Not Cool, Robert Frost

Olivia showed me this today. Since over 4 million viewers have seen it, I am guessing I am the last person to discover this yummy kid.  Anyway, if there's a chance that you need a pep talk today, I'm directing you here:

Sounds about right

I keep seeing this note posted online between 8th graders. We all laugh and laugh like it changes.  She sounds a little needy so I'm impressed that he's got an outside interest and some clear boundaries.

Catherine

I like old people. Maybe you didn't know that.  Old people like me too, I think, and I can only imagine why.  When I was a kid I spent about as much time thinking about old people as probably most kids do, if by that you mean it was only to assess that they liked me best.  My grandparents were the sort of old people you'd want to know so it was always worth the investment to spend a weekend or afternoon with them. I think that's where I get it from.  The pay off was always the stories. Why does it always seem like older people had bigger lives than we do?  My grandfather was even declared dead once because he went missing for 7 years (it was deliberate).  I'm not sure I know anyone with a life as big as that generation was capable of producing.

Anyway, this week a dear friend died and now I am thinking about being old and how that changes how we view death.  My friend Catherine was 98 years old and she was tired.  She never complained about it, but I'm sure she was weary of being without her husband Milton. I'm sure she was weary of the effort it takes to keep moving your arms and legs and brain after 98 years and one time she said the loss of independence was not a pleasant part of being old.  When you're my age, you only hope that people you love don't leave you, but when you're 98 maybe you're wishing you could go with them.

Catherine told me more than once that if she died she was ready.  I didn't think I was, but she was.  I really admired how she handled aging.  Even before she moved last year she'd call and ask me to take her to the gym a couple of days a week.  Talk about strength!  She'd had one hip replaced simply because she'd just worn it out, but before that it was her only hospital stay besides childbirth.  She didn't mind driving some places, like to the Baptist church to do her job once a week, but she'd gotten to the age where she didn't trust herself on the busier streets. She took pleasure in doing things the right way so her existence was tidy and her work was thorough and precise. I think being in your 90's and not being dependent on a myriad of drugs and nurses is a thing I'd like to aspire to, but it turns out you have to start a lot earlier if that's your goal.

During her 98 years, my friend Catherine worked and raised children and participated in church and schools and the lives of neighbors and even strangers in Africa.  She helped to start the school Olivia attends and she liked hearing me say how much we love that little school. She and Milton even helped to start the pre-school so many of our friends here attend.  Her whole life was one of giving.  As a student and teacher at Berry, she saw the same inscription on the Ford auditorium wall that I see - the words that say, "Not to be ministered unto, but to minister." From the stories she told me and from the ones I've heard about her, she lived that.

A lot of times Catherine wouldn't ask if she needed something.  She believed it was a bother to me to be driving an old woman around, but I learned recently that she'd told her daughter she knew I was really her friend.  My friendship with her had never been an obligation to me - the payoff was her positive perspective, her presence. She'd seen so many things that she could say with great confidence that anything I was concerned about would turn out all right.  I believed her because, after 90 something years, you have to believe she knew what she was talking about. I was the lucky one.

The last 3 or 4 years, every time I asked how she was, she'd always respond with, "Well, I'm still upright."  Some days she seemed a little disappointed by that. Now please don't get me wrong, I think she lived fully every day that she was given and she lived those days with gratitude, but it's hard to say that it's a bad thing for Catherine McDonald, faithful, diligent, kind Catherine, to finally get some rest.

Breathe

I recently bought a bracelet that says "BREATHE" on it because I realize how much taking a minute to just focus on the basics can change my reaction to things. You can't imagine how many people have been rescued from me because I took that moment.  The glory of intake, even of freezing cold air, is something I might need to appreciate more and then there's also the few seconds that sometimes means the difference between clawing someone's eyes out and simply moving on.  That whole Count to 10 Campaign was on to something.  So the bracelet has served to remind me to take that moment when I need it and Kenny and Olivia would probably tell you it works.

The occasional media story of China's smog problem isn't new or surprising since they are heavily reliant on coal, but for whatever reason I didn't really imagine what this would be like before seeing this.  Check this picture from this week out:

Let's add Tai Chi in heavy smog to the list of stuff we are never gonna do.  If you have to wear that mask, maybe skip class today.  Okay, and maybe taking the second to inhale is not going to help these folks. God, whatever happens, DON'T BREATHE.

The whole reason I'm even thinking about this is because this actual headline crossed my feed a few times the last couple of days:

A FACTORY fire in eastern China went unnoticed for three hours because of the thick smog that blanketed large stretches of the country this week, state media have said.

So, wow.  You've got yourself a real problem if no one even notices a full on blaze at a factory FOR 3 HOURS because your smog is so prevalent.  Sweet Jesus that's horrible.  If you want the full story, here's the link: China Smog Story.  I guess it's nice to be first at something, but Beijing is probably not very proud of being tops in polluted air.  You don't get a trophy for breaking that record.

I guess all of that has very little to do with me, but you know how I manage to make everything all about me and, lucky for you, you can go BREATHE some (relatively) clear air in and out a few times if that bothers you.  Anyway, it's actually freezing here and I'm not very interested in going outside and gulping in lots of cold air, but I am feeling pretty grateful because I could totally do that if I wanted.

Talk soon.

Best news story of the week

There are so many things I love about this story that's circulating this week.  First, I love that Milo has a community of people who adore him with his extra chromosome.  Second, I love that the server in this restaurant responded to a person's unkind remark in a responsible and polite manner and third, I love that his employer backed him on it.  I understand their business is now booming.

A long time ago

I know a lot of people look back on their younger lives and view them as the Glory Days.  I am not one of those people. My youth might be better described as an experiment in how much awkwardness a person can endure - an era characterized by awful 80's fashion, orthodontia, Ayn Rand, and a stint in the high school clarinet section.  I'm that girl.  I'd rather you believe that I'm a participant in the Witness Protection Program if you could just allow me that.  Recently, though, my parents announced that they are moving and that means all the crap I left at their house so I wouldn't have to go through and look at it after college now has to be gone through and sorted out and that also means that I had the opportunity to relive my not most glorious of days. All of the stops on this trip include photos of me trying on different identities and mostly missing the mark. Red hair? Yep. Hippie clothes for a bit? Sure.  Laura Ashley jumpers? Ugh. And each identity included a different matching, but ultimately ill-fitting, boyfriend.  I've done the work required to say that I am not the same person I was 20 years ago, but I'm still the girl who needs to do what her mama asks so I finally got by there this week.

I did not realize our walk was going to go all the way back to elementary school so, first, let me say that the thing where people keep every scrap from their first child and then kind of get busy and figure the second one will work it out is really a thing.  Whatever - just means my sister has more artwork to look through in the next few weeks. My second child issues are not even issues so that's not my focus here.

While I was going through my treasures from youth I found a lot of neat things. I found that my mom kept every single certificate for every single accomplishment in elementary, middle, high school and college. Turns out I was a champ at nailing the A-Average, a great speller, and I also uncovered a trend that in the 80's everybody got a certificate for something.  Those went in the trash - except for the diplomas of course. I found piano recital programs and band awards and a ton of photographic evidence that hairspray can accomplish more than your flat, blond-haired head ever dreamed.

I was happier with the Belmont University findings. For whatever reason, I kept a lot of class notes from college that I guess I figured would still matter to me one day. Obviously someone thought she was important. I found a handwritten note from my friend Brad (priceless since his death in July) passed to me during British Lit and some articles he'd written in the campus newspaper.  I found tickets and doodles and essays and quizzes. While I flipped through one of my notebooks I discovered that for a year or so I had written down quotes from things I'd read or heard.  I have no memory of doing this, but I am fascinated at how many of those quotes still resonate with me.  Maybe I'm not so changed after all.  Here's one I kept probably because I found it funny:

"When a woman has scholarly inclinations, there is usually something wrong with her sexuality." Friedrich Nietzsche from Beyond Good and Evil

Jerk.  But this one has stayed with me because I believe it's true:

"One swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day." - Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics.  

I remember this because I believe, conversely, one bad incident doesn't make a bad day, year or life. That's a quote that I've kept in mind all these years.

I found quotes from my dad - "If you have to be in an institution, marriage is as good as any"  and from Barney Fife - "Nip it in the bud!" and even Paul Simon -"Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."  There were tons from Walt Whitman - and I'd still quote him because there's no better missive from a person you've lost than, "Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you."

I was most delighted when I found this one from a class my friend Ginger taught.  Apparently one of the first class lectures was about Business Ethics and the obligations of corporations. Here's my instruction on that:

Guess a lot of folks missed that one and I think I could probably revisit this class.  I could get stuck on this one for a while.  Gosh, just imagine how different our headlines would be if we actually did that.

Glancing through all the college essays and papers and notes I can't believe how much I read and wrote during those few years.  I can see how hungry my mind was for direction and insight and it makes it easier to understand why I needed to try so many hats on to find the identity that's mine. I really believed that now that the braces were off I COULD MAKE MYSELF INTO ANYTHING (probably except an astronaut).  I see that I wrote with such confidence about the world during a time that I knew so little about it.  So in some ways things are different - now I readily admit that the world is way too big for me to pretend that I know too much about it and am so much more comfortable writing to you about what I don't know and also I am way more committed to good hair products.  But in other ways I'm so much the same - still moved by Whitman, still hungry to make sense of all the brilliant things other people have written, still charmed by the funny things they might say, and, very importantly, still a Super Speller!

So, as much as I still would rather you believe that I am in the Witness Protection Program and that no historical documentation or photograph about me exists before this very moment, I have to say sometimes it's not so bad to spend a little time visiting the older versions of ourselves.  I might have built up enough courage to tackle the yearbooks next.  Talk soon.

Justice will be done!!

"One thing led to another and before I knowed it...."