I Know You Are, But What Am I?

I love quotes. I often search the internet for one that will inspire my next thought and subsequent blog or column. But sometimes a concept is so concrete that I can make the quote up in my head, and there is likely to be a famous quote that matches nearly verbatim. I would imagine that “If you have to tell people who you are, you probably aren’t who you think” is already a searchable quote, but for me it was just a loud and clear thought I had the other morning.

I read new web content by an author who had taken the time to think through who he was and state it neatly. The sentiment was charming and prophetic. A headstone of sorts for a life well intended. “Here lies Joe, he had every intention of being these things, but never did get around to it”. While I appreciated the concepts, it was not in fact who he was; it was a collection of goals for who he very much wants to be. Ironically, the author is someone in whom I see profound hope, but who does not much care for me, and one can hazard to guess that this will not help the cause. Oh well.

I have spent years telling the world exactly who I am, though there has been a paradigm shift in the last few years to just show it. Here is the problem with the latter model. What if who you present to be by your actions, is not the stellar overachiever you wish for the world to know? When my cousin Lisa and I were little, we dissected my brother’s Stretch Armstrong doll in the basement bathroom to see what was inside. Stretch Armstrong, for those of you who are under 40, was a hulk-like action figure with bulging muscles, but he was stretchable. Think drawn and quartered, but with an indestructible flair. This is why no woman in her 40’s can be wholly satisfied by a mate: we are all looking for the bulging hunk with a soft core that we can pull in four directions and have him remain strong and unscathed. We took a razor blade to Stretch and found gelatinous red glop inside. I recall there was a pregnant pause between the two of us, in which I admit being a bit disappointed by Stretch’s pathetic secret. He felt like a fraud to me, and made me appreciate my solid plastic Barbies.

This is, though, how many of us go through life. We are our actions, our deeds, and our hearts. We are infrequently, if ever, our words. I still sometimes tell people who I am, but now recognize that if I feel the need to tell you who I am, it is probably because I am trying to convince myself as well. Here is a litmus test: If what you are stating is overwhelmingly positive and enlightened, it is probably a clue that you are sharing your goals rather than your truth; otherwise you would allow it to show through your actions. Here is my truth: I am a person who flosses a few times a week but tells the dentist I do it regularly, who rarely makes my bed, who often licks the spoon while I’m mixing something and hopes the germs are killed in the baking process (Sabrina, can’t wait to see you for dinner Sunday.) , and who complains about every load of laundry I have to do, but then tears up at the thought that the day will come when I won’t have a million tiny undies in every load. Now that is who I am, who are you?

Twenty Below What?

This week’s cuticle cracking temperatures make me grateful to live in a place too harsh for the masses and thus better equip me to handle the bitter cold. A native Vermonter once remarked to me “if it weren’t for the two weeks a year below zero, everyone would live here”. Tucked in the corner of one of my favorite coffee shops, I am surrounded by the artwork of Pete Sutherland whose work it seems could be based on favorite snapshots from a life well lived. Scenes of music and camping, old women baking, and pillow fights make me think the artist and I might get along as we seem to share an affinity for uncomplicated and contented moments. I do not typically appreciate art the way the trained eye knows to do, but I know what makes me feel. For me, good art makes us feel something familiar and incommunicable through a medium other than itself. It becomes the only method of delivering yourself to you in any given moment. The images around me make me feel home and safe and as though my grandmother must be somewhere close by with an aromatic pot of red sauce simmering.

The ‘why bother’ latte I have ordered is the perfect mix of non fat milk, decaf espresso and a hint of maple, and is topped with a perfect foamy leaf design. A father and son plant their cross country skis in a snow bank just outside the door and expel breaths we can all see as they transition from outside to in. It looks cold outside and my hands still carry a mild sting from the exposure of this morning’s barn chores. Still, inside it is nothing but ten different flavors of warm. Energetic talk of entertaining tweets from local personalities, dairy conferences, and the decisions we make as teenagers fill the shop’s atmosphere. There are high fives exchanged between friends who clearly agree on something, and the quiet but discernable talk of women much older than myself still trying to make sense of the lives they have lived and of what lies ahead. As one patron leaves he yells back to the barista, “It’s supposed to hit 20 below tonight, you know”. The barista wishes him well and instructs him to “stay warm”. If he were truly to have heeded the good advice, we would never have walked out the door.

Living in harsh climates means braving the temperatures, packing the 4x4 with ski gear and spending a day with hand warmers stuck inside already top of the line gloves. It demands that you resist the urge to say no to a snowshoe hike because it is too cold out. It requires going with the dogs in the knee deep snow when they need to go outside. On some days, during those legendary two weeks that keep the masses from building in our open space, it is in fact too cold to go outside. But on those days, if you can keep your mind quiet and your spirit still, you will find warmth in ways you’ll never see blow in on the summer winds. With my column almost finished, a stranger asks if he can share my table. I look up from my laptop and in a voice I hardly recognize say “I’d love it”. Perhaps, our harshest temperatures bring out the best in us all.

With its delicate leaf now reduced to a slight foam residue that resembles the remnants of a bubble bath, the last sip of my latte is still as sweet. Tipping back the bowl of a mug I ordered makes it necessary to lift the brim of my baseball cap as I enthusiastically finish it off. A warm picture indeed.

Duck and Cover

Often the best plans work out serendipitously. Last night, my friend and I made a last minute mad dash for our favorite mahogany watering hole for champagne, and what always turns out to be ear bending conversations for the eavesdroppers around us. The bartender would no doubt report that last night’s musings did not disappoint.


There is always a point in our conversation where I threaten to use a line of hers as a Facebook status. Her witticisms are among the best I have ever heard and last night’s implication along the lines of ‘If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably not a cat’ was a favorite. It isn’t so much that her spin on the maxim was so clever; it was the context in which she cautiously used it to illustrate a gaping hole in my reasoning.

We have a code word we use to clue the other one in to the fact that they are venturing onto thin ice. The ability to deliver harsh reality and truth among best friends is something to count on and cherish, but there are times when our vulnerabilities are too close to the surface and our armor is too thin and then it is best to cut the dose in half or hold back altogether. She and I pull the ‘eggshell card’ in these instances. But last night, and with the benefit of a nice dry champagne, I gave her an eggshell pass and let the insight fly!

I won’t address the context of our conversation as what happens within those mahogany walls, stays within the mahogany walls, but I will say her point was that perhaps life was once again showing me that people are who they are and it is a great time saver to believe them when they first show us their true colors. On the subject of dating, Elizabeth Gilbert says in Eat, Pray, Love “I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism."

I find irresistible the self-exploration and honesty of that proclamation and find it applicable in any number of circumstances. We want to see the best in those who share our air. Being a victim of one’s own optimism is a cruel affliction because it has its roots in goodness, compassion and empathy. If wielded against us, these blindside hits sting like a whip to sunburn. The hidden agendas of others masked by pretty words are no more truth then the foreign object floating in my wine glass is a grape stem, but still we cling to the hope that everyone will mean what they say and do what they promise. The optimism of youth promises transformation and growth and idealism. The wisdom of age poignantly says, “See that thing waddling over there? It’s a duck.” Quack.

But Enough About Me

Sometimes I go to bed and find that while I try to suppress them, entertaining thoughts slink into my head and I start to laugh. My husband once said that if we could bottle whatever seemed to be in my pillow, we’d be rich. I do routinely get my second wind the minute I lay down. Tonight was no different and what crept into my head was the below blog that I started months ago but never finished. It made me laugh then, and it makes me laugh now, so here it is in all its splendor. I genuinely hope that it makes you laugh too!

But Enough About Me or It is an Honor to Serve or Allow Me or I Have All Day

It turns out there are many things you can do with fishing line. I know this, because somewhere in the middle of a conversation while I was sharing with a friend the story of a troubling family rift, I was unexpectedly educated about the remarkable concept that is the “wind knot”. Without adequate segue, he told me about his newly acquired skill as a clear indicator that my three second time limit on the soapbox had unknowingly expired. Likewise, while discussing with my teenage daughter the experience of her premature birth, she asked me where we were going for Christmas this year, to which I responded, “I like cheese” to illustrate the irrelevance of her inquest. The older I get, the more I realize that no one really wants to hear about you anymore. In fact, the self importance that you felt as a twenty something has evaporated and instead reincarnated itself into a Mother Teresa-like form where we live to serve. It is a captivating concept - one that the wise among us will embrace, occasionally toy with, and then ultimately accept. I am not necessarily casting judgment on it, as Oscar Wilde aptly said, “All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction”.

There is something brilliant, however maddening, to being on the other side of the offending equation. Listening breeds insight, and subsequently gives us navigational life tools that make it possible to steer through rough waters. Kahlil Gibran said, “The reality of the other person lies not in what he reveals to you, but in what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says, but rather to what he does not say”. Human beings are complex and are forever in pursuit of that which they have to prove.

I like to talk. I like people who like to talk. But there is a shift that happens somewhere later in life, if we are lucky, where we realize that talking about ourselves precludes us from learning about others and that others need to be heard. Rick Warren, whom I had the pleasure of hearing speak years ago, opens his book The Purpose Driven Life with these profound words – ITS NOT ABOUT YOU. Those words, when fully digested, are life changing. The paradigm shift from self importance to selflessness is a gift and the younger it hits you, the better off you are.

Remember the scene from Casper the Ghost, where Casper becomes a real boy, but somewhere later on in his enchanted evening he begins to fade and is no more than an apparition? This, I find, is 40 or motherhood or marriage or wisdom. We somehow fade from everyone’s view but our own and that is where the wisdom lies, in seeing ourselves as we see ourselves, and not through the eyes of others. It is more than the idea of not caring what others think. I do deeply care what others think and it is a useful guideline for how we conduct our lives, but, there is freedom in having nothing to prove. This is less my personal experience and more my observations of the graceful and brilliant among me. Every day I see people who have achieved a level of comfort with themselves such that they seem to float across the room rather than amble. I can only assume that they are the ones who have walked through the fire, lived, and learned enough to know it is best next time to just go around.

Rural Route Today November Column: Honest Abe

As is the case with us all, I have been guilty of chasing the fairy tale and waking up in the pumpkin, but, I also make a remarkable pumpkin pie. As Thanksgiving looms in the near future with Christmas right behind, it is wise to reflect on our many blessings those obvious and those not so. This weekend on a Christmas shopping trip in New York, I grew deeply appreciative of three unsung blessings in my life –wrinkles, time and dirt.

In Buddy the Elf-like wonderment, I traversed the Westchester County Mall taking in the spectacle of the shops and of the moms in knee-high, 5 inch heeled boots pushing Burberry clad babies in strollers through a vast expanse of consumerism. It was not long before I was stopped by Abe, the kiosk skin care salesman who no doubt saw my pasty, 40-something, Vermont skin coming and thought he had struck gold. As he examined my face he told me my problem was that I smile too much, and as he smothered my face in Dead Sea salt infused oils, he repeatedly asked me to refrain from smiling. When his application by force was complete, he gushed over how youthful the left side of my face now looked and then built a strong case for me to purchase his $400 regimen. I politely declined his offer and turned both sides of my face, now separated by generations apparently, away. He grabbed the pamphlet I had been holding out of my hand and dismissed me.

Walking away, I smiled defiantly thankful for this consequence of aging. Years of smiling does, in fact, deepen the wrinkles around our eyes and how fortunate we are for that outward proof that we’ve been happy. As the day passed, I enjoyed the shops and the irony in learning that purchasing a Tory Burch wallet makes it less likely that you will have anything to put into it for awhile. I appreciated the opportunity to complete Christmas shopping in one place and in one day, were one to have the stamina. But, I missed the humanity of Vermont. There was a frenetic tempo to it all that was unfamiliar and uncomfortable. I am thankful that the pace in Vermont allows time for pleasantries, and for discussions about the weather, for limited business hours during deer season, and for holding doors open for strangers to pass through.

The next morning I gathered my things and headed to the hotel parking garage. There among the New York plates and sparkling SUV’s was my mud covered Jeep with its new studded snow tires. In that moment, I was silently overwhelmed with gratitude that it would be taking me home to the dirt road that was responsible for its appearance. It is something to enjoy the Christmas shopping fervor, but it is quite another to quietly reflect on and give thanks for those things that cost nothing and that tether us back to this earth and to each other. Happy Thanksgiving!

One of My Favorite Things on the Planet

I am not a shopper. I am hard pressed to recall a time in my adulthood when I desired an item, sought it out and purchased it. My favorite things typically find me. Two years ago I happened upon a wrist watch while wandering through an antique shop in my home town. I wasn’t looking for a watch, and in fact, do not value the need to know what time it is at any point in the day. I enjoy flying by the seat of my pants. I like to watch the position of the sun in order to guess what time it is; and, I am amazed at my ability to guess correctly within a few minutes. Sometimes though, remarkable things present themselves to us and fill a void we never knew we had.

Venturing into empty shops is uncomfortable for me, knowing one foot in the door that there is nothing within that I wish to buy. Inevitably, the hollow eyes of the employee seem to beg to differ and there is an overwhelming guilt that sets in. On this one surprising occasion, however, I was drawn to a watch that seemed out of place in the shop. I picked it up, put it on and was surprised to discover how well it fit me. I vacillate between the extremes of dressing up for work and dressing so down at home that I cannot leave the house in my favorite ripped jeans without risking the penalty of indecent exposure. But the watch went with everything. It was large and strong and felt good wrapped around my wrist. It was unpretentious yet added style to my wardrobe without mocking my tendency toward that which is comfortable.

I have been surprised how much I rely on it for accuracy and to make my life run smoothly. On many occasions, I have left it home and have even lost it for extended periods of time, though mercifully it always seems to show up. It is as though it knows that sometimes I need to go back to the days of less structure, but that ultimately I am better when it is with me. I maintain a fairly structured jewelry collection- necklaces hanging from funky wall mounted racks, earrings hanging together in pairs from a brass tree I designed years ago- but I never really put the watch anywhere in particular. No matter where I leave it though, it seems to resurface at just the right time and as though we were never apart. Dependably, it remains sturdy, precise and cherished.

On the most recent occasion of its misplacing, I was certain it was lost for good. Usually when it is gone, I have that clear feeling in my stomach that it is not lost at all, it is just temporarily teaching me a lesson about how to better look after it. This time however, I began to question whether having a watch made me too structured and I justified its absence as a step back in the right direction - anything to make the sting of reality easier. Then, in early October, I missed a significant appointment that I had been anticipating for months. It dawned on me in that moment that had I had my watch, I would never have missed that date. A week or so after the fated engagement I set out to look for the watch once again, and once and for all. In part, I felt deficient that I had been so unbalanced without it, but I was unwilling to be without it again. I made peace with the fact that having it on my arm makes me comfortable; I feel more together, and more in sync. Finding it, as always, was easy. It was right where I had left it. It’s been two weeks now, give or take, and I haven’t taken it off once. Often times, possessions we are sure we must have the first time we see them become ordinary and unrewarding as time wears on. I’m not ashamed to say that I adore it as much today as I did that day I found it in that unassuming hometown shop.

Cinderella in Wartime

According to Merriam Webster “memory” is the mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experience. There are countless quotes on memories- prose, short stories and musings about beloved recollections. There are mental health articles in abundance on retaining memories, jogging memory and improving one’s capacity for memory, but far fewer on how to obliterate a memory. In fact, the most available subjects when searching for ‘how to erase memory’ are largely relative to computer memory. While I am adept at extrapolating information from wise sources and applying it to the task at hand, I am hard pressed to find a mental delete button, and a metaphorical reboot seems to be the quest de jour of the Dr. Phil nation. Once after searching until dark, I was forced to ask a security guard to drive me around a parking garage looking for my car. I forget easily.

Nevertheless, memories of playing in the sand with our children do not wake us up at night; nor do they call on us to employ exercises of distraction to eradicate them. It seems to be the heartrending memories and the raw ones that attach themselves to us and demand to be brought everywhere we go. Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now says, "The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly—you usually don't use it at all. It uses you."

The Institute for the Healing of Memories (IHOM), based in South Africa, addresses the emotional and psychological wounds suffered by those in war ravaged countries. The IHOM attempts to help affected individuals remove painful obstacles which can keep them from moving forward. There is extensive supporting evidence that forgiveness promotes healing and thereby peace. The IHOM asserts that holding on to the anger and hate associated with wartime experiences can give way to future conflict and violence. Healing takes place by acknowledging the hurt that led to the feelings and working through a series of exercises intended to permit emotional and spiritual growth.

Rhodes Scholar and renowned teacher of Creative Thinking, Edward de Bono said simply “A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.” Overused expressions like ‘unfinished business’ and ‘closure’ often pepper well meaning advice; but finishing and closing are not always viable options. Death, distance, and circumstance are thieves who strike without notice, depriving us of options and time.

On the complicated subject of eradicating memories it seems everyone is an expert on everyone else’s pain. Most of us march through day after day thanking God for every experience, every sunset and every person who ever walked through the doors of our lives. Still other times gratitude escapes us and we are stuck in a decayed but vivid scene when we wished that the sun had not set so fast or that someone had just kept going or never reached for us in the first place. Like a white gull pressed against a dark sky, the shadow of a painful memory allows for striking contrast and makes the sweet ones shine.

Perfect Tommy's

Recently while visiting my home, my mother recalled a story for my children that I had long since forgotten. As I listened to her recount the tale, I was equal parts horrified, captivated, and inspired by my own cunning the likes of which I have at least tempered in the decades that have passed since the incident took place. She told the story of a night about 20 years ago watching a then popular news program-A Current Affair-on television that was featuring a local competition in a New York City bar. As she and my father flipped through channels they stopped for a minute because they thought they saw someone on TV that looked like me. They were right.

David Letterman had developed a ludicrous activity using the magic of Velcro back in 1984. A contestant dressed in the hook side of the Velcro material would leap from a tiny trampoline and attempt to stick onto a wall made of the loop side of the Velcro material. The object of this competition, and I use the term loosely, was to stick as high up on the wall as possible. This ingenious ‘sport’ became known as “Human Bar Fly”. A New York City pub called Perfect Tommy’s hosted a weekly “Human Bar Fly” night. On one of its first nights holding the event I begged a dear friend of mine to accompany me to Manhattan so I could try my hand at this sport.

I am a bruiser by nature, a bit of a bull in the proverbial china shop. So this activity was appealing to me. I did not tell my parents where I was going, nor did I make the mental leap between the camera crews on site and my truancy. Once I got there I remained focused and my objective was clear. There were several dozen contestants and the event was initially divided into men against women. I won in the female category. The winning height was measured by how high your feet were off the floor. While you were stuck on the wall a small group of judges would measure your feet to floor distance, briefly confer, and then viciously peel you off the wall.

While I was an athlete’s athlete among the women I was simply no match for the conqueror of the men’s category and to declare an ultimate champion he and I would have to go head to head. In a tremendous show of chivalry my rival geared up to go first for our final show down, the crowd cleared a corridor for him to run down, and with every leg muscle bulging from within his Velcro suit he began his run toward the wall. His powerful spring from the trampoline was impressive and his belly hit the wall high and hard like an ejected F16 pilot. He stuck it high. It was physically impossible for me to jump that high.

Koichi Tohei, the founder of the Ki Society and the practice of Aikido said, “Power of mind is infinite while brawn is limited.” And so an out of the box, or off the wall strategy if you will, was imperative if victory was to be mine! I quickly clarified the rules and verified that the measurement was simply feet to floor. With the information affirmed I zipped into my navy blue suit, took my place on the starting tape, scanned the floor for beer sludge or any other possible impediments to my success and began my run at the wall. Rather than the hard leap on the trampoline that my adversary had taken, I took more of a balanced and calculated bounce this time and then made a strong, close to the wall, head first front flip sticking to the wall upside down, back to the wall, with my feet high above my head and way above my opponent’s marker tape! Ingenious.

I won the admiration of every beer infused patron at Perfect Tommy’s on that night, the adoration of my friend (which I already had to begin with) and an on air interview on A Current Affair which would later prove to be my unraveling. In researching for this blog, it turns out my brilliant flip has been used by the masses since, as you can read for yourself in the following 1992 Newsweek article. http://www.newsweek.com/id/125528.

That clandestine trip to Perfect Tommy’s gave way to a hilarious night back in 1991 even after the news program aired my interview, and it made for even more memorable giggles with my family nearly 20 years later in a sleepy farm house. A good night, indeed.

A Bird in the Hand

I get pleasure from irony! It wakes me up, smacks me on the tush and makes me walk taller. It is incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs. This morning while balancing my latte as I drove, I swerved my minivan to avoid a Robin that had made a most daring left bank into my path. In doing so, I nearly caused a head on collision with an oncoming SUV. It was a dazzling start to my day!

When my children were small I felt sure that I would meet a regrettable end careening down our staircase after tripping over a Polly Pocket playhouse left precariously at the top of the stairs.  I made my husband swear that, upon such an ill-fated occasion, he would write a wonderfully descriptive obituary that would claim my demise was a result of a heli-skiing accident and that he would groom the kids accordingly so they would support the bleak tale in their preschool, thus leaving me in memoriam with some shred of dignity.

Even now the idea, that I would perish trying to avoid the great Turdus Migratorius is fitting in an oddly satisfying sense. I have leapt willingly from airplanes, flown them solo a time or two, taken 1200 pound horses over stone walls, and dove down to the ocean depths with sharks, but today my obituary nearly read “died tragically and suddenly while irresponsibly drinking her morning coffee and maneuvering her minivan out of the path of an oncoming songbird”. As I brought the vehicle I fondly refer to as the MomBomb, which ironically emits a gentle airplane-like engine hum, back under control I remembered the days behind the yoke of my Cessna and laughed at the irony of this day and the many many days that had passed between then and now.

How had so much changed? There is a canyon like chasm between bypassing ultralight aircraft or even birds in flight under a parachute canopy and this. As an avid skydiver, I have spent many days mixed among clouds and azure skies doing the former and yet to use the term 'distant memory' is hardly descriptive enough. Continuing my drive to work, I laughed out loud at my choices, and time, and moments that force us to see ourselves clearly. I put my coffee mug securely into the cup holder and surrendered to reminiscences of the past.

Twelve years ago my husband and I boarded a King Air at Bay Area Skydiving in Byron, California. Our three month old daughter was on the ground with friends as we enjoyed another skydive. The engines revved and the smell of jet fuel filled the fuselage; a rush of adrenaline that I had become so dependent on filled my veins. A deep breath, a look around at my fellow jumpers, no doubt a smile from ear to ear and we rolled down the runway. Perfect blue skies. Seated on the floor, I leaned back between my husband’s legs and pressed my back up against his chest.

I had jumped hundreds of times, but the anticipation was different that day and I remember it well. I leaned back with my mouth near my husband’s ear and said “What are we doing? We are throwing both of our baby's parents out of a plane.” I can't remember if he heard me over the engine noise, but I heard me loud and clear. I love skydiving, I miss it, and I believe in it for everyone, parents included. But the irony of our actions that day made me see something about myself I had not seen before. It was my last jump.

I do love a thrill and admittedly adrenaline is still my drug of choice, though my fixes are few and far between. Life is kind that way, there is irony in the ordinary - subtle wake up calls to grab onto gratitude and acknowledge the value of simply being content.

I hope that Robin appreciates what I did for him this morning? He owes me a thank you. And I him.

An Honest Voice

""You're wishin' too much baby. You gotta' stop wearin' your wishbone where your backbone oughta be!" -Richard from Texas.

The world lost an extraordinary and honest voice this past week when Richard Vogt, a man made famous as, "Richard from Texas", a real life character in the memoir Eat, Pray, Love passed away suddenly in his sleep Thursday. His prominence would have been markedly less were it not for his implausible ability to shelf the appeal for pretty words and plainly say what he was feeling - a notion I sadly feel is fading into obscurity more every day. Among his many brilliant witticisms he said, "Sure those gremlins still gnaw at my heels but I keep kicking them aside". And isn’t that the objective anyway – to be better than what’s getting the better of us?

A little known fetish of mine, of which I am very proud, is my fascination with the origin of phrases and by fascination I mean I find it interesting not that it occupies time I don't have. In the 1800’s boots had a kind of tab or loop at the top known as bootstraps which allowed the wearer leverage in pulling the boots on. The phrase "to pull yourself up by your bootstraps" was conceived to metaphorically refer to an impossible mission or to convey the idea of bettering oneself without the aid of external assistance. It was the equivalent of saving oneself from drowning by pulling ones own hair.

Improbable though it may be, I like the suggestion of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and Richard Vogt must have too. His hard-hitting cowboy love had a candor and truthfulness that made anyone who heard him want to do better for themselves. Some people have the ability to comfort others while not allowing them to go headlong into the chasm of self pity. These are the people who truly care for us.

In my experience there are three types of nurturers: the Enablers, the Hallmarkers and- in deference to the character we lost- the Cowboys. The Enablers need our depression. It’s a pillow top mattress into which they can contentedly fall. Our weakness minimizes their own, so they comfort us in our time of need all the while ensuring we become more deeply mired every step of the way in our own circumstance. The Hallmarkers are the card senders. Sorry for your loss. Their concern is genuine, but your pain does not supersede their children’s soccer schedule. The Cowboys are those who allow us to feel, but then spend the energy and invest in us enough to pull us out and back into the light.

Many years ago during our first misstep into foster parenting we were in the process of losing the first baby we set out to adopt. This was a baby born to a drug addicted mother and prior to the turn of events we were told by numerous attorneys that this adoption would go through. I will pause here to tell you that, as the parent of biological children, I can say unequivocally that the love you feel for a child you have raised from birth -biologically yours or not- is the same. Losing this baby was killing me slowly and surely. At this stage we had been told that the baby would be placed with biological family that had surfaced and had expressed an interest in adopting her. (Foster parents have no rights in this case.) During a candid and emotional conversation with the DCF Resource Coordinator, AKA “the woman who had gotten me into this mess”, she gave me a piece of the best advice I have even been given. A bit of cowboy logic, if you will.

She suggested I pick a sensible timeframe that was fair to me and to my family - three to five days- and allow myself the privilege of falling apart. She invited me to be reckless within reason, shop excessively, cry, scream, eat, whatever I needed to do to grieve, and then, pick myself up by the bootstraps. I think about that little girl often now and there was additional grieving that needed to happen, but the concept worked and the advice was compassionate and sound.

Things do not always turn out as we plan. Fields that looked wide open from the sky turn out to have barbed wire fences stretched across them as we attempt to set down our troubled airplane. People we trusted with our hearts sometimes unexpectedly mistake those very hearts for baby fur seals. And, as Richard Vogt’s Texas eloquence offered, the gremlins do continue to gnaw at our heels. But even when we don’t feel safe and our back is exposed during one long mad season we do have to persist and keep kicking them aside.

"Everyday when you wake up ask yourself, 'Am I going to be happy or miserable today?' Take it from me -choose happiness - I always do." - Richard from Texas*

*quotes were taken from www.richardfromtexas.com

I Like It On You

I’m not a shopper. I am fairly frugal. I do not like clothes, crowded racks, narrow aisles, consumerism, materialism, dressing room attendants, 10% discounts if you sign up for store credit cards, buy-one-get-one-half-off, or any store that hangs items higher than 5’ 3”. I have always alleged that I do not have the shopping gene. However, I now know that I do have it, it was just recessive as I did throw a daughter who loves to shop and I do love to spend time with her. In order to meet her where she is, I sometimes spend whole days shopping. Today was one of those days.


These are the moments when God reveals to me that He is real, that He sees me, that He saw everything I did in college and that He gave me a daughter who loves to shop as a reminder that what comes around goes around. This is indeed a fair and merciful penance. It is a good thing, however, when a shopping day falls on a single digit Vermont winter afternoon when the mountain winds are too high and the chair lifts are closed. This takes the edge that I could be doing something more fulfilling off.

There are simple pleasures even when shopping that make the day a gift! Today they were too plentiful to mention exhaustively but I will highlight a couple. Nothing is sweeter than the little old man who sits patiently on the chair either outside the dressing room or at the entrance of the store waiting for his partner. I am choosing partner here because I have come to learn that it is not always a wife squeezing into something in the dressing room that the man waits on. I suppose earlier on I would have assumed this was the practice only of those married for decades; now I know those are very often men on their second or third marriages or even waiting on a girlfriend. Whatever the nature of the relationship, I think it’s sweet that they wait and that they are patient. So spotting the token sitting man has become a much loved part of shopping for me. A kind hearted Where is Waldo game.

Another highlight today was trying on dresses with my near teenage daughter in opposite dressing rooms. We had both taken in armfuls of clothes to try on and would periodically call to each other for a quick opinion. That alone was a favorite moment. At one point we opened our respective doors to find we were standing there in the same dress. A simple, casual, floor length, steel grey dress with black flowers fading out around the bottom. She looked beautiful, and graceful, and all grown up, but she said she loved it on me. Twelve and a half years ago I took a fairly uneventful ambulance ride to a Level One Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Oakland, California to set free a tiny four pound baby girl with an apparent recessive shopping gene. Grandma Moses said, “Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.” Oddly, I suppose, so too is shopping.