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Born for Endurance
As promised in my last post, here is the first of two family narratives I’ll be sharing. I composed this in 2016, when my challenge was elective hiking. The piece reads much differently in today’s pandemic context. The underlying message of endurance, helpful then, feels crucial now. This hike is no different. I’ve climbed quickly, and the last stretches are looming and formidable after the exertion. My t-shirt is damp with sweat, my calves are tight, and I’m beginning to think that a break is in order. But in the very next moment, I decide I want this hike to be different. I want to push myself to be better, to…
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A Birthright of Stories
The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: develop a strong family narrative. – Bruce Feiler, The New York Times Like many, I grew up with stories. A collection of bedtime fairy tales, Nancy Drew, the Choose Your Own Adventure series, as well as The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings series because my oldest brother was in to Tolkien and I read whatever I could get my hands on. I inhaled stories. I also had scores of family stories. I learned about how, when Dad and his brother were little, they got hauled down to the local police station…
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The Sun is Gonna Shine Again
Steve Martin has a bluegrass band. Yes, that Steve Martin. He plays the banjo and sings, and if you dig bluegrass, I think you’ll dig Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers. Martin and his colleague, Edie Brickell, wrote a beautiful musical titled “Bright Star.” Set in the 1920s and 1940s Blue Ridge Mountains, it’s a poignant story of love and loss. Some friends and I saw it this week, and the music has been echoing in my mind ever since. As I wrote that sentence, my brain had a hard time wrapping itself around the fact that, yes, I was at that show on Monday. It’s Saturday, and things…
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Be the Change You Seek
I’m fatigued. I’m tired of the societal junk I’m witnessing. Back-biting, in-fighting, political maneuvering, argument for the sake of argument. Seriously, I’m done. Not today, Satan. (Side note: I introduced this phrase to a friend who struggles with self-criticism, and told her she should use it as a mantra. She though I was telling her ‘not to date Satan.’ I mean, you know, both. Don’t allow Satan to trick you AND don’t date him or anyone resembling him.) Okay, back to it…Not today, Satan! I am actively working to reject the bad and embrace the good. And not in a head-in-the-sand Pollyannaish sort of way. I work to be educated…
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So Much Depends
There were too many perplexing questions needing answers in my day and I was overdone. Attempting sleep, I took deep breaths and quieted my mind. As I cleared out space, into the vacuum came William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow.” In my sleepy state, it wasn’t words that came; it was a scene. A red wheelbarrow in green grass, dew sparkling, sun streaming. A slight breeze, sounds of grasses humming, birds calling drowsily. And I, drowsy too, drifted off. The next day I read the poem. so much dependsupon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the whitechickens Ah, so sparse, so unfettered by capitalization and punctuation. Clean. Crisp. Only…
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Fortune Cookie #1
Finally, I’ve found a purpose for all the fortune cookie messages I’ve been saving for years. This is the first in a series of fortune cookie posts. I’ll pick a message, see how it plays out in my week, and write about it. Let’s begin. “Keep it simple. The more you say, the less people remember.” I am my family’s historian. I scan pictures, convert old Super 8 and Camcorder tapes to digital movies, and change cassette tape recordings to digital audio files. This has yielded such amazing moments for us as we’ve been drawn back into time, hearing and seeing earlier versions of ourselves. What has really been the…