Goin' Down to Mama's

Sunday Morning Serenity

My friends at work often put up with my broken record of a complaint about the sea of emails I have to wade through every day, most of them trying to persuade me to write stories about things our magazine doesn’t cover—in some cases, things we’ve never covered. For example:

We are pleased to invite you to an all-expense paid trip to the hippest new resort in Denmark, in connection with a travel feature we’d like to see in your magazine during the first quarter of next year. 
(A) We don’t trade free trips for stories. (B) I don’t accept free trips at all.
(C) We’ve never covered Denmark.

Just following up on my email from yesterday to see if you’ll be coming to our resort in Demark. We need to know ASAP because the trip is just two weeks away.
(A) Again, no-can-do on Denmark. (B) An ASAP of your own making does not create a sense of urgency on my part.

We think your readers would love an interview with [Actor’s Name Here], who can tell you how he prepped for his new role as a serial killer by telephone from his slick pad in L.A.
(A) Why would they enjoy that? (B) Unless, by “L.A.,” you mean Louisiana or Lower Alabama, Actor’s Name Here is out of our territory.

For whatever reason, those emails popped into my head during prayer time this morning. I wonder if some of my prayers sound, to God, the way those emails sound to me:

I promise I’ll do so much better at XYZ if you’ll just get me through ABC.
[Sounds like somebody’s trying to bargain. That’s not how prayer works.]

Just asking one more time . . .
[Maybe I should stop asking and try listening?]

I think it would be great for everybody if you would do X for me.
[Is that so, Miss Priss? That's what Grandme used to call me when I got too big for my britches.]

Prayer isn’t Let’s Make a Deal. And it’s not the Home Shopping Network. I’m working on sending up more gratitude and fewer laundry lists. Grace and gratitude to you this week.

 

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

One day last week, I was driving to work with the heat on in my car—and wearing a heavy sweater—when I noticed the wisteria blooming alongside the street. Something about that feels way off kilter.

I have long struggled with March. I can’t decide if it’s indecisive or a total trickster because you just never know what might happen from one day to the next. March can take you from daffodils to snow in a heartbeat. You get the sense that the dogwoods and azaleas are having a fit to bloom, but they know they’d better hold off. I guess that’s why this is also such an interesting month. There’s no way to prepare for it. You just have to roll with it—and keep James Spann on speed dial.

March always makes me think about life changes—the ones I’m dreaming about and the ones I’ve already been through. I took a personality quiz one time that asked, “Are you happier when you’re considering a decision and have all your options open, or after the decision is made?” I’m definitely in the “after” camp. Uncertainty makes me anxious: Am I going to be watching flowers bloom, or will I be too busy sweeping snow off the deck?

Despite the anxiety, I know those periods of I-don’t-know-which-way-to-go are just bridges to something better on the other side. So I’ll keep my garden shears handy . . . and my rubber boots

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

My dear friend called me the other night to tell me her house had sold. She sounded happy for the first time in a long time.

We’ve been neighbors since I moved into this house—as a clueless single-woman homeowner back then. She and her sweet husband, who passed away last year, took me under wing and looked after me. And they were just as good to Dave. We hated to see that “For Sale” sign go up in their yard. But it was time for her to move closer to her family.

First, they helped her sort through 60 some odd years of belongings. Then came the estate sale, which she stayed away from. I think it was just too sad to see all of her things laid out like that. (After the sale, I told her that if she wanted to see her things again, she could just come to my house because I bought as much of her hand-painted china as I could, plus two table cloths . . . things that reminded me of her and would look just fine with the beautiful pieces she had already given me.)

So if the selling made her sad, why did the sale make her happy?  She got a letter from the new lady of the house—a young wife and mother who told my friend how thrilled she was to get to raise her children in such a great house, how much they would enjoy playing in the yard and sitting by the fireplace, and how they promised to take good care of the home that had meant so much to its previous owners.

Whenever we move to a new chapter in life, I think we all want to be able to look back and feel that what came before meant something. We want to leave something of value for whoever’s coming along behind us. I used to live for big feature stories in the magazine, but I’ve had more than my share of them (in my advanced years), and I can honestly say that I now get the most satisfaction from coaching and encouraging young writers who are just taking on their first big assignments—just as my predecessors coached and encouraged me. Passing the torch, I guess.

Years ago, I interviewed a wonderful storyteller named Betty Crawford in North Carolina. Betty was in her eighties and had grown up spending her summers at her grandparents’ cottage on the Outer Banks. I remember she told me that she and the other children on the islands learned how to form a human chain, joining hands for strength whenever a playmate got caught in the strong current and needed to be pulled out.

That image stayed with me because I think each of us is part of our own human chain, forever connected to the people we meet and grow to love on our journey—even when they’re no longer right next door.

Sunday Morning Serenity

This morning’s Serenity involves My Big Fat Greek Wedding, my childhood self, the children of Israel, and Life As We Know It. You might need coffee.

Part 1: “Woe to me!”

Dave and I have loved and watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding for so long that we own it on video. That’s right—video. As in we still have a VCR. I had to prepare a young colleague at work for it when she kindly cat-sat Cheeto for the first time. But back to the movie. One of our favorite scenes involves Toula’s mom and aunt plotting to convince her stubborn dad to let her leave the family restaurant and work in the aunt’s travel agency. And as Aunt Voula is dramatically feigning despair, she cries, “Woe to me!”

The Luesses have adopted that cry whenever we catch ourselves complaining about something. One of us will interrupt the whining with “Woe to me!” (Our other favorite Voula quote is, “Tell me what to say—but DON’T tell me what to say,” which we sometimes vary: “Tell me what to do—but DON’T tell me what to do.” That one comes up a lot when I’m driving and he’s navigating. Or when one of us is helping the other make a decision about something.)

Parts 2 & 3: My Childhood Self & The Children of Israel

Did you ever have sort of an out-of-body experience with your childhood self—a time when you weren’t so much remembering something from back then as watching Little You experience it? I see myself in Sunday School when I was about 8 or 9 years old, with Bernice Kidd, Gracie Sewell, and my Aunt Zudora taking us kids on that long journey to Canaan with the children of Israel. And I can hover above that Sunday School room and watch Little Me shaking her head at those doubting wanderers. “God parted that sea and sent them manna from heaven and STILL they don’t trust him? Sheesh! What’s up with these people?!”

Part 4: Life As We Know It

Over the years, I’ve wandered in my own wilderness from time to time, with many a “Woe to me!” as I couldn’t understand why “this” (whatever it was at the time) had to happen. Dave and I have had a lot of “this” over the past year or so, along with some amazingly wonderful blessings. And I can be really quick with the “Woe to me!” even as I’m blindly stepping over manna from heaven.

We’re human. And we’re going to have moments of “Woe to me!” But some of our worst moments are guideposts to the best. I just have to remind myself to look for that manna.