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!