Connecticut Christmas

I have a wreath on my front door.  'Tis the Christmas season, and I always have a wreath on my front door.

Such holiday decor isn't original to me--according to Google, the hanging of wreaths is an ancient Roman custom that once symbolized victory.  Perhaps my wreath is a symbol of nothing more than the victorious hauling of decorations up the basement steps.

This year, in a town far from me, it means something far more.

Last Thursday three men I hold dear (one my own husband, one like a brother, the other like a sweet son), traveled to Sandy Hook.  They were driving through Connecticut and, like so many others, felt compelled to pay their respects.  With heavy hearts and tight stomachs they turned off the highway, not sure what they would find, not sure what they would see.

They found this:

The most picturesque of places.  An "It's a Wonderful Life" kind of place, the kind of place we wish we could call home.

The kind of place where evil resides.

They didn't know what to expect.  CNN cameras can only do so much.  This day, at this time, those cameras were silent, the reporters at a brief rest from what our media-hungry public demands--24/7, in-your-face coverage of the suffering.

They didn't know who or what they would see.  They saw quiet reminders of our collective strength.

They didn't know if they could, or even should, walk these streets, but together with other solemn souls they took these steps:

They paused to honor the outpouring of love from around the world:

And they stopped to speak with young college students who wanted to honor the dead, college kids who did the only thing they could think of:  make Christmas ornaments and set up a sidewalk stand.  They spoke about their need to help, about their desire to make a difference, they spoke about the future.

In years to come, as we unwrap this ornament, we will be reminded of pain, yes, but even more we will be reminded of the care a group of college kids couldn't contain, of their commitment to doing their part in sharing the glow, even if their own flame was small in a big, often frightening, world.

My three traveling men saw a changed Sandy Hook.  A Sandy Hook that will forever be different.  Altered.  Strange to its own residents, and now "known" to all of us.

They saw a Sandy Hook, and a world, that says no to hate and that will not, no matter the circumstance, allow evil to win.  They saw a Sandy Hook that says we, the people of this town--we, the citizens of this world, cry victory.  We cry hope.

Postmark Kentucky

An Open Letter to Our Leaders

Dear Men and Women of Washington,

We are watching you.  Even as we are engaged in our own, very personal, work of living, we are aware and we are worried.  Many of us feel the future of our country--not just our economy, but of the fantastic, some would have believed humanly impossible dream that is America--is teetering on a very fine point.  Only future generations will know whether we have collectively risen to the challenge or have plunged this fine nation into the gutter of superficial self-centeredness.

From the heartland, from one woman, one wife, one mother, one citizen, a few notes.  

1.  Listen first, then talk.  Take off the tie, learn how to hang out and talk WITH, not TO.  Take a private moment (and I'm sure you have precious few) to remember what it was like to be out here, doing your thing, just trying to have a life.

2. Do the prep.  That means getting in touch with your own passion and then figuring out a way to share it; speak in terms of what we CAN do instead of what we CAN'T.  Of what we have done instead of what we haven't.  Remind yourselves of the common denominators we all share as human beings--and of the basic elements--good and bad--of human nature.

3. We want to laugh, with you, on occasion.  Not at your expense, and we ask that you not laugh at ours.  We aren't as dumb as you think; we aren't wayward children in need of a heavyhanded parent.  

4. We want to believe that you get us--not merely to use for your personal gain, but that you get us as people.

5. Most Americans are pretty generous folk, without any laws or federal requirements to make us so.  We help our neighbors in true times of crisis, but we expect that our neighbors take personal responsibility for their own lives, too.  Mourn our genuine need, but celebrate our genuine charity.

6.  Be a coach.  Coach us, your team, to ever increasing personal responsibility.  The goal of any leader should be to get his or her people successfully competing in the game of life.  We have the tools--public education and public libraries are available free of charge to any who would avail themselves of them--it is our job as citizens to make good use of the many resources we already have.  

6.  Help us build a strong economy while at the same time adjusting our bloated standard of living--we have outstripped our own ability to provide for ourselves at a basic wage--not just due to the high cost of living, but due even more to our childishly high expectations of what we should get out of life and at what minimal effort.  

7.  Lead by example:  engage in campaign finance reform--stop the manic marketplace circus our political process has become.

8.  Police yourselves:  make public service an honorable profession peopled with serious-minded adults of integrity who haven't lost their flexibility, their humor, their sense of place in a larger world.

9.  Don't drink from the media Koolaid--you aren't as fascinating as you think--and don't talk just to hear your own voice.

10. Don't eat from the big money hand--once you sell yourself you will never get what matters most about yourself back.

11.  Don't sell off our future in loans we can never repay to satisfy the openmouthed squawking of special interests or those ablebodied, ableminded men and women who would rather take than work--be bold and be brave and say no to us if you have to.

12.  America was built by individuals--BE one and allow us to be a collective of  independent individuals as well.

That's it. I know it's a lot, but you can do it.  The time is now.  The day has come.  History is being made.  We all must choose what part we will write, be it out here in the middle, or inside the beltway.  Have at it, ladies and gentlemen.  We'll have your back if you have ours.

Yours,

Portia

Rx for the World

It's been a heck of a week.

So much talking.

So much fighting.

So much hatred.

And then, today on Facebook, a Friday gift from someone I barely know.  The perfect antidote to the week from Hades.  I dare you to watch this (all the way through to its very charming conclusion) and not have hope.  I dare you to believe that the world won't implode on itself:

I dare CNN, Fox News, and every purveyor of media worldwide to do nothing but run this video for twenty-four hours, over and over and over again.  A steady stream of reminders that we are all people, that we all have arms and legs that dance and mouths that smile.  I dare the world not to be better after that 24-hour dose of reality.  This is just as real as any firebomb of hatred, any political rant, any crazy killing.  These smiles, this laughter, those dances.

Now go outside and do your own dance.  Take a video with your phone and let it fly into the stratosphere.  Together let's fill the sky with a cloud full of dancing.  Together let's build a world full of peace.

Handy Dandy How-To

 Labor Day weekend is upon us, which means almost every man, woman or child who will be engaged in educational activity this school year is.  Time for a little more routine, a miniscule uptick in organization, and a tad bit more systematic approach to living.  It means agendas and backpacks and three-ring binders.  It means a place for everything and everything in its place.

For some people.

The tools of organization are a beautiful thing.  Just looking at them makes one feel adult and in charge.  Purchasing them is akin to a spiritual experience--aisle after aisle of colors and textures, all with the promise of control.

I am sure that, properly used and maintained, such items do actually assist in the control of one's life.  For a while.  For the small stuff--like dentist's appointments and carpet cleanings, oil changes and soccer practice.

It's the big stuff that just doesn't fit.  The stuff that really makes up your life.

Stuff like this:

Dropping off your kid at college.  You write it on the calendar in your kitchen.  Enter it into your iPhone or computer, etch it on your brain.  The words fit in that tiny little square, but the day sure as heck doesn't.

Buying your first ever mother-of-the-bride dress.  There's an event that absolutely never crossed your mind when you were sixteen or twenty-six or even thirty-six.  Yet here's the day....right there on the calendar in that teeny little box.  Here's the notebook with all the dividers and plastic sleeves and Post-it notes in the front pocket--a notebook for all the details of an even bigger day that is on its way.

Watching another daughter try on dresses for her engagement pictures.  Engagement.  My second daughter.  The one who did cartwheels more than she walked.  Where's the file folder for that?

All good stuff--every single bit of that living is happy and full of joy--and still hard to organize.  What about the not-so-good stuff of living, the stuff that just hurts with no joy to ease the sting?  Where does one store that in order to clear space for the aforementioned fun?

After many years of spotty efforts and lackluster results, I have developed the Dewey Decimal system of pain and suffering.  If it works for billions of library books, why not my puny little life?

Remember the card catalogs of your past?  I loved those things.  Just standing in front of them rifling through the cards was enough to make my hair stand on end.  If you're too young to remember such a fantastic item, Google it--you won't get the real effect, but at least you'll have a visual.

Take a card catalog, preferably the classic card catalog made of wood.  Put it in your brain.  Take a tidy little stack of index cards--again in your brain.  At the top of each card in nice, blocky, librarian-style handwriting, put whatever pain and suffering is trotting along behind you, dogging your every step.

Then file that little sucker in the appropriate alphabetical section.

Take another card.  Write some more words.  File away.

And another, and another, and another.  Until every single person on your worry list is tucked safely inside.  Until every single situation you can't help, every relationship you can't heal, every illness you can't cure, every grief you can't absorb, is there--inside that tidy little card catalog.

Then close the drawer and go away.  Not forever.  Just for today, maybe tomorrow or the next day.

There.  You're organized.  Now go have some fun.

Carpe Diem

In my younger years I envisioned philosophers as elderly, balding men (weren't they always men?) of great thought with marbled visages of wisdom.  Folks whose frocks I wasn't worthy to starch and press, much less engage in conversation.

This beleagured brain has clocked a few hours since then and those youthful misperceptions have been challenged more than once, most recently from the back seat of my very own vehicle, which was at that moment speedily northbound on I-65.

I have a tendency--actually I have many, but of specific interest here, I have one--to overthink and over react.  Well documented and long suffered by those who know me well, I have accepted their observations as fact and, on a good day, am able to wrestle said tendency into quasi-submission.

Then the month of May arrives, in all its verdant glory, and with it transitions, celebrations, feasts and festivals, many of which involve me or members of my fairly good-sized family.  What better opportunity for said tendency to gear up into overdrive and power me on through Memorial Day?

Overdrive has its benefits:  speed and...well, speed.  No engine is meant to go many miles in one gear, and the human engine is no exception to that rule.  Which brings me to my 17-year old back seat philosopher.

Our northbound trip on I-65 was the result of the happy addition of yet another furry member to our herd-sized four-footed fleet.  The sun was shining.  The pup was adorable.  The kids were besotted.  And what was I doing?  Thinking ahead to some weeks hence, planning, to-do listing, fretting about said furry friend and his impact on the month of May.

And then came the quiet words of my Olympian thinker:   "Just be in the moment, Mom."

As calming as the proverbial hand on my continually twitching shoulder, those words made me stop and think:  just how many moments, exactly like this one, have I let get by me, simply because my transmission is stuck in one gear?

So for you, my many friends, a May Day moment.  Be in it.

Pseudo-Living

It's easy, in these days of fast cars and High Def, to wax reminiscent about the good ole' days.

Days when there was one movie screen.  Everybody went.  It cost a nickel.

Photo by Tommy Hughes
Bowling Green Since 1950

Days when there was one telephone operator.  Phone numbers looked weird, phone lines were shared, and nosy neighbors were on the other end.

Back when you grew your own food.

Lit your own oil lamps.

Read your own books.

Thought your own thoughts.

No, it wasn't the pretty, Instagram-altered life we wish it had been.

But it was real and it required real, human attention.

Brought to you, on my very own Apple, first sent to me via YouTube in my very own Facebook mailbox, a reminder that we are but minions in one vast, very fake, empire (and yes, Disney, that includes you):

Wanna Get High?

When I was a kid growing up in Madisonville, Kentucky a boy a few years older than I who lived exactly across the street from me was arrested because a beautiful, really beautiful, girl he was hanging out with died of an overdose.  The media attention to her death and his arrest led to CBS reporters somehow finding their big-city way down the Pennyrile Parkway with cameras and microphones.




Drugs were everywhere in those days, even in my small town.  And you know what?  Drugs are still everywhere.  New drugs.  Powerful drugs.  Glamorous, sexy drugs that make people think they can do anything at any time, anywhere.  And they still kill.

There's a new drug out there (new to me--to users, it's been around a while).  It's called Opana.  On a recent happy trip to an out of town athletic event a young friend, somebody I love, shared with me that three members of his immediate family are hooked on this drug.  It is ruining their lives.  Even as I type these words on this blessedly beautiful day it is ruining their lives.  My friend is a survivor.  He will continue to be a survivor because I know him, I know his spirit.  But their actions have been and will always affect him, for the rest of his life.

Just this week I sat with another friend, a mom with whom I have shared the ups and downs of mom-hood on more than one occasion, and I listened as she unflinchingly told me her own tale from the trenches where she is fighting strongly, faithfully, against this drug that has taken its hold among her own bright, beautiful children.

This drug is killing our kids.  It's taking them down paths from which there may be no return.  This isn't melodrama.  It isn't hype.  It's fact.

It starts innocently enough.  Drinking (all teenagers do that, don't they?)  Some weed (it's no worse than drinking a few beers, right?).  Then something a little more.  A line or two of coke.  No problem--didn't affect me one bit.  And then the self-conscious girl (and aren't they all, no matter how sexy, self-conscious), the guy who wants to be tough (and don't they all, no matter the size of their biceps, want to be tough), is offered a new high.  This one is guaranteed to beat all others.  C'mon man.  You'll love it.  You're a ***** if you don't.

One sniff.  One swallow.  That's all it takes.  And there he or she goes.  The beautiful kid we love is lost.

We parents are the last to know.  That's nothing new to 2012.  Even in 1975 or 1955 the parents were the last to know.  So it always has been, so it always shall be.  And with the advent of lightning-speed technology, of 24-hour communication access to the subculture that is the adolescent/young adult world, it is even more so.

So the mom is in the kitchen cooking supper, the dad sprawled out in front of ESPN, or they both are at work, safe in the knowledge that said beautiful daughter, said strong son, is at school, living the dream, when the phone rings and life never looks the same, will never be the same.  Ever.

I don't have an answer.  All I have is more questions.  But I do have this to offer:  it's Opana.  It's heroin for the privileged.  It's a killer--swift, indiscriminate and sure.  And it doesn't look like you think.  It looks like this:

Holding Serve

Tennis is a sport that requires fierce, man-to-man combat.  It elicits the very best and the very worst from its athletes, with absolutely no room for the fearful or weak.  Through some 30+ years of spectatorship and study of this sport, I have seen a lot of balls bounced, witnessed a lot of excellence, and suffered through some dismal displays of ill humor and incompetence.  In short:  I know the sort of play I like.

Last Friday, far too soon, we lost a friend and fellow competitor, a young man whom I had seen grow and develop over the years, from towheaded little bounce-about to handsome young adult, confident and sure.

Bradley Ross Boling
4/5/90 - 2/17/12

Bradley Ross was the type of player I like to watch.  I could pick him out from three courts over, even with the sun in my eyes and a brisk wind whipping around the fence posts, and I would make my way over there in anticipation.  Never once did he let me down.

He stepped out on the court with the sturdy, rolling gait of a surefooted sailor--he looked ready and he was.  From first warm-up to final handshake Bradley Ross was in battle mode, and I can see him now--poised athletic stance, racquet up and ready, eyes straight ahead, flashing with energy.

When he played, his hair bounced in a way that was specific only to him--we could pick him out by that hair bounce.  He was quick, like a cat, and his workmanlike game reminded those who watched of Boris Becker or other stocky Germans who play with a gritty, stoic, unbeatable fire.

He played offensively, attacking the net and moving forward, always up on the balls of his feet, quick to find his way home with racquet back and ready to keep the ball in play, and then, in a flash, he'd be back up there again, smashing the ball down the throat of some unwitting foe.

He grew up in a tennis family, rooted in a long line of players, and the day I took this picture his whole family celebrated, lit up with happiness by a regional victory, not only for Bradley Ross, but for the entire Bowling Green High boys' team.  I will never forget the unbridled joy on his father's face, and I am glad I was there to see it.

My husband and I watched Bradley Ross play many times.  After every single match I would look up at him and say, "I love to watch him play."

And I did, I really did.

Boob Tube

When I was a child I loved to read TV Guide.  I loved the gritty cheap paper, the way the pages rustled against each other as I riffled through each week, looking for especially artsy films I couldn't begin to understand, or checking for ABC After School Specials.  I liked the little red-n-white television set in the corner of the cover, the tightly packed row after row of channel, program, date, time, and movie star minutiae that filled every single page.

More than the Guide, I loved TV. All of it.  I even loved ABC Wide World of Sports with Jim McKay and his Timex watches, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom (I wanted one of Jim Fowler's cool safari jackets with the handy pockets), Captain Kangaroo, Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, Midnight Express and Soul Train, (RIP Don Cornelius)...you name it, I would watch it.

Fast forward forty-plus years and I still have plenty of television pleasures--I indulge in my fair share of ESPN, American Idol, What Not to Wear, and Kelly (she just keeps getting thinner, poor thing).  Bottom line:  a television prude I am not.

But tonight I came across some mildly unobtrusive, even reserved, words penned in 1938 and they gave me pause.

"...I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world....We shall stand or fall by television--of that I am quite sure."                                                                                      E.B. White 


Television as we know it didn't even exist in 1938.  E.B. White was a fairly well-connected man--and somehow those connections had, two years earlier, provided him with the rare opportunity to observe the transmission of sound and image from one room to another.

The observation of that naive little transfer a mere handful of feet was enough for White's no-nonsense New England mind to grasp the global magnitude of this new invention and to question what we, in our childishly grasping need to be pacified, would become.

White goes on to note, succinctly and without melodrama, that with the addition of the Elsewhere, we will become ever more oblivious to the Here, to the what, to the why, of our own daily lives.  Because if it's there, of course we have to look.

As they say on GMA, what's everybody going to be talking about at the water cooler?  I don't want to be the one lone dweeb, standing there clutching my sad little cup of break room coffee, with no idea who made it to Hollywood, or who got a rose, or who hit the three-pointer at the buzzer.  Not me.

And here is what I miss:

And this:

And, more importantly, this:

Whistling in the Dark

photo courtesy of Jenna Binion

I have a hard time letting go.  Just ask my kids--three of whom have already flown the coop--number four is in the driveway with the engine revved and ready, counting down the seconds to graduation, and five isn't far behind.  As the day draws near, the maternal clutch grows ever more white around the knuckles.

Same premise holds for certain writing projects, only the struggle isn't so much the letting go as it is the getting started.  The knuckles are just as white.

Portia's Protocol for Not Writing (for non-writers, this plan may easily be applied to any new undertaking):

1.  Have an idea.

2.  Toy with the idea, like a dog with a bone, until any shred of meat that might have proven useful has long since been removed.

3. Scratch, scribble, scratch, scribble.  Mark it all out.  Tear it all up.  Put the offending digital file in the handy little trash can at the bottom of one's computer screen.

4. In the wee hours decide that the idea was never very good anyway.

5. Go to the library, the bookstore, on-line, your own bookshelf, and make a huge pile of books that you must/should read/re-read before ever trying to write again.

It works every time.   Cling to any idea long enough and it's bound to become ridiculous.

A wise man once told me you wouldn't even buy a color TV set if you waited until the time was exactly right, much less have a baby--I certainly took those words to heart and leapt off the precipice into motherhood five times over with very little planning.

I have more faith in my ability to bring another human being into this crazy world than another piece of writing.

The same premise holds true for any major undertaking in life:  college, a new job, marriage, any creative work of art--if you wait for the time to be exactly right, for all the closets to be cleaned, the credit cards to be completely paid off, the insurance policies to be precisely executed with the lowest possible deductible, you will stay exactly where you are.  In a comfy chair with the remote control.

Today's visit to the library brought the perfect words regarding this paralytic condition into my hands:

"[faith and fiction] both start with a leap in the dark.....Faith is less a

        position on than a movement toward, less a sure thing than a hunch."

                                                                        - Frederick Buechner


Here goes.

Just Touching Base

February 6, 2012


Dear Friend,

     How’s your February?  The Super Bowl is over and I have a little down time between now and Valentine’s Day, so thought I’d jot you a note.  
I’m doing this thing called “A Month of Letters” where I try to send at least one letter every day.
Well, I’ve already messed up and I didn’t write a single letter on Saturday, so I made up for it and wrote one letter and two postcards last night after little Eli took care of business.
    An old friend from college (he’s so old) said he probably wouldn’t write me a letter but would a video with lots of envelopes and words count?  He sent me the link, and it way more than counts (thanks, Mike).
       If you like words, stamps, envelopes (AND a great song that Cassie and I blast out in the 4-runner every single day, me singing at the top of my very tuneless lungs), then you have to watch this.

Watch it.  You will be glad you did.  Then get out a piece of paper and write a letter.  

Write it because this is the point:


“Our differences, they do a lot to teach us how to use
 the tools and gifts we got, yeah, we got a lot at stake
 and in the end, you’re still my friend.
 We had to learn how to bend without the world
 caving in…”


Because we do have a lot at stake—each other.


Love,
Portia

Better than Bills

Dear Friend,

When I was a kid, I had an address book.  Doesn't every second grader need such an item?  Good little bespectacled nerd that I was, I actually used it--because more than an address book, I wanted a pen pal.  I even made a few childish attempts at keeping correspondence going--with a friend who moved to Florida after our 2nd or 3rd grade year, and then later, with another friend who moved to Illinois the summer I was thirteen.  Both attempts foundered.  I can't recall who dropped the pen first, just that eventually the letters stopped coming and going.

As much as we all enjoy a good e-mail--the speed, the easy casual camaraderie or the brisk business-like relay of data--nothing can or ever will compare to the many pleasures of a letter.  I have a friend who has spent countless hours photocopying six hundred pages of family letters, organizing them into ring binders, so other family members can have them to keep and enjoy.  Think anybody will be copying e-mails a hundred years from now?  Heck no--an e-mail doesn't even last a good day!

To support my habit, I recently bought a box of somebody else's family letters at a local junk store.  Just what I need--more paper--paper to which I have not one whit of historical or emotional connection.  I had to have them--that flowing script and small window into another life was too hard to pass up.

To wit, I am hereby issuing a personal invitation to you, to join me in A Month of Letters .  It's simple.  It's easy.  It can be as meaningful as you want it to be, or as happily inane as the most slapdash of jotted notes.  The important thing is it's in your handwriting (penmanship is not the point--the movement of the hand across the page is), and the good old USPS is charged with its delivery.

Write to whomever you please--friends, family, enemies (if you are brave!).  The editor of the paper or the customer service department at your favorite snack food company.  Your dental hygienist probably never gets a thank you note--or the guy in the window at the dry cleaner--or the dude who sprays off your car at the car wash.  Just write.

These letters will mean something in a way an e-mail or a tweet could never even begin to touch--they will be personal, they will take time (to write, to receive, to respond to).  

And they will last.  In a box, under a bed; in a drawer; in a closet.  They will last.

Yours,

Portia

P.S.  Some of my favorite novels are "epistolary"--stories told through letters.  If you feel like dipping into one, check out Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith (one of my all-time favorites), or the soon-to-be-released Same Sun Here by fellow Kentuckian Silas House and Neela Vaswani.