Category Archives: Parents Don’t Know Everything

Eternity Passes Through You…

ETERNITY PASSES THROUGH YOU…

…YOUR PRESENCE WILL BE FELT

By now, it is clear, parents don’t know everything. That’s why God made you…that’s why God needs you!

Years ago, before you were born, my grandmother, your great-grandmother Grandma Sue, told your Dad and me, “Your future is in your children.” Thank goodness Dad was paying attention. He mentioned her words to me again that very day, and I couldn’t figure out what they meant. I am a slow learner, for sure!

Today, Grandma Sue spends most of her time in a rocking chair coming from her childhood home, holding a cat in her lap, looking out at the goats playing in the pen on the hillside. Her eyes still manage to read large print Reader’s Digest. Thank goodness for computers with large fonts. God must have allowed the invention of computers for the eyesight of grandmothers and grandfathers. Her ears still manage to hear Lawrence Welk Sunday night on her public television station. None of this will give you a the smallest hint about the years of memories I have with Grandma.

Back then, she didn’t know everything either, but she taught me most of what I know today. She loved to play the piano by ear, and we begged to hear her sing about the bear who chased the preacher up a tree. Boy, how we laughed…and then asked her to play it again!

She entertained us in Tennessee for long summer visits, feeding my sister and me juicy fresh bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches, capped with fresh peach ice cream purchased just for us from the small town’s drugstore. She didn’t even tell on us to Mother, who had sent us to Grandma’s house with instructions to vacuum and wash dishes. We didn’t, and Grandma didn’t tell. She just shooed us outside to play, and of course, we didn’t argue.

She told us how mean goats can be. She had proof. When a young girl, the family goat had butted her from behind, making her fall and break her arm. She pointed on her arm to the scars bearing witness to the event. With some justification, she didn’t have much love for goats.

Grandma Sue told me how she had had the strength to nurse her elderly mother and an older uncle in their last years. She said, “I wouldn’t do it if I thought about myself. But when I think about my children, I hope that someone will be there to take care of them if they ever need it. That makes me strong to take care of older folks. They’re someone’s children.”

Grandma sent me a box filled with four-leaf clovers; I’ve never managed to find even one on my own. She spent months in Arizona, and my fondest memories include daily walks with Grandma Sue, Grammy, and our dog Santa, going all around Earl Lake picking up unusual sticks and rocks, pointing out lizards and snakes, and laughing at Santa who leap-frogged through the shallow water, pouncing after frogs and fish.

She was the mother of Grammy, my mother, who spent years building a low lava rock wall encircling the cabin driveway. Grammy filled my home when I was a child with live plants, philodendrons. She pushed dirt and plants into 5-gallon bottles just like ships in a bottle, a trick she a had learned from Grandma Sue. Grammy taught me how to cut up a chicken, the method I still use today, a neat trick she was taught by her mother’s family housekeeper as a wedding gift when she got married in 1950.

Grammy loved to read. She tried to learn to play the piano, taking lessons and practicing everyday. But she never really quite “got it.” She never could play the song about the preacher and the bear. But she more than made up for it with her MEAN cinnamon rolls. I would fight to get the sticky gooey one in the middle, and I never tired as an adult in later years of having her bring a pan of rolls when she visited me.

Grammy lectured me as a child, “If you don’t have something good to say about someone, don’t say anything.” It would make me so made, cutting me off just in the middle of a complaint about someone. Her mother, Grandma Sue, told me, “Everything you say should be the truth, but all the truth doesn’t need to be spoken.”

Grandma Sue considered my dad Jack, your grandpa, as her own son. When she downsided from a huge country home to a single-wide country trailer, he went through her trailer when she moved, nailing, hooking, and attaching all sorts of things. She brags about the method he created to hang her toilet paper more conveniently in the small space.

Daddy, my dad Jack, could be irritating in his efforts to be “particular” about how things were done, but he was always there to fix a radio, to find the perfect size screw for a repair, and to help your own father install a new water line at the apartments. Daddy, your Grandpa, loved collecting just about everything: beer cans, coins, stamps, insulators. I thought he was crazy when he said he was going to write a book about insulators. Who would want a book about them! More people than I realized. And the detailed drawings in his book benefited immensely from his “effort to be particular about how things were done.”

When Grammy was selling things after Granpa died, I gave her an incredulous look and pulled out a small abacus created from soldered wires and Indian beads. Grandpa had made that when he was a child. Later that day, in another box of ‘junk,’ I retrieved a pair of custom-cut and ink-spotted wooden dice he had made. Today, we live in the cabin he and Grammy build and rescued, carrying the fully furnished cabin in two separate sections on two trucks to a new hillside home site, thirty miles down the road, safe from certain demolition.

From your own fathers’s side of the family, you inherit the world: a grandfather who immigrated to the United States from Colombia when he was just about your own age today. In a different time, when Hispanic people tried to pretend to be light-skinned, your Nana would proudly proclaim, “I’m Mexican. What’s wrong with that?” In fact, she delighted in teasing neighbor children that they couldn’t eat her tacos unless they were Mexican. Only Mexicans ate tacos. With their mouths watering, the kids would look at her and say, “Rebecca, I’m a Mexican.” “Eat up!” she would tell them.

Nana told us how challenging life had been in Puerto Rico where even the Mexican culture clashed with Puerto Rican customs, but she always told about the challenges with laughs and smiles. I never heard her say a mean thing about anyone.

In our tool shed, we have the pick that she used to dig out clump after clump after clump of bamboo roots that had flourished in a special paradise just made for bamboo…over the septic tank leech line. She enjoyed telling us about birthing a calf in the kitchen and protecting your Dad when his brother Donnie chased him into the house, threatening to “tear him apart” for not watering the cows. And today, after the death of Nana, we are able to celebrate life with your grandfather who lives in his own papaya paradise down in Mexico, continuing the love of travel that brought him here to the United States sixty years ago.

In all of this, I see Justin as he builds tiny wire, wood and rubber band catapults and as he builds bows and arrows with paper clips that I must confiscate. I see the generosity of Jamie who is able to find the perfect gift for the person who has everything and who will spend all of her hard-earned money to get the best for someone else. I see both of you handling jobs in high school, at the time of life when I was only playing. I enjoy listening to you practice your Spanish. I marvel at your ability to unravel complicated puzzles, and I am proud that you are eager to contribute time to serve meals at city shelters. I feel honored that God allowed me to be your parent.

Most important of all, God teaches us that we are all brothers and sisters. Our future is in our children…and in our brothers, sisters, friends, neighbors, everyone we touch. You are not just mine. You belong to God, and through Him, to the world. He has special places to lead you, special talents to nurture in you, and special gifts to ask from you.

Just two years ago, I sat in the living room of Grandma Sue’s trailer and heard her talk as she has down over so many years about her early life. She started reciting poetry and encouraged me to pull out a book of poems on her shelf by Charles McWhorter. He is not a famous poet that the world will know. But he is part of you because he is a part of her. I have asked Uncle Jimmie and Aunt Brenda to make sure to save this book for me on the day that Grandma Sue dies and passes on. Inside the book, I found letters that Grandma explained to me as we talked, and these letters between a grandmother and a poet tell as much about Grandma Sue and Mr. McWhorter as anything else.

As we wake in the morning, God asks us to live to the fullest of each day that he gives to us when we wake in the morning. I hope you will always feel the special privilege God also gives us in letting eternity pass through us, adding to the honor and glory gifted to us by the people who have come before and our responsibility for passing these gifts faithfully forward to those who will follow.

I love you!

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Charles C. McWhorter

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Bibliography

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NOTE TO READERS:
I completed PARENTS DON’T KNOW EVERYTHING for our two children in 1997. The books and writings listed in this Bibliography provided insights that informed my writing. Selected quotes from these sources have been included in the stories posted here. Others will be posted in future updates. Some are awaiting publisher’s permission before posting.

Nearly twenty years have passed since writing this book. The stories still reflect my parent’s heart. The Bibliography, if crafted today, would reflect my own personal and spiritual growth during that time.

This Bibliography provides access to the materials used when writing PARENTS DON’T KNOW EVERYTHING. However, it is not a recommended reading list. There is much of value here, and some make my personal Top Ten. But you, the reader, must use your own discernment.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bakker, Jim, I Was Wrong, Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1996.

Bombeck, Erma, “Real Success Is Not What We Do, But Who We Are,” The Arizona Republic.

Bortz, Walter M., M.D., We Live Too Short and Die Too Long, New York: Bantam Books, 1991.

Buscaglia, Leo, Love, Ballantine Books, 1972.

——–, Personhood, the Art of Being Fully Human, New York: Ballantine Books, 1978.

——–, The Way of the Bull, Charles B. Slack, Inc., publisher, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973.

Canfield, Jack and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Deerfield Beach, Florida: Health Communications, Inc., 1993.

——–, A 2nd Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Deerfield Beach, Florida: Health Communications, Inc., 1995.

Carnegie, Dale, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Simon and Schuster, 1936.

Chopra, Deepak, the Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of your Dreams, San Rafael, California: Amber-Allen Publishing: New World Library, 1994.

Close, Rev. James J., No One to Call Me Home, America’s New Orphans, Chicago, Mission of Our Lady of Mercy, Inc., 1990.

Covey, Stephen R. and A. Roger Merrill, First Things First, to Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.

Dyer, Dr. Wayne W., Pulling Your Own Strings, New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1978.

——–, Your Erroneous Zones, New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1976.

Foley, Charles, In God’s Underground, Richard Wurmbrand, New York: Bantam Books, 1968.

Frankl, Viktor E., Man’s Search for Meaning, Revised, New York: Washington Square Press, 1984.

Fulghum, Robert, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, New York: Villard Books, 1989.

——–, It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It, New York: Ivy Books, 1989.

Frost, S. E. Jr., Basic Teachings of the Great Philosophers, Revised Edition, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1962.

Fynn, Mister God, this is Anna, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974.

Gandhi, Mohandas K., Gandhi, an Autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Boston: Beacon Press, 1957.

Gibran, Kahlil, The Prophet, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986.

In God’s Care, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990.

The Holy Bible, New International Version, Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1988.

Jefferson, Citizen Jefferson: The Wit and Wisdom of an American Sage, compiled and edited by John P. Kaminski, Madison, Wisconsin: Madison House, 1994.

John-Roger & Peter McWilliams, Life 101, Everything We Wish We Had Learned About Life in School–But Didn’t, Los Angeles: Prelude Press, 1991.

Larson, Bruce, Where Will You Be When You Get Where You’re Going, Garden Grove, California: Crystal Cathedral Ministries, 1995.

McWilliams, Peter, Life 102: What do Do When Your Guru Sues You, Los Angeles: Prelude Press, 1994.

Michael, Robert T., Sex in America, Little Brown Publishing, 1994.

Mother Teresa, Mother Teresa, In My Own Words, compiled by Jose Luis Gonzalez-Balado, Liguori, Missouri: Liguori Publications, 1996.

——–, A Life for God: the Mother Teresa Reader, compiled by LaVonne Neff, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Servant Publications, 1995.

Oatman, Johnson, Jr., and Edwin O Excell, “Count Your Blessings,” The Hymnal for Worship and Celebration, Waco, Texas: Word Music, 1986.

Peale, Norman Vincent, The Positive Principle Today, How to Renew and Sustain the Power of Positive Thinking, Carmel, New York: Guideposts, 1976.

——–. The Power of Positive Thinking, New York: Prentice-Hall, 1952.

Pearsall, Paul, Ph.D., The Pleasure Prescription, Alameda, California: Hunter House Publishers, 1996.

Peck, M. Scott, M.D., The Road Less Traveled, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978.

Petersen, Dr. J. Allan, Better Families, Family Concern, 16086 W. Ridge Tee Dr., Morrison, Colorado, 80465-2140, Vol. 21, No. 2, February, 1997.

Peterson, Karen S., “Turns Out We Are ‘Sexually Conventional,'” USA Today, Friday, October 7, 1994, pp. 1A-2A.

Powell, John, S. J. He Touched Me, My Pilgrimage of Prayer, Niles, Illinois: Argus Communications, 1974.

Schlink, M. Basilea, Realities of Faith, Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany House Publishers, 1983.

Schuller, Robert H., Be Happy, You Are Loved, New York: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1986.

——–, Prayer: My Soul’s Adventure with God, Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1995.

——–. Tough Minded Faith for Tender Hearted People, New York: Bantam Books, 1983.

Steinem, Gloria, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983.

Ten Boom, Corrie, Corrie Ten Boom, Her Story: The Hiding Place, New York: Inspirational Press, 1995.

Tutu, Desmond, An African Prayer Book, New York: Walker and Company, 1995.

Twain, Mark, Report from Paradise, New York, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1952.

Wiesell, Elie, Dawn, translated from the French by Frances Frenaye, Robson Books Ltd., London, 1960, 1961.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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This Is the Day the Lord Has Made…

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THIS IS THE DAY THE LORD HAS MADE…

…WHO INVITED THE WORMS?

Nobody likes me, everybody hates me,
I’m gonna eat some worms.
Big ones, fat ones, little tiny skinny ones.
I’m gonna eat some worms.

Nobody likes me, everybody hates me,
Guess I’ll go eat worms,
Long, thin slimy ones, short, fat juicy ones,
Fuzzy wuzzy teeny weeny worms.

This song was written just for me. Not only does everybody hate me, but I have problems. Lots of problems. The upholstery in the car is falling apart, the garden is dying, I burned the rice, taxes are due, the television is broken, I lost my favorite CD, I have mosquito bites and chigger bites on top of the mosquito biteS…should I go on? Naw, forget it. I’ll just eat worms.

Every once in a while, however, when I run out of worms, I do get a glimpse of my foolishness. One early morning, while walking around the neighborhood, I tried to remind myself that life wasn’t all bad. At least I had a house in a pretty neighborhood. At least the morning was cool and refreshing. The sun was out. At least I had two healthy legs for walking. “Hey,” I thought. “I wonder how long I can keep thinking of things to be grateful for. I can breathe. I can think. I live in the United States. I was raised by two loving parents. We had food in the refrigerator. I still have food in the refrigerator. Good food. If I want to go out to eat tonight, I can, I have the money. There are restaurants nearby. The streets are safe. No one will break into my house tonight to arrest my husband. My eyes work. My ears work…We work. We have jobs. We get paid for our jobs.” For one full hour, on my morning walk, I was overpowered by the steady stream of things I had to be thankful for. **

With all this thankfulness, you may be surprised that, whenever anyone asks me, “How’s your day?” I am still tempted to think of problems. It is so easy to stop being thankful.

This year Dad brought home a story by Zig Ziglar. Zig’s flight had been cancelled, causing him long delays at the airport. Some people in line were pounding the counter, shouting, voices tense, demanding new flights to get them back in the air. Others, accepted the delay calmly. Zig was asked, “Isn’t this delay terrible?” He responded, “Compared to what?” Compared to a warm bath, a good book, a glass of wine, and mellow music…being stranded in the airport was definitely a loser. Compared to being in an airplane crash…being stranded was just fine!

If I get off course, counting my troubles, I often find myself automatically asking myself, “Compared to what?” “Isn’t this heat terrible?…Compared to what?” “Isn’t it awful to pay $1000 for a new transmission? Compared to what?” Compared to having no money, no home, no food…$1000 for a new transmission is a blessing. And I just move the transmission from the troubles column to the blessings column.

Yet…sometimes, in spite of my best efforts to keep everything under the blessings column on my balance sheet, I find myself pressed against a problem that blinds me, takes control, and threatens to take me out. This past year has had its generous share of trials. One of the largest has been the death of my mother, your grandmother. You have watched your dad and me spiral downwards, talk each other out of the pits of dejection, seeking words of comfort and inspiration. Some days we succeed. Other days, we get out the can opener for the worms. What a year! Three families of our small church lost parents/spouses to cancer. Another father/brother/son was murdered. it is ever so tempting to slip into counting the trials…Isn’t it terrible to have to work with spiteful, hateful people? Compared to what?

Of course, by now, knowing that I am not perfect, you can predict that I forget my good fortune more than I should. Yes, my mind is on worms more than it should be…

Raw worms, buttered worms,

Salt and pepper, spicy WORMS,

You would think I’d tire of worms!!!

Your grandmother knew me just about as well as anyone. She taped several sayings around her home on picture frames, on the edge of counter tops, and under glass at her office desk. Maybe she knew I would find them as I went through her home following her death, as I struggled in making decisions on how to pass along her possessions. Little did she expect, I imagine, that these treasured sayings would be among her most valuable possessions, being my duty and honor to pass them along to you her grandchildren:

Instead of being thankful when their cups runneth over, too many people pray for a bigger cup. –unknown

Talking about your troubles is no good. Eighty percent of your friends don’t care, and the rest are glad. –Tommy Lasorda

This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
–Psalm 118: 24

**See Published Story: Blessed by Breakdowns by Jane Jimenez

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Count Your Blessings

Text: Johnson Oatman, Jr.
Music: Edwin O. Excell
Performed by Guy Penrod
Performed by Irish Choir
History of Song

When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed,
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.

REFRAIN:
Count your blessings, name them one by one;
Count your blessings, see what God hath done;
Count your blessings, name them one by one;
Count your many blessings, see what God hath done.

Are you ever burdened with a load of care?
Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?
Count your many blessings, every doubt will fly,
And you will be singing as the days go by.

REFRAIN

When you look at others with their lands and gold,
Think that Christ has promised you His wealth untold;
Count your many blessings, money cannot buy
Your reward in heaven, nor your home on high.

REFRAIN

So, amid the conflict, whether great or small,
Do not be discouraged, God is over all;
Count your many blessings, angels will attend,
Help and comfort give you to your journey’s end.

REFRAIN

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Count Your Blessings…Name Them One By One

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8.__________________________________

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10.________________________________

…Don’t stop now…

11._____You’re just getting started…

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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** See Blessed by Breakdowns, by Jane Jimenez, published in Marriage Partnership.

WHAT YOUR PARENTS WOULD TELL YOU ABOUT SEX…

…IF THEY COULD REMEMBER!

Sex is everywhere these days. The ads sell it. Talk show guests brag about it. Kids strut it. And parents avoid it…except to tell kids not to do it.

I don’t think you really want a close and personal talk with us about sex. It seems still to be an area where parents and kids need to maintain some privacy. Don’t let the title of this chapter scare you. I want my privacy, and I want to respect yours.

You already know our concern about AIDS. We have talked freely in the house about our fears. Because of AIDS, information is freely available about the technical aspects of sex. Perhaps because of our fears for you, we probably convey the message that we don’t want you to be sexually active. The pleasures of sex you will discover over the years. My fears for you are founded in the mistakes of my youth, fortunately for me, mistakes that never proved fatal.

Mistake number one. Don’t let people my age mislead you. Girls my age were having sex in high school. Not everyone. But I personally knew three girls who openly admitted to it while talking about their boyfriends. However, we lived in the era of whispers. Sex was there, but everyone whispered about ‘it.’

Mistake number two. In our efforts to promote the equality of ‘humans’ we worked our hardest to prove that we were all the same. Blacks were the same as whites. Girls were the same as boys. Hindus were the same as Christians…and on and on…the equality of the human spirit.

Mistake number three. It’s not the sexual act that is wrong, we shouted, it’s the sincerity of the relationship that matters.

And I spent my first year of college putting those mistakes into action.

I went to college sexually naive, due to mistake number one. I am glad to live in a new climate of open discussion of sex. Dumb Is Better is only true if you are Jim Carrey. For the rest of us, dumber is stupider. When everyone is busy whispering about sex, you miss 90 percent of what is said and mistake 8 percent of what you do hear. Of the remaining 2 percent, half (at least) of the sexual discussion was false or misleading. How’s your math? When adults put down your generation as sexually promiscuous, we aren’t really able to say that we can go back to the ‘good old days.’

I went to college to prove that I could be just like a guy, mistake number two. One of the phrases of the 60’s you will hear us ‘older types’ repeat with a smile is, “One of my best friends is _____.” Fill in the blank. For whites, it was often, “I don’t believe in prejudice. One of my best friends is black.” Or…”Some of my best friends are guys.” “I have several good friends who are gay. They’re just like us, regular people.” We were big into ignoring differences. Finally, today we are comfortably acknowledging differences and appreciating the variety they give to life. In the ‘good old days’ we acted like differences caused prejudice.

Mistake number three was clouded vision. I liked my college friends because they were sincere. They weren’t impressed by money, clothes, cars, hair styles…we discussed values, ethics, philosophy. And today I STILL love my college friends for the same reason. But sincerity does not cure all evils. It is not the Pinesol of life that washes away the need for judgment, that eliminates the need to distinguish the rotten apple and give it the heave ho before it ruins the rest.

My mistakes follow like a laundry list.

My sorority pledge roommate arranged a September double date with two frat boys, real cute frat boys. We went to a drive-in movie. Now Ruth and I were about as far apart on the sincerity scale as possible. We ended up as roomies because they put all the sorority pledges together as roommates in the “normal” dorms, figuring that we had all pledged, would share sorority life together, and move out to sorority houses at the same time. They didn’t count on me. My sorority pledge week is another story, but the final line of it is that Ruth was in one of the top two bitchin’ sororities, and I wasn’t in any sorority. She was constantly worrying about the color of her socks, who she was going out with tonight, and when her Kansas boyfriend would call. My date that night was from one of the top two bitchin’ frats, and I think I was supposed to feel appreciative of that, as well as the date.

The four of us were in the car busy laughing, talking, and watching the movie, and I thought that was the point of the evening. The cute, bitchin’ boys had been thoughtful enough to bring their own Cokes. And a small bottle of clear something or other. Now, I had never had a sip of liquor before college. I was in college to be open-minded, and it wouldn’t hurt to try a drink. We laughed, talked, and watched the movie, as I sipped on my Coke. Before I hit the bottom of the glass, my eyes got droopy, the movie looked blurry, and it was hard to hold my head up. Everyone was still laughing, except me. I was concentrating on talking right and staying awake…and laughing appropriately, if I could. I did understand enough to turn down a second Coke. By the end of the movie, my head had cleared, and we headed back to the frat house.

Not wanting to embarrass my roommate for bringing a prude along, I went into the frat house where Ruth and her reeeeeeealy cute date disappeared, and I was left with my date. No, I didn’t want another drink, yeh, let’s talk, sure you can rub my shoulders, no I don’t think a back rub under my jumper will be that much better, I think I’m ready to go back to the dorm now. Ruth didn’t show up until the following morning. Her Kansas boyfriend called that night, I think. I woke in the morning under the sharp glare of the 10:00 a.m. sun with a throbbing head, a sour stomach, and cotton in my mouth. I took a drink of water and an aspirin and went back to bed, vowing never to feel that way in the morning again. I haven’t.

I don’t know how much vodka or gin was in the Coke that night, but my later years have assured me that it was more than a ‘good guy’ should ever offer a ‘good girl.’ I just didn’t know that kind of thing could happen.

Do you think I learned my lesson? Read on.

Ruth and I quickly learned that we should never share dating or much of anything else. So I went out on my own. One October night, bumping into an old high school friend that I trusted, I ended up accompanying her group to a party and meeting a guy friend of hers that seemed really nice. He invited me out on a date, and I thought it might be fun. The evening must have been nice, whatever we did. On our way home he asked if I wanted to see the view from Camelback mountain. Now, stupid is as stupid does. I said ‘yes’ because I wanted to see the view. Never mind that Camelback Mountain was a notorious smooching hangout for high school kids. If we ended up kissing a bit, well, I was busy being open-minded, and he seemed like such a nice person.

He actually was a nice guy, because during Christmas vacation he called to talk with me at my parent’s house and to apologize once again profusely for thinking I was one of “those kind of girls” and wanting to know if I would be willing to go out again now that he knew a good night kiss would be all that I was interested in.

November-January was filled with a serious boyfriend, Frank Whatshisname. No insult is intended, for I doubt he will remember my last name, my first name, or much else about me.

Somewhere in there, there was a sincere boy from northern Arizona who had come to college in the big city. He liked telling me about the big saint Bernard dog he missed back home, and I remember laughing and teasing late at night on the lawn outside of Grady Gammage auditorium. I think he was cute, but I know he was nice.

In March, dateless, Jeannie and I decided to go out and have some girl fun. Late that Friday evening we put on our high boots and velvet hot pants, and we went walking around the Tempe campus. Cars would honk, actually guys in cars would honk. Well, actually, guys started slowing down in their cars, pulling up to the curb, and stalling our walk for a real ‘conversation.’ Maybe this had to do with Jeannie’s 36-26-36 figure, low-cut frilly blouse, pre-hippie fluffed hair, and unbelievable female walk. I was definitely out of my league. Little did the guys know that we were only silly college girls and that Jeannie was the true, straight-laced Catholic girl out for a tiny bit of fun.

That particular evening should have made me wary of a fix-up date Jeannie arranged for me with a “really cute guy.” As she and I stood in the dinner line at the dorm, I asked her what he was like. Where had she met him? What did he like to do? “Oh, he’s so cute, and he lives in this neat townhouse that his parents own.” When he called to arrange to pick me up, he asked me to bring my swimsuit because there was a pool at the townhouse. Stupid is as stupid does. I took my swimsuit. Swimming sounded fun.

Swimming and kissing wasn’t fun. Getting out of the pool, later, even in clothes, kissing wasn’t fun. “Don’t you like to kiss,” he asked. “I like short dates,” I replied. Jeannie was right. He was cute.

In April, I met your dad. He was not a mistake. He was cute!

Your dad probably saved my life. There’s only so many “stupid is as stupid doeses” in a person’s life before you run into danger. Along the way, the “mistakes” of my era also helped to save me.

Yes, sex was whispered and women were held back. Sex was looked upon as special: good and bad special. Sex was especially bad if you were a girl before marriage. Boys were just boys. I don’t appreciate that attitude. Sex was especially bad if you got pregnant…before or (without) marriage. Children of unwed parents were “illegitimate,” as if to say they were “mistakes” who didn’t belong…unless they were adopted by married parents. I don’t appreciate any of these old attitudes either. I am glad for the sexual revolution that opened the door to information and healthy acceptance of sex.

But the good part of all of the above is that sex was special. It belonged to special people at special times in special places for special reasons. Maybe it shouldn’t have been so special, but it doesn’t belong in the gutter. I see sexual exploitation in the popular out-for-everyone-to-see culture that is vulgar, not because it is sex, but because it violates the dignity of individual people. I hear sexual lyrics in music and see them translated into MTV videos that turn me off, not because I feel I’m a prude, but because they suggest sexual truths that don’t exist. “If it feels good, do it.” Well, “it” does feel good. But the little word “it” includes a lot more than “sex.” Some people are trying to sell us on the idea that “it” equals the physical “sex” they have been able to describe so graphically. Ask yourself why they are doing this.

The second mistake I made was in thinking that everyone shared my naive attitudes. For some people, and at some times in our lives, sex is purely physical. If he wanted to see the view from Camelback or swim at night, then “I could dig it.” But boys are not the same as girls. We can want the same jobs, the same opportunities, the same access to money, credit, fame, glory…but we are not the same. In general, men have a different physical drive and a different need for sex than women.

Now, I know you both. You are good at finding the exceptions. But don’t let the exceptions eclipse the general rule. Unfortunately, science is showing that boys (and girls) are reaching sexual maturity at earlier ages today just as we are pushing boys and girls to delay family (sexual consequences) and marriage until educational goals and social maturity have been realized. There is a window of ages 14 – 22? when you are “wired” for sex and are being asked to “defer” sex, and boys do have more “wires.”

I didn’t expect that sexual needs would transform simple dates into elaborate rituals moving toward the sexual moment. I thought everyone (boys included) was waiting, just like me. In the Good Old Days the parents, culture, television, radio, and music were telling kids they should wait, even if it didn’t always happen. Today, there is a whole world out there telling you that you don’t need to wait, forget it, “it” feels good, don’t be a prude, there’s nothing wrong with healthy physical sex, why wait. Ask yourself why they are telling you this.

My third mistake was in not understanding sex, what it was, what it belonged to, and what sex with sincerity implied. I now feel that this mistake wasn’t my fault. I believe it is the fate of youth and inexperience. Maybe that’s why history made up so many rules connected with sex and why fathers were handed shotguns to enforce those rules. (Do you know what a shotgun marriage is?) History seems to show that you first have sex and then you learn what it means.

Fortunately, you live in a time when sex is not equal to marriage. Unfortunately, you also live in a time when sex is not equal to marriage. With the sexual revolution of the 60s we wanted to liberate sex from the mechanical act that comes the day you get married, and we wanted to attach sex to sincerity. Sex was supposed to be a sincere act between two “connected” and “caring” people. Marriage does not guarantee good intent, good follow through, or sincerity. That was the goal of marriage originally, but we see so many examples of its failure to do that. My greatest fear for you is that your culture is destroying the intent, destroying the sincerity, that transforms the physical sex into the magical sex.

Rather than tell you what sex means to me, I urge you to ask yourself what it means to all the people peppering the afternoon talk shows. It means liberation, independence, babies, maturity, immaturity, happiness, unhappiness, control, submission, illness, AIDS, fulfillment…it seems to “mean” what the person who is talking “means.” If doing it is as good as your culture is telling you it is, why are there so many unhappy and unfulfilled people available for Rikki Lake to exploit? I cry inside to see the types of boy-girl relationships we are generating with today’s teens. I look at the string of people sitting in chairs on the stage and I start to wring my hands, “What is the world coming to these days?” Then Phil-Rikki-Sally-Jenny will give the microphone to a member of the audience, and I will breath a sigh of relief.

Listen to the people in the audience. Listen to their questions, hear their advice. Young and old alike, they sound like they are back in the 60’s. Sex gives fulfillment if you are a fulfilled person first. Sex is pleasurable if you find pleasure in life first. Sex is enhanced with sincerity, if you are a sincere person with another sincere person, first. Sex is physically safe if you live a healthful informed life first. Sex will give you a joyful family and wonderful children, if you seek the joyful and wonderful marriage first.

Sex will give physical pleasure first, before all of the above, if you choose it, but what about the rest? Day after day, Rikki’s guests describe lives that started with sex…and then what…they are on stage describing misery, after misery:

I got pregnant, and he didn’t hang around.
I got pregnant, and we’re living with his parents.
I thought he loved me, but he won’t get married.
We really love each other, but he can’t quit seeing his old girlfriend.
We really love each other, but his old girlfriend keeps after him. I think they’re having sex.
We were planning to get married, but we broke up. Now I have AIDS.
We had too much to drink, and we ended up in bed. Now I’m pregnant.
I really love him, but he won’t marry me.
I really love him, but he won’t stop dating other girls
I’m sleeping with him, but I’m not sure if he’s sleeping with other girls.
Yes, we use condoms…most of the time.

Listen to their stories…and listen to the audience. I didn’t have Oprah when I was growing up in the 60s, but then we didn’t need her as much, either. We had rules. We didn’t have to think. We just knew the rules. I didn’t have to think about each date carefully because I was safe in a time when rules were in place and people, by in large, followed the rules.

The rules and your dad saved me, stupid-is-as-stupid-does ME. Women were still on a pedestal, and it was against the rules to pull a woman off the pedestal. If she wanted to climb down by herself, that was OK. But respect was a RULE back in the 60’s, and when your date said NO, it was bad manners, against the rules, look out for the shotgun, if you ignored her. So, mommy could be stupid time after time, and my dates would bring me home safely time after time.

Your dad saved me, just as the rules started to evaporate for all time, saved me by loving and respecting me sincerely. He sincerely loves and respects me 25 years later. We, he and I, have a pact that we always want a marriage based on sincerity, and I am not afraid that he might leave. He has permission to leave, but I hope he never does. I am glad we are not in the 60’s when he would have had to follow rules and stay with me forever, love or no love. I am glad we are in the 90’s when he is staying because he loves me. I am glad he loves me first, before the sex.

My fears for you? There are no rules today. You have no choice. You must think, think hard, and think for yourself. Daddy is only there for me. You will have to find your own Daddy or Mommy from the many people you meet.

Many people in your lives, many 90s movies and television shows will remind you that “you make the rules.” Sex feels good, if it feels good, do it. I can still see the MTV video of 6 young people playing cards around a table, boys shirts off sweaty chests and pants partially zipped, girls in tight shiny dresses down to their crotches, all gyrating, bumping and pumping at each other, putting cards onto the table, and ?singing? I keep wondering, were they really playing cards? If so, how could they concentrate? I wonder, were they having sex? Together as 6? While playing cards? While singing? Who is making this stuff?

You will have many people discouraging you from waiting for sex that is right for you. They will tell you, now is the time, why wait, everyone is doing it, what’s wrong with you…and ask yourself why are they tell me that?

Are they producing movies and videos that we buy so that they can buy big houses and cars with our money?

Are they ‘friends’ who want you to join in on their own escapades to avoid being alone or on their own?

Is it a boy (a nice boy, a cute boy) who has hot wires?

Is it a girl or boy you just met that seems sincere?

And ask yourself, what happens when the sex is over? Where will the hot, sincere boy/girl be?

Where will the hot, sincere boy/girl be if I get pregnant or get AIDS?

They “loved” me (or at least liked me a lot) enough to have sex
…I wonder if they will love me
…tomorrow
…next week
…next year
…if I am bed-ridden for 6 months
…if I have to move to Alaska
…you can make up your own ifs…

For most of these questions, as with much of life, time will tell. You know they will be there for you in the hospital next year when next year rolls around and they are standing next to your hospital bed. There is no shortcut to sincerity. It requires patience, yes, even waiting. No parents will be there for you in the car, in the swimming pool, in the bedroom, to shake a finger. Unlike your lucky mom, you live in a time when date rape, sex clubs and lists, and casual teen sex exist. Women have been pulled from the pedestal with a resounding thud.

Your mom could be stupid. You can’t.

I love you, but my love can’t protect you. You must love yourself above all. You must love yourself, whether you have a date tonight or a steady boyfriend. You must love yourself enough to question the promised “love” of a cute boy who is pressuring you into something you don’t feel good about. You must love yourself enough to know that you can keep your sexual distance from a girl without being less of a man. If you don’t love yourself that much, don’t expect another person to save you with their love. Your love comes first! Love for yourself and your well-being. Then comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Jamie/Justin with a baby carriage.

I love you both. Forever!

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Return to: TABLE OF CONTENTS

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PLAN AHEAD

The time to look for a fire escape is before the building catches on fire. Likewise, young people* need to set limits for sexual activity before they go out on a date, even before any relationship begins. If teens wait to set standards until their hormones are aroused, they’ll probably blow it. Encourage teens to share those standards with their dates. When the other person knows the standards, it’s not quite so easy to forget. (*and old people)

Josh McDowell, quoted in BETTER FAMILIES, Dr. J. Allan Petersen, February, 1997

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TURNS OUT WE ARE ‘SEXUALLY CONVENTIONAL’

USA TODAY
by Karen S. Peterson
Friday, October 7, 1994, pp. 1A-2A.
Reporting on: Sex in America, Robert T. Michael, Little Brown Publishing
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Despite popular images of swinging singles and steamy bedhopping, plain old married sex is the best sex of all.

And forget about every night. We don’t have sex that often, and that’s just fine with us, thank you. We’re pretty satisfied with the sex we have.

That’s the good news for the mainstream from the National Health and Social Life Survey, a random sample study of 3,432 ages 18-59, to be released Monday. It’s being touted as the most comprehensive U.S. sex survey ever.

It is also a study Congress turned its back on. Following attacks by conservatives, the government refused funding. In 1991, the University of Chicago-based research team found private money and went ahead anyway.

Ironically, many findings about committed sex will please the wary. About 87% of marrieds are “very” or “extremely” pleased physically with their sex lives; 85% are emotionally satisfied. Among live-ins–partners who live together but aren’t married–84% are physically pleased; 76% emotionally.

The least satisfied are those commonly thought to have the hottest sex; those who are not married, not living with anyone, and who have had at least two sex partners in the last 12 months.

Many of the mountains of statistics translate to “good news for relationships,” says University of Chicago sociologist Edward Laumann, one of the five study authors.

The statistics on infidelity–make that fidelity–show 80% of women and 65% to 85% of men of every age have never cheated on their spouses. Researcher John Gagnon, a sociologist with the State University of New York, Stony Brook, calls the statistic “one of our most important findings. It suggests the way in which marriage is one of the country’s dominant institutions.”

About findings that the best sex takes place in marriage, Beverly LeHaye of the conservative group Concerned Women for America, says, “We’ve been saying that for years, but we had nothing as extensive as this coming out to give it credence.”

The survey supports a long-held tenet of sociology: we meet and marry people quite like ourselves, those in our socioeconomic class, similar in “age, education, ethnicity, religion, and educational background,” Laumann says. In part, that facilitates choosing someone who likes the same sexual practices we do.

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Rosanne Makes Me Laugh…

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ROSEANNE MAKES ME LAUGH…

…AND CRY

This is probably one of the hardest chapters to write because it is so humiliating and difficult to be honest. Every time I put a word on the page, I am tempted to quit or to at least make it sound better than it was. I roll around in the chair, get up for a cup of coffee, check the garden to see if it is still growing, and finally…sit down once again, to try to face myself and write.

It may be hard for you to believe this picture of your mom, even though there are tiny signs of the picture visible even today. When I spill red soda on the carpet and slip with a, “Oh, s…” When a car nearly pushes me off the road and I slip with, “D… it, be careful.” These are slips that remind me I once had a mouth like a truck driver. Now, I don’t know many truck drivers, and the ones I do know are very kind and respectful people. So I suspect the phrase “mouth like a truck driver” was created by people like me who don’t want to take responsibility for our faults. Truthfully, I deserved to have my mouth washed out with soap daily.

This couldn’t have come at a more inappropriate time of my life. I was a junior high school teacher. Now wait. In class, I spoke with great caution and correctness. Behind closed doors, with my friends, I let loose.

It is tempting to blame my faults on others or on circumstances. I only tell you about the others and the circumstances to let you know how decidedly the blame rests with me.

I was freshly out of college, 5 foot 2 inches, 105 pounds, and long straight hair. I looked young. (Yes, young!) In fact, when seated or when standing, near a group of 13-year-old students, the office runners would have a hard time finding me the teacher when they came into the room. If the office runner was a new student, they would sometimes ask me directly, “Where is the teacher?” I would smile.

Part of this was also due to my 60s wardrobe and attitude. Back then, it was OK…more than OK…for teachers to be relaxed in the classroom. Jeans and knit shirts were commonplace for teachers. I added to the confusion about my age by wearing clothes that failed to separate me from the kids.

Like many identity confusions, it was sometimes fun for me to see a person mistake my age, and it gave me an interesting view of the world. One day, a lunchroom worker yelled at me when I accidentally (of course) dropped my lunch tray. I was walking alongside a tall, elegant, obvious-teacher, but the worker immediately assumed I was a stupid, not-elegant obvious-student who needed to be browbeaten into good behavior. She yelled at me, the “student.” I responded to her, as the “teacher,” while cleaning up my mess. Oh well, even that was a slightly amusing situation.

The other part of me wanted to make sure that people knew I was a grownup, all 23 years of me. I had finished college and passed finally out of the ranks of student and into the real world of the adults. I was one of them…a member of the grownup world…finally.

As it happens in so many schools today, now working as a teacher, there were problems exacerbated with the challenges of identifying me as adult or child. In my first assignment as a junior-high English teacher, I taught with a group of ten teachers in the English department, old and young, men and women, new and experienced. Unfortunately, these differences led to conflict…choosing ideas and ‘sides’ of the conflict…and they led to warring factions of teachers. There was plenty of provocation for swearing. And there was plenty of swearing.

In my demented mental state of the day, I found many good reasons for letting loose with foul language. Other teachers, older and more experienced than I, were using it. The perfect profanity could express not only the words of anger at what was happening, but it shouted out the intensity of the anger. It told people off. It made them respect me, they couldn’t push me around. And it made me grown-up. I was no longer a young child held back by rules. “I have the right to do ‘my own thing,’ to stand my ground, and to live my own life. I am a grown-up.”

Gail was right. At the time I dismissed her as a goody-two-shoes. “We don’t have to lower ourselves to their standards. Then we’re no better than they are.” Who is she, I asked myself? She’s just afraid of them. She lets them get away with putting her down, ridiculing her behind her back. I don’t have to take it. Haven’t they heard of women’s lib? They deserve a good taste of their own medicine. Besides, I’m not going to let them push me around. If she won’t tell them off, then I will. I’m not a child anymore. Time moved on, years passed, and – thankfully – I continued to grow up.

Two years ago – twenty years later – Roger opened my eyes to one of my biggest problems in life, a problem that extended all the way back to my junior high English teacher’s workroom, 20 years ago.

Roger had told us in the Bible study class of the church ladies offering him an anti-abortion petition, expecting this God-fearing man to immediately sign. As a Christian, abortion was disheartening to him. As a policeman, his days were filled with events caused by the effects of children being born alone, without parents, babies addicted to drugs, without lifelong love and guidance, children who grow up to join gangs, enter the drug culture and live a loveless, hurting life.

Roger looked at the ladies with the Anti-Abortion petition and asked them, “I know you are against abortion. We all are. But what are you for?” In our Sunday School Bible study he asked us…what are we doing for pregnant teens, for children born addicted to drugs, for children born to abusive parents, for children pulled away from dangerous lives and put into foster care?

I had needed Roger’s question put to me as a teacher those 20 years earlier. From the start, I had been really good at knowing what I was against! I was against them. They’re rude, foul-mouthed, insulting, conceited, people. They lie, hide teaching materials, harass other teachers openly, snicker and insult people behind their backs, in front of co-workers. I’m against all of that and I “have a right” to let them know. Those b——-!

But – what was I for? Well, kindness, courtesy, honesty, of course.

And where did I think all of that was going to come from? Gail was right.

All these many years later, you, my two children, you both taught me that Gail was right. As tiny babies, you were a delight for me to hold, with your laughing, giggling, babbling, bubbly sounds. Your first words came at a trickle, followed by a deluge of words over the years. I was so proud that three year-old Jamie knew the word applique and could properly apply it. Most importantly, I knew there were words I’d better not use around you.

Like all kids, you eventually learned the power of the word why. Sooner or later, all kids turn their faces up to mom and dad and ask, “Mommy, why are you doing that? Saying that? Why can’t I do that?” I realized I didn’t have a good answer, unless I wanted to pull “adult prerogative” out of the hat, as we adults often do. “You can’t do ‘that’ because you’re not an adult yet.” Roger finally put an end to that drivel.

Roger makes it hard for me to watch Roseanne. I love her show. She and her family deal with real life problems. They don’t try to make real life perfect with perfect moms and dads who fix everything by the end of the show. They let us know we’re not alone in our weaknesses…we fail together as part of the human race. We are petty, silly, stupid, dishonest, and yet…we are also, loving, caring, wise, kind and insightful. We are a wonderful package of human frailty. If we can laugh and watch ourselves with open eyes and hearts, see our blemishes, and still love ourselves, maybe there is hope for us. Hopefully, we will face each day with the good cheer and insight to improve ourselves and become better than we were.

It’s hard to watch and love Roseanne, though, because she reminds me of that foul-mouthed little teacher I used to be…the one who was waiting for everyone else to “clean up their acts” before I “cleaned up my own act.” As much as Roseanne (and Hollywood) might wish to believe we learn how to be good people by watching bad people, I am convinced otherwise. I see Rosanne’s children walk through the room, argumentative, rude, and insolent, and I know I am seeing real teachers of today’s students who openly challenge and defy teachers and parents.

For myself, I know I have learned how to be a better person by watching and copying some of the better people I have known:

From Carol, in 1981, I learned the power of a smile and a compliment. She always had a smile and compliment, a sincere compliment, for the people she supervised. One day, she told me the story from Reader’s Digest that had inspired her to live a life of praise for others.

From Nikki, in 1989, I learned the power of ruling from the heart. She always saw the best in teachers, parents, and students, even when she had to overrule them or correct them as a principal.

From Oprah, in 1991, I learned the power of convictions and courage.. She repudiated a talk-show format she had pioneered and turned to a format founded on to promote the positive, redemptive enlightenment of people. Ratings and money were not going to direct her life…she was going to take charge of her life for the benefit of people who might appreciate “a little good news.”

From Roger, in 1994, I learned the power of choosing my example, my life seen through the eyes of others. If I don’t live and shine the good of life, who will? If others don’t see the good of life in the world and people around them, how will they know what it looks like? How will they have the courage and direction to set their sights on the good? Most importantly, if I don’t live the good that I believe in, what right have I to expect others to live the good? How can I be for something, if my actions are against the same thing?

My life has changed for the better. Every day I guide myself with Roger’s question: What am I for?

I’m still not perfect. I loose my temper, I lose my cool. But my language is definitely – mostly – under control, and my attitude about life and other people is improved. How can it be otherwise? If I am truly for it…love, charity, forgiveness…then I must live it.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Your life will be a resource for someone’s learning–their first scripture lesson.

Westminster Presbyterian Church, Rev. Jeff Hutcheson, March 12, 1995
2921 Airport Blvd. at Sage Ave., Mobile, Alabama

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THE HOLY BIBLE

No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. –Matthew 6:24

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FIRST THINGS FIRST

Stephen R. Covey

Many of us in the Western world are programmed from an early age to see [our roles] as separate “compartments” of life. We go to different classes in school, we have separate subjects, we have separate textbooks. We get an A in biology and a C in history and it never crosses our mind that there’s any relationship between the two. We see our role at work as completely separate from our role at home, and neither as having much to do with other roles such as personal development or community service. As a result, we think in terms of “either/or”–we can focus either on one role or another….In reality, these roles are parts of a highly interrelated whole, a living ecosystem in which each part impacts every other part. As Gandhi observed, “One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole.”

What an incredible difference this makes in our lives! The personality ethic literature of the past seventy years would have us believe that “success” in some roles means putting on a different personality–like putting on a sweater or a pair of shoes. It creates fragmentation, duplicity. But the reality is that the same person who gets up, showers, and eats breakfast in the morning is also the person who interacts with clients at the office, makes presentations to the board, coaches the Little League team, cleans out the garage, and goes to church. Whatever we are we bring to every role in our life.

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The problems in life come when we’re sowing one thing and expecting to reap something entirely different.

May of our fundamental paradigms and the process and habits that grow out of them will never produce the results we’ve been led to expect they will. These paradigms–created by people looking for shortcuts, advertising, program-of-the month training, and seventy years of personality ethic success literature–are fundamentally based on the quick-fix illusion. This not only affects our awareness of our fundamental needs but also the way we attempt to fulfill them.

It’s not enough just to listen to conscience; we must also respond. When we fail to act in harmony with our inner voice, we begin to build a wall around the conscience that blocks its sensitivity and receptivity. As C. S. Lewis observed, “disobedience to conscience makes conscience blind.”

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I’m Only Me…

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WHAT CAN ONE PERSON DO, I’M ONLY ME…

…POWER TO THE PEOPLE, WE ARE THE PEOPLE,
WE ARE THE WORLD

I have tried to be Miss America more than once. Who can blame me? She always epitomized perfection: pretty, adored, graceful, talented, nice, smart, wise. She had her own crown, her own bouquet of red (were they red?) flowers, and her own Song. There She Goes, Miss America.

When I was eight years old I looked forward to spending the evening watching the Miss America pageant. I remember the Miss America who did a wardrobe demonstration, who sang with a ‘dummy,’ who broke tradition with her gold formal gown, and who cleverly solved the problem when questioned about breaking the heel of one of her high heels on the runway during the bathing suit competition. “Kick off the other shoe,” she said. High heels and bathing suits are a ridiculous combination anyway. I loved them all. Most of all I loved the way their eyes glistened as the audience showered them with adoration while Burt Parks sang, Theeeere she is….

When the pageant was over, I would run off to my bedroom and sit spinning in the aquamarine chair dreaming about the day I would become Miss America. As the magic of the idea took hold, more than once, I rose from the chair, stared out at my future adoring audience, and walked the runway between the twin beds in my room, holding my bouquet, waving my arm smoothly and regally, and holding back the tears of joy, my eyes glistening just like the eyes of the new Miss America I had helped elect in front of the television in the living room. I was ridiculous. But I doubt I was the only ridiculous eight year old. And nine year old. And ten, eleven,…I needed all the practice I could get.

I never entered a beauty pageant. I never really missed being in a beauty pageant. Nevertheless, I felt a pang of sadness in my mid-twenties when I realized my Miss America chances had truly faded forever.

I have been saddled with big dreams all my life. I didn’t just want to be a good teacher. I wanted to be the most popular teacher. I wanted to be Teacher of the Year. I wanted other teachers to come to me for help. Ridiculous. I didn’t just want to sell houses. I wanted to be on the Million Dollar list of Realty Executives. I wanted to sell more houses than anyone, to sell houses to important people, to give seminars on all of the tips I had for others who were trying to sell houses. Ridiculous. I didn’t just want to be a good mom. I wanted to have twelve children, to bake delicious berry pies on a wood stove while singing lullabies to sleeping babies, to have all of my twelve children become President of the United States and say they owed it all to their mom-ME. Ridiculous. I wanted to save the world. Ridiculous.

What a disappointment it was when I finally realized that I was just going to end up being a person. What a letdown it was when I finally realized how difficult it was for me to be merely good at teaching, selling houses and mothering children. What fear I have felt at times, realizing how far I fall short of even being good. How do people get to be Miss America when I have so much trouble just being a person?

And when the going got tough…Nope. The tough didn’t get going. Oftentimes it was easier to think, “What difference does it make?” If I can’t be Miss America, why bother? Who’s going to notice anyway? Everyone else can be Miss America, Mr. America, Company President, Teacher of the Year. Let them do it. I didn’t give up physically, but there were many days when I gave up mentally, spiritually.

You my children have both been my savior more than once. I could have been a teacher to hundreds of kids, but you are the kids who matter most to me. Five years ago, life had pushed me to my limit, and I was just short of collapsing under the weight of my failure to meet challenges I had so wanted to accomplish. Early one morning at 4:00 a.m., unable to sleep, I sat in the blue stuffed chair reading The Bible, Psalm 49. God’s voice reached out to me and literally lifted my eyes off the page. “He’s talking to me,” I realized. I looked back to Psalm 49 and began reading again. “Yes, there, he said it again. He’s pointing his finger at me!” And suddenly, I realized that God had never asked me to be anything other than a person. In fact, he was wondering when I was going to get my mind off the roses, the crown, and the song and begin paying attention to what really mattered–you, my children, my family.

What good would it be if I did save the world, if I ended up sacrificing the two of you in the process. And, if I did manage to help save our small family, if that were my only accomplishment in life, why had I not realized the joy and glory that could be found in such an accomplishment. In that instant, I raised my eyes to God and promised him I would take my eyes off the crowds, off the awards, off the world, and look only and specifically to the people who depended on me–you.

My goals today are so small that it’s hard to even realize that they’re goals. Maybe it would be wonderful if I were ‘great’ enough to set goals of being Mrs. America. But if I can only end my life achieving the little goals, I will feel a sense of satisfaction, accomplishment, and joy. And it’s in the small mistakes I make each day when I realize my ‘little’ goals are big enough:

to wake each day with appreciation for my blessings
to wake each day thinking only good of my fellow man, each fellow man
to wake each day treasuring and caring for my health and my mind and my soul
to wake each day contributing a kind word to someone who needs it
to wake each day trying to understand someone who is hard to understand
to wake each day giving the day my best effort
to wake each day willing to forgive myself when I fail and willing to start over
to wake each day realizing that there are many people to thank for helping me when I do succeed
to wake each day with thanks…and
to wake each day with a prayer for myself, for you, and for everyone, Amen.

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First Things First

Stephen R. Covey

The power to create quality of life is within us–in our ability to develop and use our own inner compass so that we can act with integrity in the moment of choice–whether that moment is spent planning the week, handling a crisis, responding to our conscience, building a relationship, working with an irate client, or taking a walk.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous…

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LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS…

…THE EYE OF A NEEDLE

I was almost successful once upon a long time ago in 9th grade. I loved going to high school football games, and I loved to watch the cheerleaders bounce around having fun and doing the splits in the air. Cheerleaders had fun, and every eye in the crowd was on them. If not rich, at least they were famous. I decided to go to tryouts.

In workshops for tryouts at the end of the school year we learned cheers, and I practiced each one of them to perfection in my backyard. I struggled to perfect the splits, trying to get all the way down, straight-legged, to the ground, each of my legs pointing north and south. All the while I wondered how Peggy could not only do the splits with her leg pointing front to back, but how she could also do them with her legs sideways, straight and stiff. Why wasn’t I “as good” as she? I practiced harder. It never occurred to me that body type was a key factor.

When tryouts came, I put my best polished cheer forward and then joined the other hopeful girls in the locker room as girl after girl filed into the gym, each in her turn to yell, “Push ’em back, push ’em back, waaaaay back!” After the last contestant performed, we settled down for a nervous wait. Ten minutes later a real cheerleader pushed through the doors and called two girls back to perform again: Cindy and me. It looked hopeful. Cindy and I, we cheered our best and returned to wait again.

Finally, the tense moment arrived, the squad leader came in to read the final list of next year’s cheerleaders. Cindy made it. I didn’t. I was crushed. But I was only a sophomore, and my near success gave me encouragement for the coming year. I would practice harder.

The following year I prepared for cheer leading tryouts with intensity, bolstered with the hope that last year I was only one person away from success. “I could do it, I could do it, Waaaay to go!”

On the day of tryouts I took my place, as I had done one year earlier, waiting my turn outside the gym, trying to relax, mentally rehearsing. Finally…I heard them call my number.

I entered the room, stood before the panel of judges, and clicked my heels in readiness. I stared at them. They stared back.

I wound my arms and began, “Push ’em back…” My mind went totally, completely, utterly blank. In a crouch, I was stuck…preparing to leap into the next position, stuck…waiting, and waiting…waiting for the words and actions to leap into me. I stared at the judges. They stared back. I weakly rose and shrugged. It was over. I had failed. There was no reason to wait nervously in the locker room for the final list of next year’s cheer leaders. I had failed completely. There was no slim margin of one to prove that I was almost successful. I had wilted, skidded, thudded. A failure! I walked home in tears, devastated.

As an adult, Dad and I have tried not to fail. We always knew we weren’t destined to be big successes. Our house would never be featured on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. But we worked to find upstanding neighborhoods and to create homes of beauty that would catch the passing eye. I surely knew what kind of home would mark us as failures in the adult world. As a teenager I had called those homes tin cans. We would drive by a trailer home, and I would declare that I could never live in a “tin can.” I felt sorry for the people who lived like that. How could they bear it?

That’s why I laughed when Jamie unexpectedly declared she would be glad when we left our own tin can home for our real home. Boy, how my words had returned to haunt me! More than that…I was also shocked to realize that I was on the other side of the “tin can” defense league by now.

Our Tin Can Adventure began one fine and bright Phoenix day when we had left our 2400 square feet home, packing all of life’s necessities into a 5′ by 8′ U-haul. Fifteen hundred miles away, we had begged Ruby Dale to rent us a small single wide trailer home for three months in Tennessee. I figured a person could endure anything for a short time…even a tin can home…most especially if you knew it wasn’t forever.

Ruby Dale, with the help of my Aunt Brenda, came through. She located a two-bedroom home and rounded up the basics of furniture and cooking utensils. We had one central living room with a couch, a chair, a Christmas tree, a dining table, and a kitchen. The living room windows looked out on a hay field and a pond where Justin would fish for perch each day after school. On the far end of the home, Jamie and Justin shared a bedroom. And next to the kitchen, Dad and I had our master bedroom.

On a typical Tennessee evening, in the living room, Justin cleaned his gun on the couch while Jamie typed at the computer, while Vic read a book in the chair, while I quilted at the dining table. Or perhaps I would be cooking dinner, while Vic, Jamie and Justin would be working a crossword puzzle out loud, calling words to me across the room, and taking turns combing the fur of our two cats.

During the days, housecleaning was a breeze! There were only three rooms, and we didn’t have anything. By 8:30 a.m. the kids were off to school, the kitchen was clean, and I was able to read, sew or write letters to friends back home. Deciding what to wear was even easier. I had brought jeans, sweats, and one all-purpose navy “church” skirt with one week’s worth of tops that could go with any of the pants and skirt. I would just start on the left of my closet on Monday, wearing the closest outfit, and work my way to the right toward the navy skirt and Sunday. Monday I would do laundry and begin all over again.

My entire “office” fit inside one small dresser drawer, envelopes, stamps, pens, and address book. If we didn’t have it, we most likely didn’t need it. Besides, we would be going home at the end of three months. Then we could get “it”…whatever “it” might be.

One day in my cozy Tennessee tin home, I was completely startled when I realized I was dreading the approach of our scheduled return to Phoenix. I sat back and began thinking. What was back there, at home, 1500 miles away? What did I need? I couldn’t even remember what we had left behind in our huge 2400 square foot home. An immense desire came upon me to call our neighbors, tell them to sell everything, close it all down, and send us the check. I was in heaven. I didn’t want to leave. I could live in my little tin heaven for the rest of my life.

It was with the greatest regret that we answered the call of “reality” and returned to Phoenix. We had our regular, comfortable and secure paradise.

But I now know that I will someday return to the heaven that still calls to my heart…a small paradise…tin, clay, or brick…a paradise cozy, and filled with love.

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One of the games I like to play in downtown Phoenix is Dress Up, Dress Down. I think my experience as a Poodle inspired this game.

Downtown Phoenix, like many state capital cities, is the home to courts and financial institutions. For this reason, impeccably dressed men and women walk briskly across crosswalks, swinging their expensive leather briefcases. They are going places. They have appointments to keep,with schedules and destinations.

Again, like in other large state capitals, Phoenix is fighting deterioration and inner city blight. There are also shopping carts parked in alleys, the moveable homes of men and women who walk aimlessly during the day and seek the shadows of night.

On frequent visits to downtown Phoenix, with time on my hands, just as I was transformed into a poodle after a one hour visit to a “beauty” salon, I pass time mentally creating a transformation of people walking the downtown streets.

A neatly groomed tweed-suit lawyer crosses the street – I imagine him with a longer, shaggier beard. In my mind, his crisp tweed goes limp, bare spots and stains just showing under a flapping oversize torn overcoat. He crosses the street with a slow, halting gait, and stops as he reaches the curb, seemingly uncertain which direction he wants to go. Of course, it’s only a mental game.

Somewhere further down the sidewalk I will mentally dress up a street person. Clipping and trimming his beard to a mustache, I hand him the crisp tweed suit I plucked from the attorney. I give him an urgent appointment and a dark brown briefcase filled with legal briefs. Immediately, his posture straightens and he quickens his pace so as not to be late. Of course, it’s only a mental game.

But it reminds me that much of what I have taken seriously in life is only mental, too. We succumb to the media hype that causes us to be impressed by people who do little that is impressive. We allow people to validate their existence with the money they get from bouncing basketballs and taking off their clothes, money that buys tweed suits, Mercedes Benz, and $400,000 weddings…money that makes our eyes pop in envy. It’s really only mental, and it starts in our minds.

Do I look beyond the house, the body, the clothes? Do I only see the poodle hair, the cute cheerleader, or the fancy house? I’m afraid that often I do. For myself, long hair or poodle hair, I was the same person underneath. My students were kind enough to realize that. It’s a lesson for me to remember.

Still…do I allow myself to idolize “successful” people who are merely identified as the rich and famous? How many true heroes walk the sidewalks hidden in their anonymity, no crisp tweed suits to give me a clue, heroes completely unknown to me? Fathers who support their families? Parents who struggle to work out marriage difficulties to fulfill their vows with love and honor? People who give up their vacation time to help build a medical clinic or work to save people from a bombed out building? Teenagers who resist the terrible temptations of our society? Who are my heroes? And how do I sing their praises?

Like being a poodle, nobody “fails” forever. I have many years left (I hope) to reach for success. The bigger challenge for me today is to keep my eyes on the kind of success I seek.

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HOLY BIBLE – NEW TESTAMENT

Matthew 19:24
Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

Matthew 19:23-25 (in Context) Matthew 19 (Whole Chapter) Other Translations
Mark 10:25
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

Mark 10:24-26 (in Context) Mark 10 (Whole Chapter) Other Translations
Luke 18:25
For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

Luke 18:24-26 (in Context) Luke 18 (Whole Chapter) Other Translations

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Good Old Days…

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THE GOOD OLD DAYS…

…OUR BRAVE NEW WORLD

Remember the 60’s? Television was very limited at the time, so live theater was a great place to be entertained. Like Cosby and Roseanne date the 80’s and 90’s, there was a musical in the theater that radiated everything special about the 60’s. Ask your dad, “What stage musical would define the 60’s?” I bet you a fiver he says, Hair.

That first year we met, when we were busy sharing every special new experience together that we could think of, your Dad insisted that I had to see San Francisco. So off we went in his ’66 Chevy pickup truck, parked at Dolores’s hillside apartment, and dashed away to explore “the city.” And, of course, we bought tickets to see Hair. There was a special excitement to seeing Hair because it had been “banned” in Phoenix. We weren’t supposed to see it, respectable people said. It wasn’t that San Francisco was disrespectful, rather it was open-minded, and we had that special grownup feeling, knowing that we were more open-minded than most of Phoenix. We were also curious about all the naked people.

Now this was in the days when it wasn’t really polite to even say naked in public. Mary Tyler Moore slept in a separate bed from her husband on television, nudity in the movies was an actress in a lowcut strapless gown, and passion on T.V. was a hug and a peck on the cheek, in the movies, a lip-to-lip kiss. So imagine the expectation of seeing a stage full of 20 live, breathing, real, here-and-now naked people. What would they be doing? Would I be able to look at them, or would it all be wasted because I turned my head in embarrassment? Just to think that I could tell people in Phoenix we had actually gone to Hair. Of course, there was a storyline to Hair.

Oh, yeah, the storyline. I don’t remember that. I remember sitting way back and way up in the balcony, struggling not to plug my ears. It didn’t make any difference anyway, because the sound was so loud and so muffled that no words could be picked out from the noise, no melody or lyrics discerned in the ‘music.’ Of course, we paid too much for the tickets to admit that, so I spent the evening just ‘enjoying the experience’ and reading the program over and over again, trying to soak in the plot line and meaning of the play. I was also wondering, big time wondering.

In alphabetical order on the cast list was a familiar name, William Winsome. Could that be Bill Winsome from my high school class just 2 years graduated? I kept inspecting the pinhead people way down there on the stage, trying to figure out which act from the program they were playing, and trying to figure out which of those people might be William Winsome. His character should be in scene 3 of act 1, but is this scene 4 or 5, because they are singing some kind of song, and I can’t hear the words of the song to know if it is the one from scene 3, 4, or 5, and then whoosh… the actors flee the stage, and…did they just change scenes, or is this part of the scene they just did, and maybe that other guy upstage left is William. I had almost forgotten about the naked people.

Almost, I say, because there was the added intrigue…if this William was indeed Bill…did that mean I would see Bill Winsome naked?

Now Bill had been the leading “Tom Cruise” of Arcadia High School. He had taken the male lead in The Fantastics and The Music Man, and he had played the “Elvis” character in Bye, Bye, Birdie with enough panache to convince the high school he was Elvis. He sang in the small and exclusive singing group, Chorale, that I belonged to and was a singing partner any of the girls would have wanted to stand next to. None of these girls had seen Bill naked (I think). Was I to be the first? Of course, the effect would be diluted a bit because naked Bill would be seen by me and an audience of 500. I was growing impatient. One hour of ear-piercing noise and a passel of indistinguishable fairy goblins flitting on and off the stage later…was this Bill…and where were the naked people?

And finally, there were my 20 naked people on stage, standing upright, scattered about the stage like pine trees in the forest, singing another unintelligible song. Yes, I looked…eyes open…but I couldn’t see their tiny faces to distinguish Bill’s face, so any other interesting parts of their bodies were impossible to make out, song finished, last scene of last act, curtain calls, actors gone, lights up, and it was over. Just that fast…the naked part was fast…the rest of the one and a half hours had stretched to days in my mind.

I had whispered to Vic (actually, shouted in his ear) during the play that I wanted to go down to the stage at the end of the play to find Bill. When the first people rose from their seats, we were off and down on the stage in a minute, before actors could disappear. I scanned faces, but right in front of me as my eyes pulled closer, there he was? Bill? He recognized me, so it must be he. I was shocked at the sight. Instead of the healthy, virile Elvis hunk, there stood a friendly, thin, string bean, collapsed chest pulled tightly over ribs, a shrunken pallid face with fiery eyes, topped with a dull matted 8 inch brown Afro. Yes…Bill.

Over the years, I have inquired of high school buddies I met, “Have you heard from Bill?” My mother met his mother several years after Hair, but my mother said Bill’s mom avoided discussion of his status, and Mom didn’t press. To this day I still hold Bill in my thoughts and worry about what happened to him. I told him that night, “Bill, I’m worried about you. Are you O.K.?” But the crowd on stage shook us apart, although, as we could tell when we looked into each others eyes, we were already miles apart in our personal worlds and lives.

The only memory I really have of the musical Hair was a song frequently played on the radio during the 60s, where you could understand the words. Easy to Be Hard could be sung by any college age person of my generation. It wasn’t just sung, though. It was sung with sincerity. In my long straight hair, flared and baggy jeans, tank top, clogs, wire rim glasses, leather choker, and dangling gold hoop ear rings, at a moment’s notice, I could hum and then drift into Easy to Be Hard, complete with a sincere voice, sincere eyes, and sincere tilt to my head. This was the first time in the history of the world (are you smiling?) when the young people had uncovered the cruelty, hypocrisy, injustice, and insincerity that had been hidden by the old people…our parents.

Don’t mistake my humor for sarcasm. I cringe a little at the embarrassing memories of my “pseudo-hippie” ideas back then, but I remember them with fondness, too. We had high hopes for bringing the world back to Love. What the World Needs Now Is Love Sweet Love. Make Love, Not War.

Our ideals were honorable. What we lacked, somehow, was follow-through.

I was 20 years old, your dad 23, in San Francisco, watching Hair. We, and those of our generation, sang Easy to Be Hard as a mantra. We had great dreams for the future: love the whale, free love, brotherly love, free thinkers…we were going to move out of the chains of our parents into a brave new world. We had the vision.

My mistake, our mistake, was to think that a small emaciated shadow of Bill Winsome was a statement of the power of our vision. In repudiating the greed and gluttony, false values, hypocritical meaninglessness of our parents, we had latched onto the love vocabulary…love labels…without inspecting the messengers with the “new” love labels as closely as we had inspected our fathers.

Standing in front of Bill Winsome, his eyes and hair sailing out in all directions, I felt fear for his future. It is a fear that I should have held for my future, too.

I still wonder where Bill is. One of my fears is that he died early from a ‘free’ lifestyle nurtured by San Francisco drugs, sex, and theater life. My deepest fear is that he simply faded out of life, repudiated by his parents and unnoticed by the people of my generation.

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EASY TO BE HARD

How can people be so heartless

How can people be so cruel

Easy to be hard, easy to be cold

How can people have no feelings

How can they ignore their friends

Easy to be proud, easy to say no

Especially people who care about strangers

Who care about evil and social injustice

Do you only care about the bleeding crowd

How about a needing friend, I need a friend

How can people be so heartless

You know I’m hung up on you

Easy to give in, easy to help out

How can people have no feelings

How can they ignore their friends

Easy to be hard, easy to be cold

Easy to be proud, easy to say no

Music: Galt MacDermot

Lyrics: James Rado and Gerome Ragni

Hair opened April 29, 1968, at the Biltmore Theatre, New York City.

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In My Own Words

Mother Teresa

Introduction by Jose Luis Gonzalea-Balado

It would be a mistake to look for literary gems in an anthology of thoughts by Mother Teresa. She has never felt compelled to write a literary work, not because she doesn’t appreciate literature or is incapable of writing, but because to do so would detract from the natural beauty and intimacy of her thoughts and convictions….Who among us doesn’t know that Mother Teresa’s main objective has been to do all the good she can for the least of Jesus’ brothers and sisters? Her feelings for the less fortunate were not arrived at by abstract reasoning, however, All she has done, in her own words, is “follow Jesus’ word.”

Mother Teresa:

I think that the work of the church in this developed and rich Western

Hemisphere is more difficult than in Calcutta, South Yemen, or other areas where the needs of the people are reduced to the clothes needed to ward off the cold, or a dish of rice to curb their hunger–anything that will show them that someone loves them. In the West the problems the people have go much deeper; the problems are in the depths of their hearts.

***

The demands, and consequently the needs, are the same, or very similar, no matter where we are in the world.

In spite of everything, I think that in the West, in general, the needs are mostly spiritual. Material needs, in most cases, are taken care of. Rather, there is an immense spiritual poverty.

***

God pays attention to our love.

Not one of us is indispensable. God has the means to do all things and to do away with the work of the most capable human being.

We can work until we drop. We can work excessively. If what we do is not connected to love, however, our work is useless in God’s eyes.

***

When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed. We have refused to be instruments of love in the hands of God to give the poor a piece of bread to offer them a dress with which to ward off the cold. It has happened because we did not recognize Christ when, once more, he appeared under the guise of pain, identified with a man numb from the cold, dying of hunger, when he came in a lonely human being, in a lost child in search of a home.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

The End…

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THE END…

…A BEGINNING

My final mistake is a story that Jamie is more qualified to tell. It’s slightly ironic that, at the end of a book filled with words, it’s a mistake that proves we often would be just as well off without words.

I had driven around the back driveway at the high school reaching the tennis court just as practice was over. Jamie was visibly upset. Her coach was walking with her as I approached, and she was counseling Jamie to try to conquer her frustration on days that didn’t go well. With good intentions the coach moved her attention to me, explaining that Jamie tended to wilt under frustration. And just like the Ms. Supermom I have tried to assassinate with this book, I donned my red “SM” cape and began to explain Jamie to the coach, “Jamie’s life has been…. Jamie usually does…. blah, blah…well-intentioned blahs…,” finally bringing tears to my daughter instead of comfort. Stopping my words, Jamie asked to go to the locker room. On her way down the sidewalk she paused to blow off steam with a friend who gave me one of “those” teenage stares as they entered the locker room.

Once again, I couldn’t understand what had gone wrong in my motherly “moment of compassion.” When Jamie finally joined me in the car, in an uncharacteristic verbal tongue lashing, she let me have it, deservedly so, “I just hate when you do that. You always explain me to everyone. You describe me just like you know what I think and how I feel. Well, you don’t! You don’t know me; you don’t know how I feel!!” I lost all my words. She was right.

It should have been obvious to me long ago. If I have been spending years reading books, writing and thinking, to get to know myself, just what makes me think I have any right to understand Jamie?

It has been a long road for me to walk, trying to undo all my best efforts to be an understanding parent. Jamie taught me that I improve as a mom as I become more mystified and confounded by the uniqueness of my children. That’s when I am finally open to seeing them as they are and not as I try to mold them.

And after years of getting reacquainted with these teens who share my home, I realize I have only one gift left to give my children. It’s the hardest gift to give anyone, especially your own children, which is probably the reason we parents give up and turn to lectures and words. Well, Jamie and Justin, if your minds have turned to the hope that my ultimate gift will be a raise of your allowance, new clothes, or a European vacation, you will be doubly disappointed. My ultimate gift might seem incomprehensible, but it is what I hope to dedicate the balance of my life to achieving. I give to you my personal effort to live my life with integrity.

I am struggling, as all parents must, to take my focus off of you and direct it inward. This book started as a collection of stories. But early on, I realized I had a problem because I didn’t know how to end it. I realized that I had started to weave a personal philosophy of life, my life, and I only had half the yarn. Gradually, as stories came back to life on the page and as stories were illuminated by the ideas of my favorite authors, a strong conviction developed in me of the kind of person I should be. I have had to finally quit “molding” you because I see how much of myself needs to be shaped and molded according to the ideals and beliefs that I have set out for you and me to see.

I have talked big. Lots of words. When I put the final period after the last word and press control-save on the computer, I will be sitting in a quiet house staring at the keyboard and thinking about the long stretch of years to come when you both will be able to watch me and measure the value of these words I have written. You now have 21 chapters, and 141 pages. I have declared my opinions and paraded my heroes through these pages. Now, what kind of parent will I be?

Integrity is the only thing of value I have left to give. Already, as I get ready to move away from the keyboard, I know I will fail. I wish I had the kind of integrity that would allow me to honor Ghandi or Mother Teresa with my actions instead of my words.

Money isn’t everything…show me.

Love your enemy…show me.

Help the poor…show me.

If my life were one of complete integrity, words would not be necessary.

I won’t sell my home for the poor, I won’t give all I have to serve others. But how big of a failure will I be? I have a life to live and find out. I put your lives into your hands now and set my sight on the challenge that is left for me, when I have pulled all the yarn together to weave my philosophy, completed in this book to you. The only task, the biggest task, is left to me now in silence at the keyboard: “Do I have the integrity to live it?”

Love forever,

Your Mom

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GOODBYE

In 1967 I read and copied this poem as a teenager with my eyes on my parents.

In 1997 I read and copied this poem as a parent with my eyes on myself.

from THE PROPHET: CHILDREN

Kahlil Gibran

1883-1931

AND a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have thoughts,

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Gibran, Kahlil, The Prophet, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986, pp. 17-19.

Advice Is Cheap…

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ADVICE IS CHEAP…

…THAT’S EASY FOR YOU TO SAY

In the first chapter of this book I apologized to you for always giving advice. Yet, tucked away in these chapters, hiding under stories of my mistakes and the lessons learned are bits of advice. I’m a parent. It’s hard to hold myself down!

After more than ten chapters, a pattern evolves: Mom makes a mistake, Mom sees the mistake, Mom learns a lesson. It all seems so easy. So predictable. So inevitable. Unfortunately, it isn’t ever that straight forward.

Yes, I was terribly embarrassed when I smashed Humpty Dumpty’s brother, but the pain, embarrassment and lesson were squished into 60 seconds of instant insight. The crowd around me knew I was a fool. I was able to turn red, squeak out an apology, turn and show my pained look to the audience, and then move on with life. It was over.

It is so much more painful and embarrassing to sit in a quiet moment of reflection and look back 15 years ago to the day when I gave a brilliant pick-me-up, inspirational speech to my real estate buddies during a recession. In a flash, the brilliance disappears, and I suddenly see myself 15 years younger…ignorant, self-important, and simplistic.

Now I’m embarrassed, but the crowd is not there. I realize that the real estate buddies have known of my ignorance these past 15 years, and I’m not able to apologize. I have to push the embarrassment away each day, hoping that these friends were not too offended by my over-exuberant optimism.

My humility continues to daily grow when I think of all the many things I have done during these many years that would make me blush…if I could only remember them and if only I could see myself as others saw me.

Today I have my little book of mistakes, recognized and remembered, cataloged for your benefit. Each mistake, with its own lesson. Life didn’t happen, though, quite that smoothly. When I met my wild-haired friend Bill in San Francisco I felt ill at ease and troubled, but there were no blinking theater lights telling me: there’s a lesson here!

We drove away from the theater, our minds on Golden Gate Park, Coit Tower, and Fisherman’s Wharf. Bill would come into my mind at odd moments, and I would worry for his sake and wonder. Life always interrupted. Eventually, a day came when I decided that Bill’s fate had already been decided, and I had to stop thinking about him with worry for his future. He was and is Bill, without any contribution from me, and the only thing left for me to do is someday seek out a history report from a mutual friend, “What happened to Bill?”

Today’s lessons are extensions of regret that I did not take the time to seriously inquire into his well-being, that I wasn’t able to recognize the true peril of his situation, that I never moved my worry into action, and that I rationalize my inaction by trying to demonstrate that we can’t save someone who doesn’t want to save him/herself. I was wrong, I am wrong today. Bill is still teaching me lessons, 25 years later. I think about him, write about him, and worry about him, even if it’s only worry about a past that can’t be changed, a past marred by my lack of action.

The hardest lessons are those that live in my mind, lessons wasted because I never put them into action. What good is a lesson if you don’t take steps to make the lesson live and to make your life and actions a witness to your learning?

Of all of these lessons learned, but unlived, forgiveness is my greatest failure. I yearn for forgiveness and have been blessed by forgiveness. I remember clearly the rude, self-centered, irresponsible 20-year-old girl who yelled at her mom and dad. She yelled because they wouldn’t let her use their car. She yelled because they asked her to quit coming home at 3:00 a.m. She yelled at them because they wanted her to let them know if she would be home for dinner. They were paying for her college education, letting her stay in their home rent-free, letting her drive a car they bought for her, eat the food they bought for her, and spend the money they gave her.

Where would I be today if these parents, my mother and father, had not forgiven me? I will forever be indebted to them, less for their money than for their willingness to forgive and forget, their willingness to let me move on, to grow, and to become a better person than I had been.

But don’t ask me to forgive. This week on television Sally Fields is playing a mom who is out to kill her daughter’s murderer. Against all values I profess, I hope she succeeds, and I have to mentally cut off my thoughts and remind myself of forgiveness.

How do others manage? I read in Good Housekeeping of a woman who rejoiced that she was able to meet and embrace the man who raped and tried to kill her. It was her final step to releasing herself from the horrors of that experience, moving on with her life with hope. Forgiveness was her liberation.

I can believe in forgiveness. Jesus preached it. I admire others who forgive rapists, murderers, even Hitler.

But I can’t put forgiveness into action in my own life. My own sister. I would forgive her IF:

she would admit she was wrong…
she would apologize, too…
she had suffered enough…
God would pay her back…

I can give her pretend forgiveness. Yes, she’s a person, too. God loves her (darnn it). She is a good person with many good qualities (if you look hard enough). She’s had her share of hurt and suffering (well, she deserves it). We’re both the same (hardly). I can forgive her (even though she doesn’t deserve it). I always turn into a judgmental, spiteful, unforgiving person holding back on all the love that God commands for us to give…waiting for her to deserve it…

My first step along this dark path is and must be for me to beg forgiveness from God for this failing. Oh, Lord, I’m a sinner and I know it. I’m weak, I blunder, and I fail like ships that sail on the ocean, tossed and embroiled in a gale. The next and hardest step is to ask forgiveness from Diane.

Diane, whatever it is in years past that I might have done to put hurt into your life, I ask your forgiveness. Most of all, I ask forgiveness today for my sin that keeps me in judgment of you, waiting upon you to improve yourself, forgetting that you live in the shadows of my failings. I fail to accept you as God’s equal. I fail to seek you out for love. I fail to rejoice in your honor. I fail to hold you in my thoughts with love and honor. I fail to send you in my prayers to our God of mercy and compassion, and I fail to enact all of these heavenly duties here on earth in spite of life’s best lessons.

Lastly, I think these words, I speak these words, I write these words, but Diane, forgive me, that I do not mean these words with the fullness and sincerity that God requires. Forgive me.

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Forgiveness…

from In God’s Care

March 22

A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing to another man than he has to knock him down. —Dr. Samuel Johnson

Disrespect can be as damaging when quietly conveyed as when forcefully shown. We don’t have to physically push someone aside to express our contempt or anger. We’re probably done it many times by icy glares or being vacant-eyed, as the person “deserving” of our contempt was invisible.

Hatefulness in any form is never justified. It’s life-threatening, in fact, because it deadens our spirit and the spirit of the person we direct it at. Not only does the other person feel invalidated and violated, but we are diminished by missing an opportunity to know the love that’s our birthright from God.

An act of love is an invitation to come alive. We have the opportunity to celebrate life through loving actions toward others. In so doing we celebrate our own life in God.

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Postscript: God is merciful. And he does answer prayer. Many such prayers of mine have made their way to Our Father, and He indeed has granted me the forgiveness I requested. If you are in need of forgiveness, I recommend the book of a dear friend who can guide you on this path:

Soaring Above the Ashes on the Wings of Forgiveness

by Kitty Chappell

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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