The most valuable thing

Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend. - Theophrastus

The other day, I was talking to some people at a craft fair when a pretty young woman heard one of the others mention that I am a writer. She waited till the conversation was over, till I'd been stung by a woman saying, "Oh, yes, I read those when I was about twelve," when I said I wrote for Harlequin. At least, I thought, she didn't ask when I was going to write a real book. Or where the restroom was. I suppose that would have come later.

But I regress. When the conversation ended, the young woman--her name is Whitney--introduced herself and asked about writing and we talked a little bit. She reads "everything," the best kind of reader there is. She was pretty, bright, and interesting. It was fun talking to her. She said someday she wanted to write a book. And someday, when she had time, she was just going to write.

Which led to me giving advice she didn't ask for. Not that I'm a stranger to doing that, but just this one time, I was right to do it.

"Whitney," I said, calling her by name beause I love her name, "don't wait until you have time."

And I know, really I do, that I'm not the first person who ever gave that advice, but it is undoubtedly the best advice I ever gave.

I went on to tell her that I'd written my first three books sitting on bleachers. That

was in truth an exaggeration, but I did do some writing there. And in the car while I waited on kids. And during my lunch hour. And in the early morning hours before work--I had to get up at 3:30 AM anyway, so we're talking really early--I wrote the first draft of One More Summer in 83 days and a lot of that writing was done between 3:00 and 3:30.

Just last week I waxed pompous to my friend Margie, telling her I didn't know how I'd managed writing books and working fulltime all at once. I still don't know, but I do know this. I never had time, so I guess I made time. Thank goodness for coil-bound notebooks and pens that write well.

So, to Whitney, and to any other young writers out there, that's my best piece of advice: make time. My second-best is, when you meet a veteran writer, walk right up and talk to her the way you did to me. It makes our day.

I’m ending this differently, because it’s three years since I wrote this, and it was for a writing blog. I don’t regret the advice—unlike some I’ve given; when will I learn to keep my mouth shut?—but it applies to much more than writing. It applies to travel and apologizing and playing a game of Farkle with someone (particularly seven-year-old grandchildren who stomp all over you.) To saying “you bet” when someone asks you to go somewhere even if your hair’s dirty, whether it’s to East End for dessert or Aroma for coffee or a trip to Walmart for toilet paper and laundry detergent.

Don’t have time? Sure you do. 

Let It Go

This is from March of 2015. It all still fits me to a T. Sigh. How about you?

The title of this post is the name of a perfectly lovely song that has been over-played, over-exposed, and over-everything else. It's also the phrase Duane used to me--several times--when I complained about changing times. I despise the time change. I don't care whether we're on Eastern, Central, or Southwest Lilliputian time, just leave it alone! My husband, on the other hand, doesn't mind the time change nearly as much as he minds the fact that I just won't let it go.

Which leads me to other things.

• Bad reviews.
• Weather.
• The other side of the political aisle.
• The church across town whose doctrine and signs drive you nuts.
• Death and...
• ...taxes.

Which in turn leads me to different other things.

• The card you forgot to send.
• The apology you've owed for years.
• The bags in the laundry room that need to go to recycling, Goodwill, and the women's shelter.
• Saying "I love you" and "you are so cool" and "I want to help" and "I'm so sorry this has happened to you" to those who need to hear it.
• The laugh out loud and...
• ...a hug.

The first list is, you got it, of things you should let go. So...just do. We'll wait over here in the corner while you go into the bathroom and scream really loud if that's what it takes.

The other list is, you got it, too!--of things you shouldn't let go. Of things it's never too late to do.

How about you? Do you have lists of your own? Go ahead and take care of them, then go out and have the best week ever--who cares what time it is?

Amazing Grace and Mondays

I wrote this on a Monday two years ago when I was deep in grief and looking for a way out. I'm glad to have found it for today because this has been a difficult week. Too much sadness and worry and heartache for one little set of days. So...yes, I'm glad I found it. I hope you have a great week.

This past week was springy. We've had warmth, rain, wind, and--here and there but not here--fog. The birds are everywhere, flashing flirtatious bright red wings and calling their spring congregants to order in raucous, cheerful voices. My cats, both of them reluctant outdoor residents, leave clumps of winter coat behind when they rub up against the bark of trees. Duane and I pick up hundreds of cottonwood twigs in the yard and grumble about it all the time we sniff greedily at the scent of spring and new beginnings.

I've walked the Nickel Plate a few times, building back up to where two miles won't leave me gasping and leaning forward with my hands on my knees. I didn't exercise all winter, and have yoyo-ed up 20-some pounds in the absence of motion. Does anyone else do this? It's nearly an annual thing for me, I'm not proud to admit.

Also this week, I got a little of my voice back. Silenced by the stress and grief of the illness and loss of my mother-in-law, I hadn't written a word beyond lists petitioning myself to buy eggs and milk in several weeks. This week I wrote a paragraph, then a few, then a couple of pages. I have, however, choked and stumbled over emotion. It's always one of my favorite parts of writing, but when I can't get past my own feelings to experience someone else's, I can't articulate it, either.

My grandsons are in the yard, picking up more sticks--cottonwoods are amazingly prolific with what they give up to the wind--and here is more emotion; there is little in life more fulfilling than being a grandparent. I've heard "Amazing Grace" a dozen times this week and accepted the comfort it offers, but it also opens up more feelings, releases more tears. Yesterday I wanted to call Mom and ask her when to put out the hummingbird feeders and realized I couldn't this year. That hurt.

In Anne of Avonlea, L. M. Montgomery says, “That is one good thing about this world...there are always sure to be more springs.” Along with those springs, even the false ones like this past week, comes depth of feeling that, like the reawakening of the earth, is revitalized each year. I have been this emotional in spring before, when kids and grandkids were born, when our sons married, when Duane and I married, at graduations. Each year, I am amazed.

I will forget by next year how this spring has been. I will be used to Mom being gone. I won't remember how the grandboys look in the yard with the tractor. I will have to be shown again, hear again, feel and see again, the "Amazing Grace" in each day.

Soon this spring, Monday glee I learned from my writer friend Holly Jacobs will be back and I won't quite remember how still and empty these past few Mondays have been, when even if the weather promised spring, winter resided dark and lonely in my heart. Eventually, when the ache lessens, I'll get more of my voice back. The grass will be greener, the sky more blue, the sticks picked up until the wind blows again. There will be kids on ball fields, tractors in fields, music on the air. We will remember that laughter is the blessed breath of life.

Amazing.

Keeping love alive...

This isn't old at all. It was first published in The Pink Heart Society in February of 2018. I suppose it's lazy, in a way, using it so soon, but I think the audiences are different--listen to me! Like I have a multitude of audiences!--and I also believe the subject is important to most of us. It doesn't have to be about marriage. It can be about friendship or family ties. The hard parts of those relationships have different titles, but they're hard parts nonetheless. Have a great week, and thanks for reading.

"A relationship is like a house. When a lightbulb burns out, you don't go and buy a new house. You fix the lightbulb."

from Pinterest with thanks

The truth is, if we really knew how to keep love alive, we’d all do it all the time. There’d be no discussion of divorce, no drama, no growing apart, no infidelity, no abuse, no looking across the table and thinking, Who is this man and what did he do with the guy I married?

Most of us don’t have to deal with all those things, but I’m fairly sure all of us have to deal with some. In nearly all long marriages, I’m certain there are years that don’t bear repeating (mine are 1982 and 2017.) There are things said that can never be unsaid. Bleak days and nights and weeks that seem to have no end. Long drives home from work when you intend to walk in the door and say it’s over. It’s done. You don’t want to play anymore. But then…

You have to work at it. Not just on the bad days, although especially then. You need to say you love each other every day even if you’re saying it through your teeth. You need to have each other’s backs, to laugh at the same things even if you don’t think they’re funny, to grieve when your partner does if for no other reason than you don’t want him or her to grieve alone.

It’s hard, it’s…yeah, it’s hard.

But then there are the moments.

At a wedding a couple of years ago, we were leaving the reception early. We were halfway to the door of the venue when the DJ started a slow song. Duane turned back and said, “You want to?” and we went back and danced for the first time in years. It was only a moment--or a few of them--but it made me happy all day. It makes me happy to remember it.

The thing with moments is that they attach and melt together, so that they bring ease and cohesion to the hard times and the bad days―even the truly awful ones. Times that originally brought tears and anger are ones you often learn to laugh at and to appreciate for the growth they provided—whether you wanted it or not.

It’s a mistake, though, to think love’s path will ever be without bumps, because human beings are flawed. We hurt each other, and we hurt no one more than the ones we love the most. It’s coming out on the other side, skipping from one moment to another, that allows us to claim endurance.

Every now and then, there are defining moments, signature ones that last forever. It’s up to us to recognize them, to hold them close and keep them safe for when we need them.

I am, at the very best of times, clumsy, so it was no surprise a few months ago when I tripped over a pair of shoes in the kitchen and went down like a tree, falling—for the first time ever—right on my face. I couldn’t seem to move, and I cried from the pain that radiated out from my broken nose. I’m not a weeper, so it was the tears that alarmed me most.

Duane, with his two artificial knees, got down on the floor with me, lying against my back and holding me. Keeping me warm and safe. When the shock wore off enough that I could move and the splinters of pain finally dimmed enough that I stopped crying, he got to his feet and helped me to mine. 

It was probably five minutes in all, from the fall to when we got up, but they defined the going-on-47 years we’ve been together. They personified love kept alive. 

Wisdom born of pain

I wrote this quite a while back, although I'm not positive what year it was. Because I make a concentrated effort--and believe me when I say it's an effort--to keep this column from being overtly political, I haven't changed it; its statistics are out of date and incomplete. I remain grateful to the women who rose up to get us as far as we've come and proud of the ones who are still standing (and marching) to keep us from ever going backwards. 

Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less. 

Susan B. Anthony

It's Women's History Month. I've never been particularly fond of March, but reading up on this has made me more so.

In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in the US with a medical degree. In 1853, Antoinette Blackwell became the first American woman to be ordained a minister in a recognized denomination (Congregational). In 1864, Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first black woman to receive an M.D. degree. Lucy Hobbs, in 1866, became the first woman dentist. In 1869, Arabella Mansfield, became the first woman to be admitted to the practice of law, practicing not in cosmopolitan and forward-looking New York, but in Iowa.

In 1887, Susanna Medora Salter became the first woman elected mayor of an American town, in Argonia, Kansas. In 1916, Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to the House of Representatives. The 'firsts' are endless. Edith Wharton won a Pulitzer, Amelia Earhart flew alone across the Atlantic. Hattie Wyatt Caraway of Arkansas became the first woman elected to the Senate. Diane Crump was the first female jockey to ride in the Kentucky Derby. Elizabeth Seton was the first native-born North American to be canonized.

Sandra Day O'Connor and Sally Ride both went boldly where women had not gone before. Mae Jamison became the first black woman astronaut and Janet Reno the first woman attorney general. Madeline Albright was the first woman secretary of state, to be followed shortly by Condoleezza Rice, the first black woman in that position.

In 1920, twenty-seven years behind New Zealand and 85 years ahead of Kuwait, American women got the vote.

Betty Ford had breast cancer, a face lift, and an addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs. And went public with it all.

Rosalyn Carter, Barbara Bush, Hilary Clinton, and Nancy Reagan "stood by their men" even when standing there undoubtedly put their teeth on edge.

Time magazine said Eleanor Roosevelt "gave a voice to people who did not have access to power. She was the first woman to speak in front of a national convention, to write a syndicated column, to earn money as a lecturer, to be a radio commentator and to hold regular press conferences." I remember it being said that she would "rather light a candle than curse the darkness." I can think of no higher aspiration. She's still a hero.

I grew up reading Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, and Charlotte Bronté. These were women who wrote books when women weren't supposed to.

And then there are women closer to home. My grandmother, heavy with pregnancy, carried a treadle sewing machine down the stairs and outside when her house was on fire. My mother-in-law, growing up in rural Kentucky, delivered mail on horseback. My mother, and my friends' mothers, were the foundations on which our lives were built.

I don't know if any of these women set out to make history; I doubt it. I imagine they were just women who wanted to do the best job they could. And they did. But they did so much more.

In the 2004 presidential election 65 percent of eligible women voted, as opposed to 62 percent of men. In September 2004, there were 212,000 women in the armed forces and more than 35,000 of them were officers? There are more than 1.7 million women who are veterans.

My daughter and daughters-in-law all go to women doctors. I went to a religious retreat where all the attending clergy were women (I believe by accident and not design) and where I learned the immortal words, "Clergy chicks rock!" and they did. They did.

When I vote, the gender of who I'm voting for is way down there on my list of considerations, right along with "do they have a nice smile?" I believe, thanks to these women in history, that it's way down there on my husband's list, too. (That being said, I must admit that I remain disappointed and angry that neither of the last two supreme court justices named was a woman and do not expect to get over it soon.)

Reading Little Women until the covers literally fell off made me know all the way to my soul that someday I was going to write, too.

All of this then is the legacy of Women in History. Because of them, we can vote and work outside the home or choose not to; we know that strength and power take many forms. Breast cancer and heart disease in women have become Matters of Importance in medical research and development.

"I am woman, hear me roar," sang Helen Reddy.

Thank you, Women in History, for giving us the voice to roar.