesn’t have a Crazy Wilma story, and I find myself with mixed convictions about it. 

On the one hand, how do you not laugh?  During the time my husband was the Public Works director he had his first Wilma encounter while reading her water meter.  She stormed out of the house in her bathrobe and demanded of him, “Are ya tax collectin’, or gopher huntin’?”  Now call us crazy ourselves, but as he told me the story over dinner, something didn’t sound quite right.  The moment we opened our mouths about it (oh no, small-town gossip!) other stories got loose.  The time she darted into someone’s house unannounced and asked if she could have their doormat; The time she parked her scooter right in someone’s way and when they looked at her through their perfectly respectable glasses she barked, “Get out of my way Four Eyes!”; The time she went riding on her scooter in her bathrobe without anything underneath, so it flapped around exposing things it’s best not to be too descriptive about.  Just yesterday she yelled at one of my daycare clients, a grandmother in her 50’s, “Going home to get your bikini?”  It’s funny, and laughter is good. 

On the other hand, this year as winter melted away and seeped through spring into slow summer days, it became apparent that Wilma is becoming more restless and more bold.  Wilma encounters have been frequent and that can’t help but be a bit worrisome.   I had to address the subject with the children at my daycare as they were sitting around the table having a snack.  The conversation revolved around Crazy Wilma, and how she warned two of the boys to be careful because an “old lady” was watching them.  That could be scary, and scary is bad. 

Or at the very least, scary deserves caution.  I found myself sending up a quick prayer for guidance to compose the right words for explaining mental illness in a respectful manner.  I had to begin by acknowledging that I laugh too.  And then I tried to help them imagine how scary it must be for Wilma herself, to have disconnected thoughts running around in her head much like she runs around on her scooter.  Then I asked them to call her just Wilma, instead of Crazy Wilma, and to be polite if she speaks to them but to stop and talk to her under absolutely no circumstances.

I couldn’t do much more than that, other than to direct them to take any further questions to their grown-ups.  But to be honest, we grown-ups are still working on our own understanding.  Imagine,  if  you will, a small-town committee meeting.  We are discussing Independence Day festivities for the Snow Globe.  And in stroll Wilma and her husband, Mr. Wilma.  We are all caught off guard except  Karen the Postmistress, who is quite aware of the possibility that our evening may be a bit out of the ordinary, due to an earlier Wilma encounter in the Post Office during which she extended an invitation to attend the meeting.

With much helpless shoulder-shrugging and eye-raising we carry on with our meeting:  How many pounds of sausage do we need for breakfast? ; Did anyone remember to remind the Christensen girls that they’re singing the national anthem? ; Do we have a pooper scooper to follow little Hannah-dressed-like-Sacajawea on her horse in the parade?  Meanwhile Wilma behaves herself.  Mostly.  Except for the time she gets up and starts folding Karen’s collar and combing her hair.  “So you’ll look nice for the pictures” she declares as she settles back in her folding chair.  And the time she lays her head on the table and laughs wildly, chortling something about Bingo.  Not to mention the fact that she spends most of the meeting discoursing with herself, or perhaps her other self, about we’re not sure what.

We were all behaving ourselves with admirable manners, and then happened a moment that made me very proud of the people of the globe.  You see, Wilma’s husband is a small, quiet man who has lived here for more than a few years.  I went to high school with his computer-geek son and his meekly pretty daughter who I recall sang like a bird.  There was once some intense but now forgotten gossip about his first wife and then she went away, leaving him a single father.  Somewhere along the way he acquired Wilma and evolved to become an apt partner for her, strange himself in a mild way.  Marc, a member of our group recently returned home from his life in a place more densely populated, also remembered the daughter who sang.  And he remembered the part I had forgotten—the father who amplified her talent.  As the rest of us were trying to act nonchalant while exchanging subtle What-the-Hell-Are-They-Doing-Here glances, Marc asked Mr. Wilma, “Do you still have your microphone and speakers?”

Crazy Wilma’s husband, once blond but now balding, once accomplished but now bumbling, was silent and confused.  But finally he broke into a beaming grin and stammered, “Yes….I think in my computer room.  Yes.  Yes I believe I do have an amplifier and a microphone…and I have speakers.  And…you caught me off guard but I could maybe put it all together for you.”  He used to provide sound for our school concerts, where his daughter was a shy but soft shining star.  Wilma beamed too, nodded vigorously, answered a question the rest of us couldn’t possibly hear, and the meeting went on.  Independence Day came and Mr. Wilma did not produce the microphone we needed in order to announce the winner of the Apple Pie Bake Off.  It didn’t matter.

What mattered was that brief moment when he felt included and useful, when a person who shared some of his history remembered who he was.  What mattered was the brand new scooter he and Wilma bought and rode so proudly in the parade.  What mattered was how the rest of us got a glimpse into a life we don’t understand…a  glimpse just clear enough to remind us there is value in that life.  In the Snow Globe it matters because Dana at the gas station has taken the time to figure out  if you address Wilma by her “other name,” she can be coaxed into pleasant conversation, and because Karen the Postmistress saw fit to let Wilma fuss over her hair without cringing.  Because Marc remembered Mr. Wilma has a talent and a daughter somewhere in his past.

I said before that I had mixed convictions, and that’s because I feel strongly both the humor and the sadness in the situation.  Until I sat with my fellow committee members at a Snow Globe meeting I was worried that Wilma would get worse and worse until someone got hurt.  Now I understand that we take care of our own, and that includes Crazy Wilma.  Maybe we’ll do it by staying out of the way of her scooter, or maybe by minding our surprised manners when the two of them show up where they aren’t expected.  Or maybe we’ll have to find help for Wilma on some excessively off-balanced day in our connected future.  In any case, we should learn the lessons put before us.  This lesson is wrapped with humor but in the middle is insight into respect, into that moment we may be called upon to show compassion and responsibility for another, simply because we live our lives in the same small, sparkling place.

Tootsie Pop

I licked my way happily to the center of a red Tootsie Pop today.  I enjoy truffles wrapped in dark chocolate, but sometimes sugar covered sugar filled with the sweet taste of childhood is all I really want.  As I was untwisting the wrapper from this little gift, I was thinking about Bud’s Market.  When I was growing up the Snow Globe had two stores; one was Moore’s Grocery (those of you who know will agree when I say Moore’s is a story all its own, some of which I’m not qualified to tell), and the other was Bud’s Market.

Moore’s was a barefoot bike ride with my friends when we were old enough to go alone.  We dropped our banana-seated Schwinns in the middle of the doorway and skidded into the dimness, where we were allowed to go behind the counter to pick candy if we weren’t afraid of Blake.  Bud’s was way on the other side of the road, a little girl’s summer walk with Grandma.

For the first part of the walk I could skip ahead or linger behind, picking up interesting rocks, bent bottle caps, and other possible treasure.  The sidewalk meandered along, with those tiny purple weeds all little girls know are really fairy flowers peeking through the cracks.  It disappeared entirely for a stretch, went up a slope, proceeded along the side of the neatly tended lumber yard with its drive-on scale (“don't jump on there!"), and reached the corner, where it stopped meandering and marched along bravely next to the Hold My Hand So You Don’t Get Hit By a Car Highway.

What does all of this have to do with today’s Tootsie Pop?  Well, when I took off the wrapper and smoothed out the wrinkles, there was the Indian Chief shooting his arrow at a star.  My son didn’t quite understand why I was so smiley about it, so I told him “Duh!  The Indian on the wrapper means I get a free one!”  As I was explaining how I was able to return my coveted Indian Chief wrapper for a whole new Tootsie Pop at Bud’s Market when I was a little girl, I imagined myself swaggering up to the counter at Walmart Customer Service demanding my free Tootsie Pop and felt a twinge of sadness when I realized just how absurd that was.  I began to wonder why the Indian Chief was still there on my wrapper today.  Shouldn’t he be a bygone thing, just like Bud’s?  So I did what all curious folks do these days.  I Googled it.   

It turns out ever since the 1930’s Tootise Roll Industries has been trying to figure out why people have been bringing them their Indian Chief wrappers with an expectant smile, why to this day Indian Chief wrappers come back to them in the mail.  Bud’s Market is why.  Bud’s and many other little grocery stores in small towns across our wonderful, wacky, sweet, friendly country.  According to the company, the pictures on a Tootsie Pop wrapper were orginally meant to depict children at play.  If you unfold one you will still see those same children flying kites, kicking footballs, holding fishing poles, roller skating, hula-hooping, swimming, playing leap frog, racing soap box derby cars, wrapping May poles, playing marbles, pushing doll carriages. And dressed up like an Indian.  The Indian apparently appears on about one third of the wrappers, and he was never meant to represent anything extra special, just childhood which in itself is extra special.

From what I could discover, no one knows where the tradition of giving a free Tootsie Pop to a child who comes in happily waving an Indian Chief wrapper began.  But it is absolutely true that Bud himself gave one to me and to the other children in my town.  And chances were, the only thing I had bought in the first place was a single Tootsie Pop, so there went his entire profit.  Nowadays (shoot, did I actually say “nowadays” like I was my grandfather?), I can’t imagine where you can even buy a single Tootsie Pop.  They come in bags or bundles, with the lucky Indian Chief lost somewhere inside, kind of like me when I’m lost in the aisles of Walmart.

While I shop at places like Walmart, I have mixed feelings about it.  I have such fondness for places like Bud's and I think the world becomes a bit larger and more lost as they continue to disappear.  Like so many of us these days, I live a cluttered life.  I shop for my family and also for children who come to my daycare at every age and stage of childhood, meaning I need to replace the lost 1/2 cup measuring cup, restock the toothpaste and change the furnace filters, grab the iron fortified infant formula, the tropical fish flakes, and a copy of Green Eggs & Ham; Wallyworld saves me time, helping me find everything (and a couple of other things) in one stop.  And it saves me money, helping keep the cost of daycare down for hardworking parents.  It leaves me with just about enough spare minutes and spare change to enjoy a conversation about bygone days and a Tootsie Pop with my baby boy.

Still, I make it a point to follow a meandering sidewalk now and again.  They lead to places where folks put their creativity, their integrity, their heart into what they do.  Places where they never quite get rich but they often find a deeper fulfillment, where they go out of their way to make a bit of childhood magic simply because they know an Indian chief on a carefully unwrinkled red wrapper means they should give you a brand new Tootsie Pop.  Duh.

P.S.  Not all changes make me frown--I do love Google!  I found out the inventor of Tootsie Rolls named them for his five year old daughter Clara, whose nickname was Tootsie.  This made me smile because I often use "Tootsie Pop" as a nickname for the little girls at my daycare.  Everybody say "Awww, how sweet!"

Little White Church

A snow globe should have a little white church with modest but lovely stained glass windows.  Mine does not.  It does however have a red brick First Baptist church with a spacious and carefully tended lawn lying serenely beneath shady trees.  Miraculously, the lawn remains serene even when absorbing the joyful squeals of children, Baptist and not, who congregate there to play football or tag.

 I’m not a member of the congregation that gathers inside the church walls, but I’ve always felt it belongs to me just the same.  It was the site of my bus stop on brisk back-to-school mornings long ago, and today I often take the daycare children there to romp in the Crayola green grass.  But during the week leading up to Easter Sunday (Holy Week if you’re Roman Catholic, which I am), I was forced to examine the possibility that maybe I shouldn’t consider it mine.

This sad thought came to me after a conversation with my youngest son. “I don’t have a problem with anyone else’s religion Mom, so why do people have to have a problem with mine?” he asked me after school one day.  Apparently a friend has been asking him questions about his faith, but when he tries to answer the questions his answers are dismissed as wrong.  This friend fervently believes in the teachings of his own religion and has an admirable understanding of those teachings.  In fact, it’s a sincere desire of mine to have a better understanding and respect for the spiritual beliefs of others, and I don’t think I’d hesitate to ask this youngster to give me the official low-down on his.  What I wouldn’t do, however, is ask him to explain mine to me.

Having grown up Catholic in the snow globe, I’m not surprised by the usual misinterpretations.  I can even understand where they come from.  My son was caught off guard though, a little upset to be told he’s not a Christian (huh?) and can’t pray directly to God (say what?), far more upset to feel suddenly different and distanced from his friend.  We had to have a string of long talks. 

Don’t worry—I’m not going to dust off my copy of the Catechism and give you a lesson as well.  You don’t need it because you have your own beliefs, and while they may offer a clearly marked road for you to follow, as mine do for me, the truth is we’re all going cross country on this journey.  Sometimes we get lost, sometimes we take the long way by clear-eyed choice, sometimes the road is uphill for miles and miles.   Sometimes we rest where the water sings and the sun dances.  My son is walking next to his not-Catholic friend and sometimes on the path the wind is nudging them shoulder to shoulder and sometimes it’s blowing them apart.

The important thing to me is that simple fact--we are walking together.  We have formed our beliefs from our life experiences, from the influence of people we love, as protection against things that have hurt us.  The Catholic faith came to me through generations.  My tiny but bold Italian great-grandmother crossed the ocean alone at the age of fourteen and I’ve no doubt she was holding her Rosary close the whole way.  Brief personal experience and family lore have made it clear I wouldn’t have wanted to mess with her or her religion but that aside, my faith holds a comfort for me beyond debating and on a level deeper than any controversy.  And yet, I feel blessed to live right here next to those who believe differently, about religion, no religion, or which religion, beer or wine or caffeine-free Diet Coke, Chevy or Ford, Broncos or Vandals, and any number of other things large and small.

After this week of talking and praying my son through confusion and hurt feelings, I had to ask myself, why exactly do I feel blessed?  Simply because when I meet someone along the path and make a connection with them the feeling I get leads me to believe we are meant to connect.  That connections are made with people who believe differently than me assures me without question that we are all in this together.

Here in the snow globe it could be said there are so few of us floating around that we can’t avoid connecting.  True enough.  And sometimes it’s much more like colliding. Which is why it’s a blessing that we can’t help but be called upon to work together, and so we do.  When my son and his friend help the school counselor carry boxes of food to the food bank together, when I’m forced to acknowledge the great idea of the PTO member who usually annoys me,  or I share a laugh over an everyday thing with someone I’ve been uncomfortable with since 8^th grade, that’s when the sparkle happens.

We don’t have a little white church in my snow globe, but we do have a First Baptist church.  I’ve thought about it and I’ve decided it does belong to me.  I walked there yesterday with my granddaughter.  I showed her how the seed pods from the trees twirl gently down like tiny helicopters when you toss them in the air, just like they did when I was a little girl.  We waved at the folks who live across the road.  We took our shoes off and wiggled our toes in the grass, delightfully cool in contrast to the unseasonably warm spring evening.  It’s a resting spot on our journey, just as it is for the believers who sit in the pews on Sunday mornings, and I can’t help but believe we’re most likely headed in the same direction. 

Where I was and Where I Wasn't

Yesterday where I was, was in the high school gym at the National Honor Society blood drive.  And during the time I was oh-so-calmly giving blood, I was focusing and breathing deeply; focusing on the gym and breathing deeply the memories of things I have done there.  I remember dreaming there.  An avid-reader child born to avid Pirate fan parents who never missed a game, I read in the stairwell during basketball games with the noise of the crowd a distant backdrop to whatever story I was lost in, dreaming about places yet to go and things yet to do.

I learned to appreciate skilled labor there.  That back-to-school shine on a gym floor does not just appear; someone painstakingly puts it there.  I learned from my father, who gave me my first summer job.  He took pride in his work and was very good at it.  The big bully of a scrubbing machine didn’t run away with him; He didn’t slip around in the soapy water.  When he poured the thick bead of golden seal down the floor the line was straight and when he spread it with the special mop pad, there were no bubbles or blotches.  He never accidentally stepped in the wet seal and then went to the bathroom leaving shiny footprints all the way there.  We finished despite my help, arms aching, eyes stinging from the fumes, and stood together in the doorway to survey our work.  I could see him remembering what it felt like to sink a perfect shot from a shiny gym floor.

During high school I learned perseverance there, running lines and stairs until I almost threw up on the first day of volleyball practice.  Doing the cheerleaders’ dance routine to Baby I’m a Star over and over until I wasn’t terrible.  I experienced unity, entrepreneurship, and risk-taking while singing the fight song with Pirates young and old, selling Jolly Ranchers, and defying death on the rolling yellow scaffolding in order to hang blue and white posters declaring “We’re #1!”

All kinds of life moments can happen in a small town high school gym, where I flirted, frantically finished homework during late games, was called beautiful by the last boy I expected it from.  Where I met my husband; He was the DJ hired to play music at the Tip-Off dance and I was the Pep Club officer in charge of locking up after he finished loading out his gear.  It was from a podium there that I learned how heartbreaking and exhilarating life’s transitions can be, as I gave a soft-spoken, teary-eyed Valedictorian’s address and walked out on shaking legs into the arms of my friends and the rest of my life. 

And my life led me, eventually, back to my high school gym, where I attended an assembly in honor of my dad’s retirement, watched my daughter cheer, saw my son sink his first perfect shot.  Where I cried with my town at the largest memorial service I have ever been to, because when someone has impacted the lives of an entire community, there’s nowhere else we’ll all fit when we come to say good-bye.

Yesterday where I was, was giving blood for the American Red Cross in my high school gym, and it’s a good place.  But at the end of my day I found myself thinking about where I wasn’t, which is Morocco.   Because right before bed I opened my internet homepage and my eyes settled on a headline which read something like “Peace Corps Encourages Middle-Aged Volunteers.”  Clear back to the time when I was reading at basketball games, I’ve wanted to travel into the world, so I clicked on the article and then on the Peace Corps website, and then on some YouTube videos by Peace Corps volunteers, and then on some information about Morocco, and then back to the article.  

The article talked about the valuable life-experiences older volunteers bring with them to their Peace Corps positions.  I was filled with the possibilities!  I’m older.  I have life experiences.  Don’t I?  I guess not really.  Doubt slowed the pulse of excitement and I logged off and went to bed.  But as I rested my head on my arm, the tender spot beginning to turn lightly yellow and purple reminded me of giving blood.  My memories mingled with thoughts of where I wasn't, images and words from the blogs of Peace Corp volunteers in Morocco.

I most likely will never join the Peace Corp; I have things yet to do right here.  But if I did go, I would indeed have valuable life experiences to take with me, simply because I’ve spent time in a small-town high school gym.  Where I learned how to dream, how to make every task you are given shine, how your heart can help your legs keep on running when your mind wants you to quit.  I learned how to get all of the day’s assignments done even when it isn’t convenient, how to give proud support whether winning or losing.  How to begin a lifelong love, how to say good-bye, how to move on, and how to stay.  How to appreciate both where you are, and where you aren't.             http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=learn.whovol

The D Word

I wondered how long it would be before I couldn’t help but spout my opinion about another person’s opinion about another person, and therefore make everyone wonder who I'm writing about.  After all, I imagine I have maybe 5 readers and you all currently live or have lived in the Snow Globe (except maybe one in sunny southern Cali, land of no snow, who only reads because we’re related), and I can’t blame you for speculating.  I would!

The time has come, and I am going to be as delicate as possible, because I love all of the beings in my little world (even the neighbor’s over-achieving rooster).  In fact I’ve been accused, in a scathing tirade that still stings, of being naïve.  And it’s true; not only are my glasses rose-colored, they have sparkly frames and the lenses make everyone look like they’re wearing little halos.

Everyone.  I like the halos because, let’s face it, we have only so many people to work with around here.  It seems to me we need to appreciate and make use of the good qualities in each and every one.  So here I go, appreciating. 

It all started when I got a phone call and the unnamed person on the other end of the signal sputtered, “The small town DRAMA is exactly why I never wanted to do this in the first place!”  This person had just received word from another person that went something like, “If that person is going to continue to be involved, then me and my people are NOT going to be involved.”  (Notice how I didn’t specify gender or say involved in what.  Nice, huh?)

Well I said to the person on the other end of the line, “Don’t you DARE!  Don’t you even say the D word.  You have the power to squash it, bury it, POOF ALL GONE!”  Because here’s what I see through my special glasses when I look at “this person” and “that person:” One of them can always be counted on.  When they say they will do something, consider it done.  I remember one particular time when an incident involving someone they love had to have made following through uncomfortable to say the least.  We who needed their help figured it wouldn’t be forthcoming.  But even then they showed up, on time and willing to work as promised.  

The other one has loyalty by the orange Home Depot bucketful.  No one is more attached to or supportive of the youth in our community.  You won’t attend an event, from football a long drive from home, to the FFA auction, to the Halloween Haunted Hallway, to girls’ softball in the rain, and not find this person there, wearing school colors, being proud of the kids, and handing out hugs.

My caller is (or was) very fond of person number two but indebted to person number one for much help gladly given.  If it had to be either/or, the choice was about to be a definite neither, until I did the phone call equivalent of shaking my index finger.  I just won’t have it!  What happens when people are able to appreciate one another beyond their many differences is a kind of magic worth getting feisty for.  I told the person on the other end of the cell phone signal to make magic happen.   Or else!  

I think I may have surprised both of us with my passion for the topic, and after the call I found myself thinking about why this situation even mattered to me.  I realized it’s because I’ve done it both ways.  When I first moved back home, after years living somewhere more like a shoebox diorama than a snow globe, I showered my wider-world knowledge all over a project dear to my heart, working happily with a small group of like-minded friends old and new to reopen the public library, upon whose shelves rested so many of my childhood dreams.  Then someone I simply could not get along with joined us.  I found myself engaging in yelling matches (something those who know me know I do not do), growling at my children, splattering my husband with muttered monologues.  And then I resigned, quit, KAPOOT!

What a crappy feeling.  That’s why this situation matters.  Because I lost the path to something I loved, something that made a difference to the community.  I had to find my way back, and the way back was through learning to appreciate the person I was struggling with.  This person did not become my best friend.  I still growl upon occasion.  But by learning to focus on the good things brought to my beloved project by this person whom I found impossibly irritating, I gained an appreciation not only for those things, but for the person who brought them. 

That experience has allowed me to keep at it when conflicts (NOT using the D word) arise in my other small-town endeavors.  I believe my phone caller and friends (nope, I’m not going to tell you who they are) can do that too, and that they will find it’s worth the effort.  My rose-colored glasses often get terribly smudged, are frequently misplaced like my keys, one tie-dye sock, or the darn TV remote, but I think they look great with all of my outfits so I always clean them or search until they are found and put them right back on.  You should be glad, because you all look cute in your halos!  Except the person who was mean to me and called me naïve.  I can’t see her halo yet...but I’m working on it.

The Chicken Connection

March 8, 2012

At preschool this morning we had green eggs and ham.   Its classic Seuss, silliness with a lesson, “You do not like them, so you say.  Try them, try them and you may.  Try them and you may I say!”  I always love doing my Sam-I-am bit, and this year it was even better because the eggs came from chickens who are like family, the ones who live in my very own sister’s back yard.

Now, I never imagined my sister as the farm girl type, but she rescued these nearly homeless chickens from a friend who was moving, and perhaps out of gratitude the little sweeties settled in and started laying eggs, even though their new home is not exactly on a farm.  And because they were so busy laying eggs, there were plenty for our scrambled green eggs extravaganza.  I couldn’t have been more delighted.  Until my sister came in this evening with her sad farm girl face. 

Okay, to be more honest it was more like her highly irritated business manager face, because it’s hard to look like a farm girl when you’re dressed in your professional girl clothes and have just left an office full of responsibilities, and come home to find a notice on your door from City Hall giving you a few days to do something about your chickens.  It seems they had wandered into a neighbor’s yard, prompting a complaint to the City.

I said the chickens’ new home wasn’t exactly a farm, but it’s pretty darn close.  Our “city” has a population of 600ish.  My sister’s lawn is separated from a cornfield by one house and a narrow excuse for a road.  So what I don’t understand about this situation is why, oh why the neighbor couldn’t have knocked on the door and said, “Hi.  I met your chickens.  Could you please make sure they stay out of my yard?”

If the neighbors had done that, they would have found an apologetic new chicken keeper very willing to come up with a better way to keep her feathered family closer to the coop, and as a neighborly bonus they would have gone back home with at least a dozen cute little eggs, yummy in green but probably equally tasty in their natural color.  What they may not have known is just how important those chickens are, but sometimes what you don’t know should make all the difference.

You see, my 12 year old niece has gone through a difficult time over the past year, to the point of being medicated for depression, which sadly runs in our family.  It’s very frightening for a parent to face the brick wall of depression standing between you and your baby.  When you find something that puts a window in the wall, you buy curtains and let it stay.  That’s what the chickens had become for my niece, sunshine through a window.  My sister isn’t a farm girl, but she gave chicken-keeping the old Dr. Seuss try because she’s a mother and she cares so much.  

Caring is the connection I’m getting to here.  It’s interesting to me how seemingly unrelated parts of a day can be so clearly connected, and this whole chickens-green eggs-neighbor thing pointed straight to an article that appeared in my email inbox earlier in the day called The Caring Toolbox.  The article was from the website of former diplomat turned author John Graham, where he shares “practical tips for people who are creating change in their communities and beyond.”  He says caring is:  appreciating others’ feelings and needs, minding all the little interactions, being personal, listening, taking time.  My sister’s neighbor, like so many of us on an ordinary busy crazy day, didn’t take time to ask “Hmm, I wonder why my neighbors have decided to adopt chickens?”  He didn’t even take time to have a “little interaction,” opting instead to call City Hall. 

My own neighbors have chickens.   And they have turkeys and several other species of birds. In fact I woke up one morning to a whole flock of some unidentified feathered guys and gals walking around in my flower bed.  On Saturday mornings I will admit their rooster is a tad irritating.  I have always just considered it part of living in a small rural town, and after today, I will definitely not be calling City Hall about it.  I have no idea why my neighbors have so many birds but I’m pretty sure City Hall doesn’t either, so if I wanted to “create change in my community” I guess I’d have to “take the time” to find out.  I don’t have to allow the birds regular access to my flowerbed, but if I asked their people to keep them home, and I asked politely and with a certain amount of understanding, I have confidence that they would be kept home as well as their family of humans could manage it.    

I believe John Graham has the right idea but maybe his suggestions could be summed up more simply if I just invited the town to green eggs and ham day at preschool.  My sister’s neighbors could sit on the Circle Time carpet next to my beautiful niece and benefit from a bit of Seuss:  “You don’t like to care, so you say.  Try it, try it and you may.  Try it and you may I say.”

http://johngrahamspeaker.org/coachs-corner

5 Things I Learned From Basketball

March 4, 2012

I’ve heard it said that small towns have nothing going for them but school sports.  I’m also fond of the saying “bloom where you are planted.”  And where I’m planted, it’s been raining basketballs.  If that’s what we have going for us, we can learn from it as well as from any other experience.  So here are 5 things I learned from basketball:

1.       Natural talent is nice; Dedication and hard work is better.  If small towns have sports, they also have a limited number of players to play them.  They may not be tall, they may not be fast, they may not show up to practice jumping high and shooting strong.  But if they show up because they want to play, and a good coach believes in them, they will end the season stronger, higher, faster, and if not actually taller, then standing taller just the same.

2.       It takes only one negative person in the bleachers to bring down an entire crowd and dampen the spirits of an entire team, but it takes a whole set of bleachers filled with cheering fans to make an equally positive impact.  However, once the cheering begins the energy is instant and it spills out of the gym and into the classroom, the Post Office and the gas station and, this being 2012, onto facebook.  It gives the old guy across the street, who very likely played for the same team, a reason to appreciate his young neighbor even if he does have a loud truck and rowdy friends. 

3.      Despite the abuse folks yell from the sidelines (things like, “get your glasses checked, Ref,” and “did the other team pay you for that call?”), referees are people too.  My son didn’t like a call against him during the emotion-charged district championship game this season, and he was a little too visual about it on the court, resulting in a technical foul.  He was so ashamed of himself that he asked his coach to get him the email addresses of the referees and sent them apologies.  (No, I’m not making that up, and neither his parents nor his coach asked him to do it.) 
     He got prompt replies from both.  One of them wrote “…making split second decisions about fouls is not always an easy job, and sometimes we just plain make bad calls. In my 12 years of refereeing high school basketball this is the first time I've ever received something like this and I truly appreciate it.”  Not only do referees have a difficult job and take much abuse on a regular basis, they also love the game and care about the kids who play it, care enough to spend time writing to my son to praise the “step towards adulthood” he took when he wrote to them.  That’s a step some grown-ups in the stands have yet to take.

4.      Many foods go well with basketball:  frozen pizza (though you must remember to have on hand an entire pizza per player who will be hanging-out in your kitchen), Subway sandwiches (with extra, extra napkins if the 3 year old will be eating one in the truck in the dark when you’re late for the game), BBQ pork hoagies (if you are feeling generous enough to support the fundraising efforts of the opposing school even though they are loud and obnoxious and beating your team when you deserve to win more), and Carmel Apple Suckers (when you’ve been at a jr. high tournament all-the-live-long-day and thought you’d run out of cash until you found that life-saving 46 cents in your coat pocket)

5.      The definition of the word perspective is “the state of one's ideas, the facts known to one in having meaningful interrelationships."  I looked it up because my son’s coach talked with his team for a long time in the locker room when they lost a game in the State basketball tournament by 1 point in the final seconds.  When my son came out of the locker room, he carried with him that one word, perspective. 
       This lost game, now forever out of their reach, had been the focus of countless hours, in fact for the seniors on the team it had been the focus of four year’s-worth of hours.  This game was the reason each time they stepped onto the court they began in a tight huddle chanting passionately “One Team, One Dream!”  In an exhausted locker room filled with sweat and tears, Coach told them if they live their lives with as much drive and dedication, give it as much effort, as they have given basketball then they will always be champions.  He reminded them they would emerge from the locker room to find parents, girlfriends, classmates, teachers who had stood by them and were proud of them.  He taught them to put basketball into perspective as a part of the “interrelationships” of their lives.

I don’t believe for a minute that school sports is all we have going for us here in our small town, but if indeed they are and we work at playing them well, they just may be all we need.

A Dr. Seuss Mermaid

February 28, 2012

“I would be a mermaid,” says Makiah.  That’s what she answered when I asked the preschool class to fill in the blank:  If I were a fish___________________________.  We were making a class book to go along with our story of the week, Dr. Seuss’ One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.  They had to fill in the blank and then illustrate their page.  I got everyone started and then took a moment to enjoy my granddaughter.  Kiah was swishing big purple strokes along her paper, a mermaid’s tail in the water.  Long after the others had finished and drifted away to listen to Grandma Donna reading a story in the library, Kiah was still adding details to her underwater world.  When I place the pages in the finished book tomorrow, there will be a pink fish blowing blue bubbles, a fish playing basketball, a girl and her brother pretending to be fish, and one beautiful purple mermaid.  How can your day be bad when you get to read the incomparable creativity of Dr. Seuss aloud and giggle with along with your wiggly audience, and then watch them transform their young energy into creativity of their own?

Cheerleaders and Honor's English 111

February 27, 2012

Yay for cheerleaders!  I was one, once upon a long time ago.  And an even bigger cheer for small towns, because I would never (ever, ever, ever) have been a cheerleader anywhere but in small town USA.  And ironically, considering the perky but brainless stereotype, it was my time as a high school cheerleader that got me through my first day of college.


Why am I thinking about cheerleaders?  Because today’s happy thing happily happened when my daughter, now the Cheer Coach at the same small school where I proudly pumped my poms, came in with this season’s colorful catalogue of cheer couture.  It so happens my sister was here at the same time.  She was a cheerleader too!  And it gets better!  Her daughter was also here and she is now, this very day, a cheerleader, under the direction of my daughter, about to pick a uniform from said catalogue.  Squeal!

So we chattered and debated, bent side-by-side-by-side-by-side over the catalogue, laughing at the page boldly labeled “Vintage Styles,” where there was a picture of the very same 8-pleated skirt I wore, complete with knee socks.  When I packed those socks away in a box and went to college, thank God I didn’t pack away the perky persona, at least not completely.  It never quite fit me, but at a small school everybody gets to take on multiple rolls in order to build the whole experience.  So your yearbook bio might read “National Honor Society, Rodeo Club, Business Professionals of America, Cheerleader.”   That I was able to summon just the tiniest bit of that loud-in-front-of-a-crowd cheerleader attitude is the only thing that saved me.

In the very first class of my very first day of college, I was completely unsure I was in the right room.  I was supposed to be in Honors English 111, but apparently it is not necessary for a professor to introduce herself or tell you if you are in the right place before she begins to call role.  And apparently she is within her rights to demand that you tell perfect strangers something about yourself when she calls your name (assuming you are in the right class and she will indeed find your name).  I couldn’t decide which would be worse, having her call my name which would force me to speak, or having her not call my name, forcing me to get up and leave. 

I had absolutely no choice.  Either way it went, I had to be a cheerleader.  If she didn’t call my name, I would get up in front of everyone, give a charming smile and a perky wave and bounce out of the room.  If she did call my name, I would introduce myself with spirit (“Who are, who are, who are we?  We are, we are, we are thee  pea-eye-rrr-aaa-ttt-eee-sss, pirates are the very best!”). 

Turns out she did call my name, and while inside I was cheering, outside I was able to introduce myself with a minimum of words and a small shaky smile.  My very first essay for that class was about my small hometown, and the professor wrote comments in the margins that stay with me still, and she asked me to enter it in the university President’s Essay Contest.  Yay for small town cheerleaders!

To Begin Again

I watched a video recently by a motivational speaker.  His topic was happiness, and he challenged the idea that being successful will make us happy, contending instead that being happy will make us successful.  At the end he listed four simple things we can do to promote our own happiness, and one of them stood out to me as the answer to a prayer:  keep a journal, and write about one positive thing that happens to you every day. 

I used to be a journal-keeping fool.  As a teenager becoming a young-adult, it was how I worked through things, and often how I got to enjoy the best of those things again and again.  Somewhere along my way, I began to over-think my writing, and I lost the ability to just write.  Since I began Scenes from a Snow Globe, I’ve been looking for ways to give it boundaries, because it seems the most successful bloggers have a theme, and because I went to college and in my writing classes I slowly accepted the idea that you must “narrow your topic!” 

I know I want to capture the everyday, ordinary-extraordinary moments of small town life, but still I struggle to let my thoughts flow;  I tend to want to assign too much meaning to the entries, to over-stuff them with emotion instead of letting them speak for themselves.  What I realized when the speaker suggested his journal idea, was that the moments I really want to remember are the ones that make me slow down and smile.  If there are moments of pain or anger or melancholy, I want to balance them, surround them, wrap them up in beauty.  It’s exactly those happy things floating around, lingering in the air, that can make my world a snow globe in the first place.  So today I begin again, Scenes from a Snowglobe…

February 26, 2012

I love people!  I’m a people-watcher, a kind-spirited eaves-dropper.  People amuse me, amaze me, make me think.  In my mind, I give out high-fives and hugs to strangers all the time.  But what I don’t do is actually talk to or touch people.  My husband is my hero in that regard.  He’s a talker-toucher.  He holds doors, makes jokes, gives out compliments.  While I hear and see more little details about the people all around me than he does, he interacts with the people right in front of him far better than I.  So I’m trying to learn from him, and today my efforts paid off by giving me my “one positive thing” to journal.

In line in front of me at the grocery store today was an elderly man all alone.  I shop in a big warehouse style store where you bag your own groceries.  He was getting out money to pay the cashier in that slow and careful way the elderly do things, with a patient determination to do the things that they’ve done with ease for many years, but which now present a challenge for them.  Everything from his baseball cap to his worn and tidy wallet reminded me of the years when taking my grandpa shopping was a regular part of my life.  I could imagine him changing from denim overalls to his “waist pants,” like my grandpa used to do when we “went to town.”

Normally that would be all there was to it.  I would notice those little details and I would get a nice memory and a smile out of them.  But today, while he was slowly paying, I quickly bagged his groceries, which meant I was going to have to explain myself to him in a real, live interaction.  So when he looked up, I placed his bags in his cart and said, in what I hoped was a bright and cheerful voice, “I got them for you.”

“Well, I’ll give you a hug for that!” he glowed, as he proceeded to do just that.  For one quick, warm moment in the grocery store, I got so much more than just a smile, I got my grandpa back.

There Was This Catholic Priest and This Orothodox Jew...

I seem to be experiencing a  L   O   N  G  stretch of time where the only writing I feel inspired enough to complete is a status update on facebook.  I wanted to add something to my blog, so I borrowed this from the blog on my dusty myspace, dated May 31, 2009

 There Was This Catholic Priest and This Orthodox Jew...

I attended Mass at a different parish than usual today, rather on impulse, and I heard a homily I found quite worthy of sharing. My home parish has a very traditional priest, an intelligent man and a gifted speaker, but not someone too many of us feel like we could just hang out with. On the other hand, this parish has Father Len.  I think I could drink beer in a lawn chair with Father Len. 

Father Len told us today about a Starbuck’s he used to frequent, in Beverly Hills where he spent a short portion of his priesthood. One day, crazy as it sounds, he bought his coffee and followed an irresistible urge to take it to the table of an Orthodox Jew, complete with twisted curls, and ask to join him. He said he knew without a doubt that he was meant to be friends with this man. And the closest of friends they became and remain to this day.

He made us laugh with his honest description of two people who disagree about everything; politics, religion, and everything in between. He made me cry with his unshakeable belief that God’s spirit moves people, and that we are meant to embrace one another despite our differences, and thus God can make a difference for others through us.

You see, his Jewish friend had been wrestling with an emotional personal question in his life for quite some time. And one day, out of respect and friendship, he attended Mass. Not something an Orthodox Jew does. To put it mildly, they do not appreciate Catholics. However, in the second reading at that Sunday’s Mass, he found the answer to his question. Out of this most unlikely of friendships, one Father Len initiated because he allowed the Spirit to move him, came a life-changing moment for his friend.

They remain a Catholic priest and an Orthodox Jew. Father Len says that at least once a year the Pope does something to “piss off” his friend and he gets an earful over the phone. Why does their friendship survive? Father Len says Pentecost is why. The Jewish Pentecost celebrates God speaking to the people to give them the Ten Commandments. In the Jewish tradition, there was complete silence on the Earth, not even a bird chirping, as God spoke to the people.

The Christian Pentecost marks the moment when God began to speak not to the people, but through them. In the Christian tradition, tongues of fire from the sky rested upon the Disciples, God’s Spirit entered them, and they could speak so that they were understood in the many different languages of the people gathered around them. The Spirit of Love, wherever we may believe it comes from, lives within us, giving us the ability to understand one another beyond our differences if we only let it move us.  I think my desire to attend mass with Father Len today was more than just an impulse, it was a reminder that when the Spirit is trying to move you, you should go ahead and move!