How to Stay Young

In a word, live.

Two people in my life exemplify this better than anyone I’ve ever known.  My mom and her dear friend Gary.  He’s newly turned 80(still a looker by any standard) and my mom is a glowing 68.  She’s always been beautiful and still is.  Gary is fond of telling anyone who asks that he’s 80 and dating a woman in her 60’s.

These two have known their share of pain and difficulties in this

Daisy Waiting on her Groom

life.  There have been times when their journey here has put some significant potholes in front of them.  Painful loss of much-loved spouses, along with health issues and many of the things most of us will eventually experience if we’re here long enough.  But their journey has also included finding each other and sharing this phase of their lives with an admirable determination to wring out every last drop of joy they encounter.

Take yesterday for example.  Monday morning.  Mama’s up at 3:45  and off to meet Gary where, along with 50 or so others, they will board a bus at our church for a Mystery Day Trip.  They have no idea where they’re going, but they’re game for whatever.

First stop is a little place in Galax, VA where they are served a Southern style breakfast guaranteed to fill the emptiest of bellies.  Back on the bus, and they’re travelling I-81 South to what they’re all sure will be a stop in Abingdon, VA with perhaps lunch at the Martha Washington Inn.

But the Abingdon exit sign comes and goes, and the bus continues on until they reach Kingsport, TN where they pull into the parking lot of a shopping mall.  A hillbilly man and woman climb on board the bus and inform the passengers that they’re hard pressed to marry off one of their numerous daughters.  So they “hijack” the bus after picking the man they think will be right for their daughter Daisy.

When the bus pulls up in front of a hillbilly cabin where several daughters in bonnets stand waiting for their hijacked groom, my mom says this was this point where she’d nearly laughed herself sick.  The “actors” continue to carry out the ruse, tricking daughter Daisy into looking up, then down as a nod when she refuses to say I Do.

All of this took place at the Gaines-Preston Farm in Kingsport, TN where hilarious hijackings are a regular part of their group tours offerings.

All in all, it was a long day.  My mom and her friend Gary are at a point in their lives when it would be easy to say, “That just sounds too hard for me to do today.  Easier just to stay home.”  But their motto is to keep living.  Keep doing.  Keep enjoying.  Keep going.

And isn’t that the only real way to stay young?

Poke the Box

I just finished reading Seth Godin’s Poke the Box, and as usual with anything I read of his, I came away feeling inspired and motivated.  But with this book, and his mantra – GO MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN –  I also felt validated.

I published nine novels and one novella via the traditional publishing route, and I’m grateful for the opportunity I had to do so.

But things have changed.

Distribution has changed.

We now have the ability to release our creative work to the world through one little laptop.  When that first began to dawn on me, it came with a closet full of enumerated trepidations.  What if my work wasn’t good enough, I asked myself. What if people hated it?

I soon began to realize that no matter whether I release something through another publisher or through a company of my own,  I’m going to put the same amount of care and effort into it because my goal is not to put something out just to put it out, but to make it the very best I can at the time of its creation.

I care that it does its best to make someone laugh, cry or identify, even if it’s in the smallest way.  I have always loved creating things, starting with a seed of something and growing it until it has the ability to do one of the above.  That is rewarding to me.

And so, I’m going to take Seth Godin’s advice and poke the box.  Create the things I love to create.  And then release them to the world with the best care I can give them.  It’s almost an added bonus when someone buys a book or a song and writes to tell me they enjoyed it.

The single most important thing I took away from Mr. Godin’s book is that none of us need to sit back and wait for someone else to tell us we may now go ahead and pursue our dream.  We do need to put out the highest quality work we are capable of, but we don’t need to be granted admittance to the dance.  We just need to get out there and start dancing.  Right this very minute.  Today.  Poke the box.

So here’s my most recent attempt.  A song I co-wrote with songwriter Gabe Stalnaker, featuring super-talented Megan Conner.

youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdHJymw0rGc&w=560&h=349

What Empathy Is and What It’s Not

Empathy:  the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.
******

Something happened yesterday that’s continued my thinking about this subject of empathy.

I volunteer for our local Humane Society and heard from some of my dog rescue friends that a mama and puppies had been found under a house trailer when the owner moved out and left them there.

As it turned out, there were two mamas and two litters of puppies.  In one of the litters, there was only one puppy left.  The others had wandered out into the nearby road and gotten hit by cars.  One mama had also been hit and had an untreated injury on one of her legs which may cause her to lose it.

These two dedicated rescuers spent several hours crawling back and forth under the trailer to bring out the total of fifteen puppies.  The place was in deplorable condition, and I can’t even begin to imagine how these two women stayed at it for that long.  But they didn’t leave until they’d gotten the very last one.  All seventeen dogs are now at the adoption center where they are being taken care of.

This is a situation where these poor dogs truly saw the worst and best of human behavior.  The human beings who left them there to starve did so without a speck of mercy.   There is no justification for this kind of abandonment.  A simple phone call would have brought help for these mamas and their puppies.  I can only think that such a decision to leave them there was rooted in a total lack of care for what would happen to them.

And then there are the two women who spent an entire afternoon working to save them.  This is mercy at its most benevolent.  At its most selfless.  The kind I have to believe has “well done my good and faithful servant” waiting as its acknowledgement after this life is done.

How is it that some people can walk away from a situation like this, leaving the nearly helpless to fend for themselves?  And others will jeopardize their own well-being to right that wrong?

I know which side I want to be on.

M.E.

Me

I wonder if it could be said that every bad decision we ever make starts with ME.  ME want.  ME need.  ME feel.

I’ve recently been drawn to watching shows like Lockup and the Investigative Discovery channel.  I’ve found myself fascinated  by the whys behind the things that people do to land themselves in a Federal prison charged with something horrendous like murder.  At first, the interest felt sort of like turning my head to glance at a car wreck when I drive by, knowing all along that I don’t want that image in my mind.

I think what I find most fascinating in a disturbing kind of way is how almost every single case starts and ends with ME.  He dissed me.  He disrespected me.  He had more than I had so I took some of his.  She stole my boyfriend.  

The awful thing is that in listening to each of those individuals talk about their life in prison and how they got there, there is almost never any expressed awareness of the part that pride and self-first played in their crime.  And even after they are in prison and get into conflicts with other prisoners, their interpretation is most likely that it’s the other guy’s fault.

Each time I listen to one of these interviews, I come away from it thinking about the ME focus of the person’s explanation for their crime.  ME.  Missing Empathy.  M.E.

We’re missing empathy when we can’t or won’t put ourselves in another person’s position or imagine what it would feel like if someone inflicted upon us what we’re inflicting upon them.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if someone could flip a switch, and we could all see the world and the others who live here with empathy and a desire to understand another’s position, pain, fear or hopes?

I wonder if our prisons would be as full as they are today.

10 Dollops of Wisdom on Reading

Reading in the Dark

1. The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination. – Elizabeth Hardwick.

2. Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. – Thomas Carlyle.

3. Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him. – Maya Angelou.

4. We read to know that we are not alone. – C.S. Lewis.

5. You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend. – Paul Sweeney.

6. Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world. – Voltaire.

7. Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window. – William Faulkner.

8. Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book. – Jane Smiley.

9. Books are a uniquely portable magic. – Stephen King.

10. I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me. – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

5 Things to Do When Hard Stuff Happens

And it will.  Let’s face it.

There are no free rides in this world.  Potholes appear out of nowhere sometimes, and there’s just no way to go around them.

But if we prepare ourselves for that eventuality, we can have a plan in place to help lessen the jolt.

1.  Know your support system.  Who are the people there for you when life gets bumpy?  Mom, dad, brother, sister, friend, pastor or counselor.  We all need someone to talk to, someone who will take the time to hear us, really hear us, sympathize and strategize when we need it most.  Just saying things out loud can lessen the weight of the cloud, lighten the sky a bit.  Maybe it’s not as bad it seems.  Even if it is, sharing the sadness, fear or trauma transfers some of the weight to someone who cares about us and what happens to us.

2.  Change your location.  Take a vacation – even if it’s just a mini one.  Getting out of your daily routine, changing the scenery, just for a day or two, can provide a much-needed reprieve from daily pressures.  Choose something opposite of what you’re used to.  If you live in a place where it rains a lot, go somewhere sunny.  If you live in a big city, try a small town.  Give yourself a little stretch of time to see something different, consider things in a different light.  When life gets hard, we need to change our focus, switch tracks like a train setting off for a new destination.  Seeing other places, other sights can change our outlook, open our mind to thoughts, solutions we may never have considered before.

3.  Exercise.  There’s nothing like it for diluting stress, building up reserves, both mental and physical, for the times when we need them most.  Make it something you like to do.  If it’s running, great.  If it’s cycling, great.  If it’s walking, great.  Or maybe it’s taking a class with other people that gets you cranked for the day.  Whatever it is that releases those endorphins for you, gives you a daily boost of good chemicals, stick to it.

4.  Set goals.  We all need to know we’re going somewhere.  That what we’re doing every day matters.  Maybe it’s a 5K.  Maybe you’ve always wanted to write a book.  Build a house.  Paint an oil of your old home place.  Take your mother to Paris.  Whatever your life goals, map them out.  Record your daily progress.  When things get hard, and it feels like you’re just treading water, it’s easy to think you’re not accomplishing much.  But if you have a hard copy of what you’re accomplishing each day, it can help neutralize that temporary sense of hopelessness that comes with dealing with something difficult.  Checking in with your roadmap gives you visual confirmation of progress and purpose.  And if you keep this roadmap long enough, you can look back and see the hard points, times maybe when your progress decreased because of a temporary refocusing of energy and effort on one of those potholes.  But you can also look back and see where pace and progress picked up again when the road smoothed out, and the sailing wasn’t quite so rough.

5.  Put yourself in someone else’s place.  We all know we can’t really do that.  We’re here for our own walk, our own journey.  But we can put ourselves in a position to offer help and kindness to someone who may be dealing with something more difficult than what we’re dealing with.  Visit your local homeless shelter.  Help feed an evening meal to folks coming in maybe for the only meal they’ve had that day.  It’s a humbling experience and an opportunity to see our circumstance as that person might see it.  Maybe you have a teenager who’s giving you a fit with her rebellion.  And maybe the woman standing across the counter waiting for you to dish out her supper doesn’t have a home to provide for her teenager.

Pain is pain.  And we’re all going to feel it on this earth.  But we do have the ability to lessen its hold with our thoughts and actions, to prevent it from swallowing us whole, to find ways to swim through it until we get to the other side.

There’s always the other side.

8 Ways to Make Someone’s Day

1.  Smile at them.  For no reason.  The lady in the drive through at McDonald’s.  The older man bagging groceries at Kroger.  Just smile.

2.  Point out something you like in someone.  Maybe it’s the way they talk to their dog in a way we would all like to be talked to. Maybe it’s the way they send thank you notes that sound like they took time to write them.

3.  Ask someone for advice on something you know they’re really good at and have worked hard to accomplish.  Most people have something they’re knowledgeable about because they love it and have spent time developing it.  They may be only too happy to share what they know and feel complimented that you sought them out.

4.  If there’s an older person in your life, drop by for a visit just to talk.  Ask them about something meaningful in their lives that interests you and give them a chance to talk about it.  Older people have a wealth of experience and history to share with others, but it may seem to them that no one has time to listen.

5.  If you have a dog that loves people, try getting him or her approved for visits to a local nursing home.  Dogs can make people smile with the simple wag of their tails.  Regular visits can bring joy to those who may not have many visitors.

6.  Plant a small garden in the spring and share your vegetables with a food pantry, an older person who can no longer garden, or a family who could use the assistance.  A few tomato and squash plants can yield an abundance of produce.

7.  Maybe you have a neighbor who isn’t able to walk his or her dog as much as they would like to due to age or health issues.  Volunteer to do so for them.

8.  Offer to teach someone something you know how to do.  Maybe you know a teenager who would like to learn to play guitar but can’t afford the lessons.  Or someone who doesn’t have computer skills but would like to.  It may seem like a little thing to us, but can be huge to someone who may not have had the same opportunities in life.

10 Reasons Why I Love My Dogs

*     They love every meal I fix for them.

*      They look at me as if I hung the moon.  And the sun and the stars, too.

*      They are the picture of sadness in the window when I leave the house and the picture of joy when I pull up in the driveway.

*      They think just hanging out with me is all life needs to be about.

*      They wag their tails when I laugh.

*      They’re worried when I cry.

*      They insist that I keep a schedule.

*      They would laugh at my jokes if they could.

*      They don’t care if I drive a clunker, a BMW, a truck or a delivery van as long as they get to ride in the front seat beside me.

*      They thrive on the most basic of ingredients:  food, kindness,and the knowledge that they are safe.

How to Bring a Memory to Life

Food has the power to bring to mind wonderful memories of  our childhood.

When I was growing up, both of my grandmothers were incredible cooks.  There were certain dishes each of them fixed that I can see and smell to this day just by thinking of them.   A lot of those dishes we had on Sunday afternoons when we would visit their houses after church.

My Grandma Holland’s Blueberry Delight topped the favorites among her desserts.  It had a graham cracker crust, a cream cheese center and a blueberry topping, and she would always take it to our family reunions in the summertime.

Her rice pudding with its meringue topping is still the best I’ve ever had, and I can see her putting it together on a Sunday morning when my sister and I were spending the weekend.  She would have the radio on a local station that played Bluegrass gospel, singing along to Amazing Grace, Just As I Am and other classic hymns.

Every fall, my Grandma Johnson made fried apple pies in a plug-in electric skillet.  She would roll the dough for the crust thin and fill each pie with cinnamon-laced cooked apples which we bought from a nearby orchard in the fall.  She would press the edges into a fan with a fork before putting them in the orange pan.  The smell was heavenly, the taste equally so.

And I’ve yet to find a rival for her biscuits.  She started making them when she was just a young girl in a special bowl that belonged to her mother.  I still don’t know how they always came out  so perfectly light and fluffy from her oven.

Over the years, I’ve tried to learn how to make some of these dishes the way my grandmas made them, although mine will never be as good.  But each and every time I fix one of them, the smell, the taste, brings back to life many wonderfully sweet moments of my childhood.  And that’s a place I love to visit, even in a memory.

What are some of the dishes that bring back wonderful memories for you?

Remember When. . .

You were five, and your mother’s hugs smelled like vanilla wafers.

You were six, and you were absolutely sure those were reindeer hooves you heard on the roof.

You were seven, and you thought there really could be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

You were eight, and lightning bugs on a July night were fascinating.

You were nine, and so what if you still liked to sleep with that raggedy monkey you’d had since you were two?

You were ten and camped out with your cousins by the fish pond.  The frogs sang all night.

You were eleven, and a trip to the library was almost as good as a blizzard from Dairy Queen.

You were twelve, and the middle school had a Sadie Hawkins dance.  Why was it so hard for a girl to ask a boy?

You were thirteen, and had a best friend who thought you were cooler than cool.

You were fourteen, and acne stunk the big one.

You were fifteen, and that first kiss felt like fourth of July, Christmas Eve and your birthday all rolled into one.

You were sixteen, it was Friday night, and your first car date.  Your date at the front door looked so good you could barely speak.  It was ten-thirty before you held hands across the front seat, but it was worth every moment of the wait.

You were seventeen and taking the SAT.  It felt monumental, as if your future hinged on how well you did.

You were eighteen, the middle of June, graduation day.  Joy, sadness, wonder.  Cap in the air.  Nothing would ever be the same.

Remember. . .