Giving Up My Dreary Wardrobe

Post #30 of 40

Giving Up My Dreary Wardrobe

Rise and Shine. Turn on coffee maker. Take Dalton outside. Drink coffee. Wordle. Write. Look at calendar. Shower.

Get dressed: Black pants. Turtleneck. Vest or blazer or sweater. Socks - maybe red or with an interesting pattern, maybe even the daring ones with the statue of David on them. Backless clogs - black, brown, or gray.

My “uniform” makes getting dressed easy.

When I was head of school, I named each day to keep me out of a rut:

Zebra Monday - Wear black and white with another color optional.

Travel Tuesday - Wear a scarf or accessory or jacket I had picked up somewhere other than home.

Spirit Wednesday - Wear school colors or something with the school’s name on it.

Dress Up Thursday - Wear a dress or skirt.

Blue Friday - Wear blue or denim of some sort.

___________________

By March, my southern friends are donning their spring clothes, and I am still covering up virtually every inch of skin, often in black.

A week or so after Ash Wednesday, I looked at the clothes in my closet. The clothes, in ROYGBIV order - with black and white at the beginning - needed some sprucing up. It was time to give up my black and gray wardrobe.

I hopped in my car mid-day on a Monday early in Lent. I left my laptop and Dalton behind, and drove to Wayland Square, determined to find one versatile, colorful accessory or piece of clothing. The ladies in Green Ink are always helpful, but not hovering. Sometimes I browse, and sometimes - like that day - I go in with a purpose. I found myself drawn to the black pants and the black tops but resisted. After trying on a variety of patterned and solid tops (fabulous selection, by the way!), I decided on a blue jacket type shirt with puckered fabric, a cool collar that has a wire to keep it shaped just right, and buttons that look like cavemen carved them. I knew that this jacket or overshirt would go well with black pants, navy pants, white jeans, blue jeans, and more.

The next Saturday, Melinda and I drove to Barrington, Rhode Island for a Lead and Learn retreat sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island. I had noticed when driving back from a hair appointment in Warren that St. John’s houses Encore, a consignment shop, so I was excited to check it out during my lunch break. I went to the shop with the intention of finding color. For about a hundred dollars, I bought four colorful shirts, a black and white zig-zagged sweater, four pairs of pants, a pair of earrings, and the cutest, little bejeweled frog pin. If you live in Rhode Island, check out this place!

Two weeks later, I received an email from a shoe company named KLOGS. The company was recommended to me by my podiatrist since I have some major foot issues. The email included a picture of a bright yellow clog and an offer of 50% off of some of their most popular styles. You guessed it - I ordered the bright yellow shoes.

When Good Friday arrived, I had my Easter outfit picked out - the blue jacket, the blue pants from the consignment shop (brand new with tags = brand Soft Surroundings), and the bright yellow clogs. I would NOT be in all black on Easter. And, then it was time to pick up my sister and her husband from the airport.

When Janet unpacked her bag on Friday afternoon, she surprised me with a small, bright red purse - just the right size for wallet, phone, tissues, lipstick, and airpods. So I added this red purse to my planned outfit for Sunday.

When I dressed for Sunday, Janet asked me, “Are you really going to wear those yellow shoes to church?” I told her I was planning on it but wouldn’t if it embarrassed her. She laughed and said she didn’t know anyone there. The yellow shoes really are “too much,” even for me, but when I look down at them, they make me smile!

When we got home from church, I asked Janet to take a picture of my colorful outfit - I wish I had been holding my new red purse in the photo, but I swapped the purse for Dalton. When I got inside and propped up my feet momentarily in the recliner, daughter Elizabeth said, “You have a bandaid stuck to the bottom of your shoe.” As if having bright yellow shoes weren’t attention-getting enough, I guess I displayed someone’s yucky bandaid when I knelt for communion.

On Easter Monday, I opened up the New York Times on my laptop and immediately saw a fashion piece answering a request for ideas from someone who was ready to get out of her all-black rut. I loved that I wasn’t alone in my quest for some color in my wardrobe!

Mark+, the rector at St. Martin’s, has a fabulous sense of humor, and I enjoy our occasional banter. One day, I laughingly said, “You know, I’ve been told I can be too much!” And, without a beat, he said, “Better too much than too little.”

Amen! Watch out Providence, here I come.

P.S. Giving up your dreary wardrobe doesn’t mean you have to wear bright colors from head to toe. The NYT article talked about sandwiching with black. For example, wear your bright yellow top with black pants and a black vest. Make your sandwich filling exciting!

Easter Day Blue and Yellow

My bright yellow shoes!

The Red Purse Janet gave me!

Periwinkle Nails!

Colorful Clothes from Encore

At least I wear matching shoes!

Giving Up Giving Away Books

Post #29 of 40

Giving Up Giving Away Books

If the bookstore comes up in conversation, I say, “I was raised in a bookstore.”

My sister says, “The bookstore was home.”

Our grandparents bought Zibart’s Bookstore in Madison, Tennessee, in 1969, and even at the age of five or six, I had jobs to do when I visited. In the early years, I worked in the Hallmark section, making sure each card had three copies on display. If I needed to replenish the supply, I matched the ID number of the card with the file folders of cards in the drawers below and pulled out more.

I straightened the children’s books and took an extra few minutes to check out the new scratch-and-sniff and pop-up books. I checked the spines of the Nancy Drew, Happy Hollister, and Hardy Boys books and made sure they were in correct numerical order. My favorite job was using a tea strainer to clean out the 24-inch tall, sand-filled ashtrays at the end of each row of paperbacks. The cigarette butts and ashes would stay in the tea strainer, and the sand would flow out. My grandfather smoked cigarettes until he had a heart attack in 1971. He never touched another cigarette after that; instead, he sucked on Luden’s cherry cough drops.

By the time I was 8 or 9, I called out the prices and quantities of books during the January inventory. I helped Nana bring out the Christmas wrapping paper, cards, and ornaments, and she taught me how to neatly wrap packages. She was better than I was, even though I had two hands, and she had one. I even helped verify that the book deliveries on Thursday matched the packing slips.

My sister and I were voracious readers, and we were allowed to take home almost any book we wanted. We weren’t allowed to take home the scratch and sniff or pop-up books or the coffee table books that my parents had deemed too expensive. We wrote down the names and prices of the books in a spiral notebook under the cash register, and then our parents would pay the bill at the end of the year. With that agreement in place, I hardly ever went to a public library.

By 10, I was making change, looking up special order books in a giant hardback “catalog” of every book in print and calling customers when their special orders had arrived. This was before the internet or Amazon.

By 14, I was running the store with my sister or a friend when my grandparents journeyed on Amtrak across the United States and back each summer. One summer, I ran the bookstore with a man who had been a faithful customer over the years, and when his wife died, he went into a deep depression. His psychiatrist recommended he get a job, volunteer or otherwise, so my grandparents invited him to work at the bookstore every weekday for a year or more.

I dreamed of owning this bookstore, of arranging seasonal displays in the window, of inviting speakers, of adding a few more non-books to the inventory, as I had seen other bookstores do. I accompanied my grandparents to Chicago to the American Booksellers Convention when I was 16. It was the first time I had been in a commercial plane since coming back from Okinawa at the age of five. I remember being terrified that a pilot other than my father would be flying the plane.

At the convention, I met authors who signed free copies of their books for me to take home. I also met booksellers from all over the country, including a couple from Washington who had been in the vicinity of Mt. St. Helen’s when it had erupted a few weeks earlier. They were far enough away to be safe, but the powdery ash had landed on their house, yard, and cars, and they enjoyed showing me a mason jar full of the fluffy gray matter.

By the time I entered my senior year of college and had some choice coming up about where to live and what to do, the bookstore’s sales were double digits a few days a month, and only slightly better the rest of the time. It was hardly enough to be sustainable. My grandparents sold the bookstore just days before my college graduation, and in the hustle-bustle of senior year, I didn’t get to Nashville one last time to say goodbye to it. The loss of the bookstore may be a grief I haven’t fully processed.

After college, I spent some of my first paycheck on two James Thurber books, one of which held the story that my friend Judy and I loved. We had seen a cartoon of “There’s a Unicorn in My Garden” when we were in high school, and we enjoyed quoting the last line, “Don’t count your boobies before they hatch,” with some frequency. It was the first time I remember purchasing a book at a bookstore other than the college bookstore or Zibart’s.

In the thirty-eight years since the bookstore sold, I have probably bought or acquired around two thousand books. Going to a bookstore was a regular outing for our family, whether at home, in an airport, or in another city or country.

Over the last thirty years, I have probably given away around a thousand books. When we lived in Memphis, Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal School had a book swap each year. For each two books donated, you could pick out one. Others could be purchased. And, faculty were invited to take as many as we wanted for the classroom. Somehow I always came home with more books than I donated. Over the past few years, I have given books to the little libraries in our neighborhood, to our church’s thrift shop, and to our neighborhood Buy Nothing members.

___________________

I recently decided to give up giving away books. While books are one of the heaviest items to move, and yes, we have moved a few times over the past 36 years, I decided that our books are now an homage to my days of being raised in a bookstore. After all, I have the wooden sign that was on top of the store when my grandparents first bought it.

A month or so after making this decision, I came across an article about tsundoku. Tsundoku is the collection of books that we have bought but haven’t read, yet. Others call it an anti-library, although, for me, my collection of books includes books read and unread. Apparently having a tsundoku is good for the mind - it reminds us to continue reading, and it also reminds us that we have so much more to learn.

I love our collection of books, and I enjoy adding new ones to round out the various categories of books we presently have. As I prepare for a houseguest, I go to our library and pick out three or four books from these categories - a children’s book, a novel, nonfiction, and short stories or cartoons or poetry. The guests get different selections according to their personalities, interests, and current situations.

Currently, our books are settled into our library at the top of the steps on the third floor, and the BOOKS sign from 1969 rests on the top shelf. I have a little regret about giving away so many books through the years, but I know our book collection will continue to grow. Maybe someday I will open a bookstore, or maybe I will just pretend that our library is a bookstore. If I do that, I may have to add some ashtrays and a Hallmark card section.

Janet at Zibart's

Murray Behind the Counter

Three Generations

Murray and Elaine Behind the Counter

Christmas at the Bookstore

Our Library on the 3rd Floor

Giving Up Palm Sunday

Post #28 of 40

Giving Up Palm Sunday

*In all my blog posts, I have changed the names of almost anyone other than family. I have continued to change examples and details - sometimes because I can’t remember them exactly as they occurred, sometimes to condense a storyline, and most of the time to protect the anonymity of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances who didn’t sign up to be in my blog. In this particular post, I have provided examples of grieving folks, but I want to be super clear and emphasize that they do not represent the names of the people or the specific circumstances of the participants that Aruni and I worked with during the Grief workshop at Kripalu. I am bound by an agreement of confidentiality, and I honor this completely.

Yesterday was Palm Sunday, and I woke up on the bottom bunk in a dorm at Kripalu. No church service for me. I was working - assisting Aruni, a wise Jewish woman, in a program called Grief, Loss, and Renewal. I carefully crawled out from the bottom bunk trying not to catch my hair in the metal chain holding up the top mattress. The Hosanna song from Jesus Christ Superstar started whirling around in my head. The tune continued to make its presence known to me throughout the morning workshop and on the four-hour drive home, which is usually two.

I hesitated answering when asked to assist Aruni the weekend of Palm Sunday, but it had been almost six months since my last time to work at Kripalu. I am grateful to have been asked to assist Aruni multiple times over the last two years, and I know I am healthier and happier, in large part to her and Kripalu.

Palm Sunday or The Sunday of the Passion is the time when we celebrate Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The crowd waved palms and joyfully sang out, “Hosanna!” about 2000 years ago.

At Idlewild Presbyterian Church in Memphis, where we were members for twenty years, dozens of children processed waving the palms as we all sang, “All Glory, Laud, and Honor.” I remember such joy on those Sundays, but mostly I remember the ministers admonishing us to come to Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services because Easter would have no meaning if we went from the happy ride into Jerusalem to the joyful risen Lord.

Palm Sunday services, these days, end on a sadder note. Maybe they always have, and I am just now noticing, or maybe various churches and regions approach the day differently. Yes, they start with the joyful entrance of Jesus, but by the end of the hour, we know what is coming - the death of Jesus on a cross.

This year, as I continue life as a card-carrying Episcopalian and self-proclaimed church lady, I noted the Rector’s Epistles and listened to sermons and announcements encouraging folks to take part in Holy Week.

Mark+ at St. Martin’s explained it this way:

Liturgical Christianity commemorates Easter as a continuous drama in distinct acts. Act 1 concerns Jesus’ preparation for his death. Act 2 is his death. Act 3 concerns God’s doing of a new thing by raising Jesus to a new and transformed life – not as an isolated event but as the first fruits of a new stage in the restoration of all of creation. 

Mark+ concludes by saying that we would not skip Acts I (Maundy Thursday) and II (Good Friday) of a Shakespeare play and arrive simply for Act III (Easter).

I have never heard a priest or minister remind us to be sure and be present for the attention-getting overture that Palm Sunday represents in this way of thinking. Everyone wants to be there for those fun parts, and yet, I wasn’t. I missed Jesus’ joyful entrance into Jerusalem, and I will go immediately into the preparation for Jesus’ death and his dying.

____________

At about 11am on Sunday, the time that the Palm Sunday service at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church and the Grief, Loss, and Recovery program at Kripalu were concluding, I noticed that I started feeling better about choosing to help at this workshop instead of being at church. I had felt guilty for missing the service, for having to find substitutes to teach church school, and for not taking pictures of the procession with the palms for the social media posts and e-news that I create each week.

As I stacked chairs, put away Kleenex boxes, gave hugs, and graciously accepted the program participants’ and Aruni’s thanks, I began thinking about what I had been doing over the weekend in a different light.

Assisting Aruni in this program allowed me to help folks who are stuck in Acts I and II. The program participants are living and reliving versions of last times, not unlike the Last Supper of Maundy Thursday. They are sad about the dying and death of their loved ones the way we think of Jesus on the cross on Good Friday.

Carol is remembering the last lunch she had with her husband, and Barb is remembering the trial before her son went to prison and then died of COVID. The picture of a tube- and monitor-enveloped five-year-old is what Frank has in his head, and Irene is still trying to figure out what she could have done to prevent her son’s overdose after he’d been clean for six years.

I missed out on celebrating the Palm Sunday of my tradition, of my religion. I missed out on the triumphal entry, the attention-getting overture, but maybe, just maybe the small part that I played in assisting these grieving folks will allow them to someday see that the play will continue past Act II.

Giving Up Bad Coffee

Post #27 of 40

Giving Up Bad Coffee

A priest, a dancer, a special ed teacher and his husband sit down at the table with me.

As this is our last Lenten dinner and discussion, I ask, “Did any of you give up something for Lent - something you’d be willing to share?” They continue sipping their soup and shake their heads no. I continue, “I’ve been writing this blog about ‘giving up,’ - could be giving up something concrete like coffee or it could be…like….giving up complaining. Any ideas for me? I have a little over a week, and I need fifteen more posts.”

Do I sound desperate? Probably.

The teacher says, “Oh, I’d never give up coffee. I didn’t hear anything you said after coffee,” he teases. If you ask him what he teaches, he says, “kids.” If you ask him to elaborate, he says “kids with special needs.” He’s not being sassy. He’s being true to his calling. He wears a button that says, “Black Men Teach.”

“Do you have a special brand or way to make coffee? Some sort of ritual?” I ask.

“Not a ritual, but it’s what I do first think each morning. I start the water in a kettle on top of the stove and grind my beans. I pull out the French press and check my email on my phone. I drink some at home and take a thermos to school.”

“What about you?” I ask his husband.

“I get up later, so I do my own thing - coffee in a coffee maker. I end up sipping coffee most of the day.”

We look at the dancer. She is retired, colorfully dressed, and tiny. “Me? Coffee? No way. Can you imagine me on coffee?” she asks, her words at a quick, rhythmic clip.

Naturally, we turn to the priest.

The priest chimes in, “I make coffee every day in a regular drip coffeemaker, but it has to be just the right coffee.”

“I didn’t know you drank coffee,” I say. “I’ve only seen you drink tea.”

“Only first thing in the morning, and it has to be Red Giraffe Morning Blend. No other brand or blend. A month or so ago, I couldn’t find it, so I bought something else. It’s awful, so now I’m trying to use it up by putting one scoop in the basket each morning along with the good stuff.”

I laugh. We all sort of look at her and then each other - seems like we are all thinking through the dilemma of having bad coffee in the house while being philosophically opposed to throwing away food, and yes, I guess coffee counts as food in this case.

I want to offer some wisdom to her about how life’s too short for bad coffee, but that would be hypocritical. I had gotten into a similar situation. In addition to my writing, I have challenged myself to spend as little on groceries as possible…without mistreating myself.

Flavors and nutrition matter.

I recently bought an inexpensive coffee hoping it would be okay. It wasn’t.

I kept making a little each morning, downing it like medicine so I wouldn’t really taste it. Then, on the way to work, my car would inexplicably turn into the Starbucks parking lot or the McDonald’s drive-through line. Even McDonald’s coffee was better than the cheap coffee I’d been making at home. After four days of this, I gave in and bought better coffee. I haven’t thrown away the cheap coffee, though. It sits in the cabinet taunting me. Maybe I will stick googly eyes onto it, so that it will at least amuse me when I see it.

I told Carly, a young professor friend of mine, about my bad coffee and my inability to actually throw it away. She said that while she was in grad school, she tried so hard to be frugal. She scrimped wherever she could, whether buying the coffee that was two dollars less than than her favorite or opting for the cheapest tennis shoes possible. But, she realized this made no sense – why buy lower quality shoes that she would eventually walk hundreds of miles across Manhattan in? It was even more absurd, she said, given that she didn't bat an eye at a late fee or the price of an airline ticket. Good with words, Carly named this “misguided frugality.”

In addition to bad coffee, I will give up misguided frugality.

What’s your coffee story? Send it my way, please!

And, enjoy this Spotify playlist I created and named Coffee & Chocolate.

Giving Up April Fool's Day

Post #26 of 40

Giving Up April Fool’s Day

This may come as a shock to some of you: I haven’t always been a church lady, a teacher, mom, yogi, trustee, or head of school. I was once a freshman in college who loved to joke around.

During my first year at Rhodes, I had a suite-mate who was known for her infectious laugh in between sips of Kahlua or puffs on a cigarette. Patty outranked me in the humor department, but I held my own when it came to sassy or bawdy comments.

After all, I had seen a picture of Michelangelo’s David!

I gave David a tutu this week after hearing that a principal in Florida was fired when a group of students saw David without his tutu.

Toward the end of March during our freshman year, Patty and I brainstormed about what kind of funny and shocking joke we could play on April 1st. Eventually, we settled on taping sheets of newspaper on the outside of each dorm room door so that our other suite-mates could easily get out but would be surprised when they opened the door first thing in the morning. We liked the idea but felt that there might be something more we could do. At the last minute, we decided to peel bananas and…well…carve each one into a specific body part. Nothing like a couple of virgins trying to figure out how to carve the bananas.

So a wall of newspaper (one ply - easily torn) and a paper plate with a carved banana greeted each pair of roommates on April 1, 1986.

Ellen, the RA on our floor, figured out who was responsible for the morning surprises and left us a note that said the Dean of Students had heard about our little presents and wanted to meet with us. The note asked us to come to her room after classes so that the three of us could walk over to the dean’s office together. Patty and I were shocked that our mischief had reached the dean’s office, but we sheepishly walked to Ellen’s room, knocked on the door, and apologized profusely. We were ready to go to the dean’s office to hear the consequences when Ellen said, “April Fool’s!”

The dean had not heard about our prank, and we were not in trouble.

But, I never really got into April Fool’s Day after that.

_____________

Once Tom and I became parents, and our children were old enough to understand a bit about April Fool’s Day, we would go to their rooms first thing in the morning - in the South - and say, “Guess what! We had a freak snow storm last night!” They would hop out of their beds to look out the windows the first couple of years, but after that, they groaned and mumbled, “April Fool’s.”

When I lived in Abu Dhabi, where the time is nine hours ahead of central time, I texted the family on the morning of my April Fool’s Day and said, “There’s a freak snowstorm here in Abu Dhabi! It’s the first time it’s ever happened!” Because of the time difference, they almost believed me.

Upon my return to the USA, I moved to Maine, and one year, it really did snow on April 1. We got such a kick out of the snow on April Fool’s Day…finally…after saying the same joke for the last 18 years!

_____________

Today, some friends and I started texting about April Fool’s Day in our group chat. I’m not in the classroom with kids, except on Sundays now, but I sent them my G-rated ideas from my teaching days:

“When I was a teacher of 5 year olds, I made April Fool's Day the day when each child memorized/prepared a joke to tell over and over to each person who came to the room or whatever. The parents wrote out the joke and put it in their pockets in case they forgot. Also, I got blank books/journals - one for each child - and titled it "Everything Ms. Barr Knows About Dinosaurs." I personalized it for each child (e.g. Legos, Unicorns, Mario Brothers) - depending on their interests. The kids thought it was so funny that I didn't know anything about whatever they were most interested in.”

The texts about April Fool’s Day continued, and one friend said her grandfather used to hide a spool of thread inside his jacket and then sew a piece of thread from it to the outside so that it looked like a thread needed to be pulled or cut for him to be neat and tidy. Boy, were they surprised when the thread kept coming and coming.

It sounded innocent to me, but another friend said, “Well, it’s fine unless you’re the person really trying to be helpful, and then you find out you’ve been duped. It can be embarrassing.”

The conversation chain continued throughout the day:

“It’s not funny unless everyone is laughing.”

“You have to know your audience.”

“If you look at pranks, they are often examples of bullying/being unkind.”

“Things that make others feel scared, frustrated, or embarrassed are just no fun.”

A retired teacher said, “I used to love when April Fool’s Day was on a weekend!”

Then Chandra chimed in,

“When I was in 3rd grade many moons ago, our teacher gave us a homework assignment on April Fool’s Day, and it was to write an essay entitled ‘A Boat Ride on the Saudi Arabia Desert.’

At first, I was stumped, but I got an idea, and that night I wrote an elaborate essay about how camels are called “ships of the desert” and tied it in that way.

I was the only one who turned a paper in the next day. My teacher took one look at my paper, ripped it in half, and made a comment about how the whole thing was a joke and I didn’t get the joke.

Everyone laughed. That really embarrassed me and I hated school from then on!”

This. breaks. my. heart.

_______________________

So, what’s in store for me this Saturday?

I run the social media for St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, so I’ve lined up some groan-worthy jokes to show up throughout the day. (See below.)

I’ll be at Kripalu the whole weekend assisting Aruni with a program called Grief, Loss, and Renewal. I’m honored to be trusted with the hearts of these folks who are grieving, and I won’t be playing any jokes. Laughter, at just the right time, can be a wonderful tool as we work through loss, so maybe a touch of humor will be revealed!

I’m giving up April Fool’s Day. I will still text our kids that it’s snowing, and who knows, it might be in Lenox, Massachusetts!

What will you be doing Saturday? I’d love to know.

I value humor, but I’ve come a long way from wreaking havoc in a freshman dormitory.

Here’s one of my silly jokes that will drop on Saturday.

Giving Up Tears

Post #25 of 40

Giving Up Tears

As I wrote post number 24, a person entered a Presbyterian school in Nashville, the city where I was born and grew up. This person killed three children and three adults. One of the adults was the head of school.

___________

Many years ago on a hot July day when I was head of a school, I was looking over schedules and handbooks when my office phone rang. Gina, the extraordinary after-school and summer camp director, had received a call from Penny, the summer bus driver. Penny called from the golf course parking lot where she had been waiting for the summer camp golfers to finish their camp.

Penny and the bus had been shot at by a man in a car as he drove through the parking lot. Penny had called the police before calling Gina. The elementary school campers had been on the golf course far away from the bus, the parking lot, and the shots. Penny’s legs were cut up by shrapnel, but other than that, she was physically fine. The campers would finish in about an hour.

Gina, Candy, and I drove our cars and minivans to the golf course. The office staff split up the list of campers and called their parents to let them know what had happened, and that they would be transported by private vehicles to the school unless they wanted to meet us at the golf course. As I walked to my car, I called the president of the board to let him know what had happened, emphasizing that all the children were safe, and that the bus driver had minor wounds to her legs. I asked him to let the other board members and our attorney know.

We got the campers back to the campus, and their parents picked them up, greeting them with extra big hugs and tears in their eyes.

During the afternoon, the office staff called various car rental companies to try to rent a van or SUV until our bus could be repaired. Apparently, all the vans and SUVs in Alabama were on summer vacation. A father who owned a car dealership pulled some strings and found a giant SUV for us to rent for a couple of weeks to help with camp.

Penny called me after getting her legs cleaned up at the emergency room. She told me she’d be staying at a friend’s house and that she had to quit. I told her we would pay her for the rest of the month. Then she told me that the man who had shot the bus and her legs was someone she knew. She identified him by name and address to the police.

I started composing an email to all the parents at the school so that the facts would be out there instead of rumors. That took me well into the evening making sure every word was correct, and that I had the thumbs-up from the board president and attorney. I remember some discussion about whether to send the email to all the parents since it was summer or only to the parents of the ten campers. I insisted that all parents be told the facts and before the end of day. Once I clicked send from my dining room table, the replies poured in. Many were “out of office replies.” Most were messages of sadness and gratitude.

The only email I specifically remember was from Dan, a dad who was on the board and knew the details about the shooter. He said, “I know you said that Penny won’t be working at the school anymore. I am concerned, though. Did you fire her? I don’t see how we can fire a woman in this situation.”

I assured Dan that I had not fired her, that she had quit, and that we would be paying her for the rest of the month.

The next morning, I met with the office staff and admin team in the conference room. I went through the timeline of what had happened, what we knew, the communication we had sent, the transportation plan, the extra police presence we had requested, etc.

Their eyes fixed on mine as I looked around the conference table. They heard me say - almost robotically - the line that had been in the email, and it was true. “At the time of the shooting, the campers were on the golf course, far away from the bus and the parking lot.” Their eyes pierced mine, like a tiny pin in a water balloon, and then my tears began to flow for the first time since the shooting.

After lunch, I listened to a voicemail from a reporter. I called the board president, and we decided to consult with another board member before returning the call. I had been taught to talk to reporters. “No comment” was usually not in the best interest of the school. By late afternoon, with the help of the two board members, I had my strategy. I would answer truthfully, of course, but my tone would be nonchalant, almost like it was a boring story, no big deal. We didn’t want this to be a front-page story.

“Yes, the bus was shot by someone who drove through the parking lot.”

“The children? Oh, they were nowhere even close to the bus.”

“Yes, the bus driver is fine. She had some minor cuts on her legs. That’s all.”

The story never made the news. It was too boring.

I drove home late that afternoon in the rented SUV. After changing into a loose cotton dress and greeting Tom and our kids with longer than usual hugs, we ate some sort of simple dinner on the covered part of the deck, the unbalanced ceiling fan whirring and clicking above us.

After dinner and dishes, I walked back outside, crossed the deck, went down the steps, and sat by our pool. I thought this might be a good time to have a good cry, not just a few tears. I needed the cleansing. Everything I said in every communication was absolutely true.

But, I knew that if the shooter had come one hour later, the story would have been very different.

I waited for the tears, but they were locked up. Knowing the power of water, I pulled the dress over my head and jumped in the pool to wash off the dirtiness of the past two days.

________

Tears won’t stop the shootings in the USA. Neither will jumping in the water, I know.

Thoughts and prayers are only going so far. Please think through the action steps — letters, emails, phone calls, donations — to those who have the power to end this insanity. We can do better. We must do better.

Giving Up Standing By the Water

Giving Up Standing By the Water

Post #24 of 40

The Barr family reunions began in 1994 when Rebecca was almost three, and Elizabeth was one. Thomas had not been born, yet.

I hadn’t seen some of Tom’s extended family since our wedding in 1986. Three generations showed up - Tom’s parents, uncles, and aunts, Tom’s siblings and cousins, and all their children. I particularly enjoyed getting to know Sandy during the Friday night of that first reunion. In a Gatlinburg cabin that smelled of past wood fires, she and I sat on the floor working puzzles with our kids. The TV’s sound was off, but we looked up every few minutes to see the slowest chase scene ever televised live — the one involving O.J. Simpson’s white Bronco.

Sandy was joyful, full of laughter, mom of three, and slender. Her shiny strawberry blonde hair laid smoothly against her head and swished gracefully toward her lightly freckled face when she leaned over her kids to give them a smooch.

On Saturday, her husband, Rob, and I laughed about being the Barr spouses, not true Barrs, not “Blood Barrs.” We volunteered for kid duty at the creek before lunch. With flat skipping rocks in his hand, he made jokes about the reunion - about how many gallons of tea would be consumed, which IBM technological gadget Phil would introduce, which child would “fall” in the creek first, and how long it would take for us to get a group picture. His running commentary kept me in stitches. After lunch, the “Blood Barrs” stayed under the pavilion looking at family trees, photographs from the past, and World War I letters from Clarence William Barr, Senior. Rob and I volunteered again for kid duty at the creek. It became our thing.

When the conversations waned, we all gathered at the pool. The kids showed off their neon swimsuits, as any available grownup slathered sunscreen on their pale faces and arms. Then the splashes began. One by one, the children made their way into the water - either the baby pool section or the deeper end, complete with water slide. I kept on my shorts and shirt and watched the kids from the sidelines, ready to jump in the water if anyone needed me. I was self-conscious about my curves after joining a family of many slender women, although I never felt judged by anyone but myself.

Slender Sandy slipped into the water with her sons and daughter, and they laughed, splashed, and went up the ladder and down the water slide dozens of times. They had a grand time. She was living life to the fullest.

———-

Tom and I savored those yearly reunions with the three generations. In the early years, the numbers increased as the middle generation had more children including Thomas in 1998. Then the numbers began to decrease. When one of Tom’s aunts or uncles showed up without a spouse for the first time, we all felt pits in our stomachs.

The 2006 reunion was the hardest one. Sandy, in her forties, had died in 2005 from cancer - diagnosed and died within months - leaving behind her three kids, husband, sister, and her two parents. She was one of the younger cousins in that middle generation — and the first one to die.

Sandy knew how to live and laugh and enjoy herself. She and I never discussed why I didn’t strip down to my swimsuit to get in the water or why she did. I always assumed she pulled off her cover-up and jumped in the water because she was comfortable with her body, but maybe it was so much more than that.

Maybe she was living life to the fullest and in the most joyful way possible, and it had nothing to do with her body - one way or the other.

I learned a lot from Sandy, but not until she was gone. In 2006, Rob brought their three kids to the reunion, and he and I stood by the creek watching them, not really for their safety since most of them were teens now. It had become our routine over the past twelve years. His jokes, now fewer and tinged with sadness, still made me laugh. Getting all the family together and organized for a group picture, even after twelve years, was still fodder for his humorous commentary. That was the last year we stood by the creek and laughed.

After lunch, we all gathered by the pool; the teens put on their own sunscreen and then helped the younger kids. I pulled off my shorts and shirt, jumped in the water, and splashed with our three kids.

Here’s one of the group photos. Getting all of us posed was like herding cats. Sandy is on the front row on the right in a white shirt hugging her knees

Giving Up the Fast Book Club

Giving Up the Fast BookClub

Post #23 of 40

In 1996, our family of four moved to the Barr family farm in Blountville, Tennessee so that Tom could finish a book. When I phrased our move this way to people who didn’t know us well, they’d scratch their heads and wonder if Tom was a really…slow…reader….

Then they would realize that he was writing a book, not reading one.

I am a pretty fast reader - if I take the time to actually sit still and read. These days, I mostly listen to audiobooks. I’ve been in a variety of book clubs through the years, usually the kind that reads a book a month.

In contrast, one of my favorite book clubs - ever - discussed one book over sixteen months during 2012 and 2013.

With five other women, I sipped hot tea and discussed Geneen Roth’s Women, Food, and God: An Unexpected Path To Almost Everything the first Monday of every month until we finished the sixteen-chapter book. We were the Slowest Book Club Ever. 

In between our monthly meetings, we emailed back and forth sharing news, photos, and the humorous antics in our lives. We lovingly called the book WFG in emails and occasionally WTF for What the Food. 

At first, I made fun of the book club. I was embarrassed thinking someone might say, “What book are you reading this month?” And, my answer would always be the same. I realized within a few months the wisdom of this slow reading in the Slowest Book Club Ever.

Here are three reasons this slow reading worked for us and why I recommend you try out a Slowest Book Club Ever experience:

1. You have no excuses for not reading the book and there is no tolerance or forum for showing off.

Haven’t we all been in book clubs where hardly anyone finishes the book? No excuses were allowed for not reading a “chapter.” Most of us read the whole book within the first month or two, and we reviewed the chapter to be discussed before each meeting. We never felt any pressure to read ahead or to be the smartest, deepest person in the room.

A friend of mine recently shared her experience in one of these book-a-month bookclubs. Nancy is quite intellectual and has an Ivy League education. In her book club, Nancy made a comment about the book, Middlemarch. After hearing Nancy’s comment, one of the other book club members asked, “Is this your first 19th century British novel?”

Nancy, who wrote her thesis in Italian and has read many of the European classics in their original languages simply answered, “Yes.”

I told her she should have said it was the first book she had ever read, and that they shouldn’t shame her for learning to read as an adult.

Nancy is less sassy than I am.

In the SBCE, discussing one chapter at each meeting gave everyone a stage on which to shine. We shared “leading” each month, and no one dominated the conversations.

2. You can allow the book to “sink in.”

Women, Food, and God is all about how we see and connect to food, ourselves, and God. WFG is for people who want to understand the deeper context of food and hunger in our lives. Discussing the whole book in one sitting would have taken us on the interstate instead of the scenic route. This slow read allowed us to see a lot more of ourselves and God than we anticipated. We took time to question, laugh, cry, object, and synthesize. 

I look back at my notes from the first meeting, and I realize I thought the book was a bunch of bologna. I continued attending the meetings and reading the book, and I eventually accepted some of Geneen Roth’s wisdom. I also realized, with a little help from my SBCE buddies, that I may have a bit of “oppositional defiant disorder” when reading self-help books. I am quick to say, “I don’t agree with that,” but the women didn’t let me get by with my ODD attitudes after the first or second meeting. I had to actually think through the chapter, Roth’s ideas, and say more about any objections I had.

3. The discipline of SBCE tracks and supports members’ changes and growth.

When our SBCE started, I knew only one of the members. After sixteen months, we were close. To begin the monthly meeting, we would “check in.” How many people do you have in your life who ask you how you are and really want to know? During the sixteen months, our group of six faced some significant life changes - house move, 50th birthday, child moving to boarding school, significant job change, divorce, sex life reawakened, one spouse with a stroke and another in a car wreck, and the inevitable weight loss and weight gain.

The purpose of our SBCE was not to deal with all of these issues or to solve all the problems, and we didn’t. We did, however, reserve a sacred space where these changes could be shared and held.

Slowest Book Club Ever is the type of book club that works well for busy people who want to continue personal growth and connect with others.

St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, has its own version of SBCE - a chapter a week, led by The Reverend Linda Mackie Griggs, my wise friend and colleague. (Additionally, we look remarkably alike!) Reading a chapter a week was Linda’s idea, not mine - great minds! I fully support the book group, assist with it, and read the assigned chapter. Our last book was Braiding Sweetgrass, and we met via Zoom from April 2022 to February 2023. Our next SBCE will begin after Lent.

I don’t think I will ever go back to the fast book clubs.

Give me a good book, interesting people, and one chapter at a time.

Giving Up Expecting People to Believe Me

Post #22 of 40

Giving Up Expecting People to Believe Me

After the rainy graduation reception, Tom and I packed our suitcases and left the dorms we had inhabited for the few days leading up to Thomas’s delayed graduation ceremony. Thomas had earned his degree from Reed College in 2020, but the actual ceremony took place in 2022.

After a complicated COVID testing process for our Alaskan cruise to celebrate our 35th anniversary, our Lyft driver dropped Tom and me at a small boutique hotel in downtown Portland. The lobby wall was adorned with black and white photos, mostly of political figures from the 1970s. The exception was the photo of a testosterone-filled Ali with beads of sweat flying. Tom and I admired the photos from afar.

Once inside the elevator, I pulled the keycards from the tiny envelope. “There’s even a black and white photo on the keycard - a couple standing by an elevator,” I said. 

“I think that’s John Mitchell,” Tom said. 

“The only photo I remember of Martha Mitchell was of her on a phone - a pastel phone, I think, and maybe she was in bed talking on the phone? I remember magazines at my grandparents’ bookstore showing her as a talker, a gossip.”

“I don’t remember that part,” he said. 

The hotel served complimentary beer and seltzer shortly after our check-in, so after propping up our feet and touching base with family, we took the elevator back down to the lobby. I looked carefully at the keycard photo again. It was nagging at me. What was the memory I was trying to pull up?

We ordered a local IPA and a seltzer at the hotel desk, and then Tom commented on the photos in the lobby and asked the hotel clerk who the man on the keycard was. 

“John Mitchell, right?” Tom asked.

“Yes, the owner of the hotel knows the photographer of that picture and all the others you see around here.”

“I remember John Mitchell,” Tom said. 

“I couldn’t identify him,” I admitted and told them of my memory of photos with Martha Mitchell on the phone.“That’s my only memory of her,” I said and then paused. Something was coming back to me. “Wait. I do remember something about her. We were flying to Dallas, and we always stopped in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, to refuel. My dad was a pilot,” I explained to the clerk. “One time when we stopped, Martha Mitchell’s body was at the airport for her funeral, and we were delayed. There was a big airplane or maybe security guards, maybe secret service? We had stopped at that airport on past trips, and there was nothing special about it — except for the smell of the paper mill. I don’t remember any of the other stops in Pine Bluff, but I remember that one.”

Tom and the hotel manager stared at me. 

“You don’t believe me, do you? Look on your phone. Was Martha Mitchell buried in Pine Bluff, Arkansas? Did she grow up there?”

Tom pulled out his phone, juggling his IPA and his confusion over this implausible story I was just now telling him after 35 years of marriage. 

“Yes, she was buried in Pine Bluff. Born there, had a funeral there. You’re right!” 

I still felt the need to prove myself. 

“Okay, now look and see when she died. I bet it was in November because we usually went to see Uncle in Dallas at Thanksgiving.”

“Nope, May 1976.” 

I paused just for a second or two. It wasn’t adding up yet. We didn’t usually fly to Dallas in the spring or summer. And, then I remembered.

“Oh, that was when Daddy flew us to Mexico. We stopped in Dallas first to see Uncle, and then we flew on to Mexico. That must have been when it was.” 

I know Tom believed me, but the hotel manager had his doubts, especially as my story shifted from a Thanksgiving trip to see Uncle to an international trip with Daddy as the pilot.

_________

When we finished the cruise, I decided to dig a little deeper into Martha Mitchell’s life. My timing was perfect since Gaslit, starring Julia Roberts as Martha Mitchell, had recently dropped. After I watched Gaslit, I watched a Netflix documentary called The Martha Mitchell Effect. More than the name of a documentary, the Martha Mitchell effect occurs when medical professionals do not believe a patient’s truth resulting in a misdiagnosis. In her time, people did not believe Martha Mitchell. They thought she was a crazy southern woman.

I read recent newspaper articles and old ones about Martha. I looked for interviews of her on Youtube. I found a video with Martha as a panelist on the old show, “To Tell the Truth.” The stars on the show tried to pick the panelist who was, indeed, telling the truth. In this episode, Martha was the only one to choose correctly. Every time I think about that, it makes me smile.

Almost everyone thought this Southern woman with the fancy sunglasses and fur coats was delusional when she shared that she’d been held against her will, basically as a prisoner, to keep her from hearing about or talking about Watergate.

Martha told the truth about a lot of things including her husband and Watergate. Her motives may have been questionable at times, but she told the truth.

Eventually,  two people seemed to believe her -  two female reporters.

_________________

In the 1990s, a preschool teacher asked my sister to roll down her window in the carpool line to tell her that Carolyn was having a hard time telling the truth during share-time. When Janet asked the teacher what had happened, the teacher said that Carolyn had insisted that her grandfather had flown her in his airplane to have breakfast on Saturday morning. Janet told the teacher that Carolyn had, indeed, ridden in Granddaddy’s airplane to a small airport in Tennessee, where she had eaten breakfast in an airplane hangar.

_________________

Why is it that some people are more likely to be believed than others? Sometimes a credibility issue exists based on past lies, but sometimes it’s because the specific stories seem too outlandish for the actual truth teller. And, is it too far to suggest that women and children and people of color are less likely to be believed? 

_________________

For all the truth tellers out there, here’s to you.

Here’s to those who are least likely to be believed and to those whose lives have been adversely affected because people in power did not believe them.

Here’s to the truth tellers with pure intentions. And, to the ones with questionable intentions…well, here’s to you, too.

Since I can’t control others, I am giving up expecting others to believe me, but I won’t stop my truth telling. I invite you to join me.

Daddy and Uncle at an airport near Dallas

Daddy and Carolyn

Giving Up Thinking It Matters

Post #21 of 40

Giving Up thinking it Matters

For a decade, we kept the poem, “Washing Doorknobs,” stuck to the refrigerator, first with Scotch tape and later with a magnet when we moved. I cut it from the New Yorker one Christmas break while flipping through magazines for our New Year’s Day vision boards. The part of the poem that I have memorized is “How happy we are, how unhappy we are, doesn’t matter.”

Since finding, clipping, and reading over and over “Washing Doorknobs,” I have been fascinated with the word - matters. Lately, I’ve been playing with these questions:

• What matters to me?

• What matters to someone else?

• How does our own mattering impact our lives?

• What matters in an existential way?

• Do goals or outcomes matter?

The questions above that are in bold are the ones that I decided to explore today, and the part that goes with the title of this post is at the end.

What matters to someone else?

I knew by the age of six that I had to work harder than other children, especially my sister, to have a tidy room and neat handwriting. I gained no pleasure from a clean room or from neat handwriting, so taking the time did not make sense to me.

I was sent to my room on occasion to clean it. I never did a good enough job. I have heard the term “clutter blind.” Maybe, I just didn’t see the stuffed animals on the floor or the Barbie clothes on the end of the bed. But, I realized the tidiness of my room mattered to my mother. I knew she loved me, and while she wanted me to have a clean and tidy room, she did not expect perfection or hours of drudgery. She wanted me to enjoy being a child - climbing trees, playing basketball with the kids next door, or training my pet mouse, Rover.

At some point, though, I noticed that not only did it matter to my mother that my room was tidy, it mattered to her that I learn each time to do a little more, to always strive for a slightly tidier room.

And, that’s when I came up with the idea that I would purposefully leave out one giant and easy to put away item that would give her pleasure as she “taught” me that it matters to try just a little more.

After this ah-hah moment at about the age of 10, the next time she came to inspect my room, she said, “Okay one more thing, just put the globe back on your desk, and straighten your lampshade, and then you can head outside.”

That was easy! Her wish to help me do one more thing had been accomplished, and I got to go outside.

Figuring out what mattered to her made my life easier.

As I grew older, I had a knack for noticing what mattered to friends, relatives, and even to talent show judges. I noticed and commented on a rugby shirt that Kate expertly sewed in one weekend; I brought ice cream to Nana, and I added movement and dancing to my act in the next talent show.

Figuring out what matters to others is one of the keys to being a good friend and relative and to achieving success.

———————-

How does our own mattering impact our lives?

My parents were 22 years old when Janet was born and 25 when they had me. I don’t really know how they parented so beautifully. I never doubted that they loved me or that I mattered to them. In fact, I always had the sense that I, Kathryn, mattered in a bigger way — not just to my parents.

A month or so after returning from Okinawa, I was in the kindergarten show at my grandmother’s church. My mother and Nana sewed a white, sparkly snowflake ballerina-type costume that was identical to the other girls’ costumes. Waiting for our entrance, the other snowflakes pointed out that my white tights had a pattern, and they were supposed to be a solid white. I told the snowflakes that my mother wanted me to have special tights.

Where does a five-year-old snowflake come up with this answer? Somehow my parents, who were barely 30, had instilled in me that I mattered and that others’ opinions didn’t have to bring me down.

How can we make sure that we project, “You matter” to the people we meet, the ones we raise and teach, the teens and stressed out parents at our church, our spouses and our neighbors?

——————————

Do goals or outcomes matter?

Some friends and I were discussing life with a capital L last fall during a potluck dinner. Diane’s sister became a topic of conversation. Sometimes, it’s easier to talk about a sister than ourselves. Diane’s sister, Meg, had been trying to decide whether to move to a warmer, sunnier spot for a position that was basically a lateral move. The weather was calling her, and a change was too. Meg had talked to her therapist hoping for some clarity, or at the very least some probing questions to help Meg figure out if her life would be better and if she would be happier if she made this move. “Guess what the therapist said!” Diane had us on pins and needles, and with a playful grin, she said, “It doesn’t matter. You’ll be the same person either place, either job.”

I think we were all stunned. We explored the decisions we had made in life thinking they would “matter.” Did we find success in jobs after leaving the ones we didn’t like? When we moved to a bigger house with two bathrooms, did the morning arguments stop? When we lost 20 pounds, were we suddenly happier?

We enjoyed exploring this idea of whether making a change really matters if we are looking for a specific outcome. We took turns talking about what “mattered” to us and what goal or outcome we were working toward.

I confessed to the women that what I really wanted was a happier marriage. Tom and I were happy, had been married for 35 years, but we were going to be entering a new stage within a year or so if he retired. Wasn’t this the time to cross the t’s and dot the i’s and make sure we had the happiest marriage possible? I knew he loved me, and I loved him, and we enjoyed spending time together, but I was hung up on this idea of having a happy marriage.

Diane said, “Maybe you should decide that it doesn’t matter if you have a happy marriage. You do you. He does him. You’re both loving and kind to each other. Continue to be considerate housemates. Spend time with each other, but then at the end of the day…that thing we call marriage…does it have to fit into some sort of category of being ‘happy’?”

The idea of deciding it doesn’t matter if we are in a happy marriage seemed so backwards, and yet…and yet…I liked the idea of trying it on for size.

I took Diane’s advice - be kind, loving, and considerate; be a good housemate; enjoy spending time together. Give up this expectation for us to have a happy marriage, though.

Within a week, I sensed a difference in our home. More joy, more laughter, more peaceful moments together. We were lighter with each other.

How could giving up the expectation of a happy marriage actually make for a happier marriage?

Today I told a friend about this post - about my fascination with the word “matters.” I told her the story of giving up thinking that it matters that we have a happy marriage. She said, “That makes me think of holding lightly.” As she said this, she cupped her hands in front of her as if she had a butterfly resting where her fingers meet her palms.

I think I may have figured out the secret…for me, at least.

I take our marriage seriously, but I hold it lightly.

I challenge you to look at the outcomes you may be holding onto, the ones that are so good and noble in theory. Maybe there is a way to take them seriously, but hold them lightly.

Maybe it doesn’t matter if you publish that book or run the marathon or travel to all fifty states. Maybe, just maybe, the secret is deciding that the outcome doesn’t matter.

Just take it seriously and hold it lightly.

Giving Up the Smaller Box

Post #20 of 40

Giving Up the Smaller Box

Mary and I Facetimed last week. The blue streak in her silver hair was hardly visible. Mary asked how things have been going since Tom retired. “It’s a new dance,” I said, “but, so far we’re learning the steps, having fun, and not stepping on each other’s toes!’

Mary told me about the period of time after James retired a few years ago. “We did everything together - traveled, cooked, ate, exercised, shopped, went to concerts. It was great until COVID hit. It was hard being in the house with just the two of us. We realized maybe we aren’t meant to be together 24/7.”

Mary and I talked about marriages in days gone by. “Even our grandparents probably thought about marriage differently,” she said. I asked her for more. “Our grandmothers were homemakers, right? But they had their friends, maybe sisters or mothers or neighbors to see. They didn’t expect their husbands to be their ‘everything.’ It was a different concept of marriage back then, don’t you think?”

“Oh, yeah,” I agreed, “My grandmother was a stay-at-home mom until the late sixties. Even when she stayed home, she had her garden club, the home demonstration club, the hat club - they made hats - can you believe it? and even the ‘Kit-Kat Club,’ which I think was just women eating lunch and talking. Her parents lived two doors down, so she saw them every day, too.”

We both sighed. I was thinking about all the things Tom and I like to do together and how we’ve added more to our together activities - like yoga three times a week at the Y. I think I can speak for him when I say that we are excited about how his retirement is giving us more opportunities to do more together.

After a pause, Mary said, “I had to get a bigger box,” Even through Facetime, she could tell I was trying to figure out what she meant. “Well, James and I love to do a lot together, but there’re things I want to do that just don’t interest him, and I want to learn new things, too, and meet new people, so I had to get rid of my smaller box that held only the things we both like to do and get a bigger one that includes him, of course, but also new people, different people, and different things to do.”

Her box statement made me think of how I seem to pepper Tom with questions every month or two: “What do you want to learn to do? Do you want to learn pickleball or bridge or mahjong? Wouldn’t it be great to learn some new things we can do together as we get older? You know, I went to that preventing dementia seminar, and they said we need to keep learning new things as we get older. It’s not good enough to just get better at things we already know how to do. And, Gretchen Rubin says every couple should have an indoor activity and an outdoor activity to do together.”

Obviously, I can be annoyingly enthusiastic, at times.

Tom is very patient with this enthusiasm for new ideas and activities, five-gold-stars-patient, but he doesn’t necessarily want to jump on every suggestion I have.

“Get a bigger box…” I say to Mary, squinting my eyes as I think about what this may mean for Tom and me in this new dance. Then I remember similar advice I heard years ago.

“When I got offered the position to work in Abu Dhabi for a year, I had coffee with a new friend, and I told her I was trying to decide whether to go or not, and she said, ‘Choose the bigger life, Kathryn.’”

Mary and I both paused.

I broke the silence. “Maybe we choose the bigger life during our careers and choose the bigger box later on? Or… maybe we can choose the bigger life and the bigger box for most of our lives? Is it too late to keep choosing the bigger life?”

Mary and I moved on to other topics, and she convinced me that next time she’s in Providence, we will go to a pub and listen to live music at a place called Nickanee’s. I admitted to her that I don’t think I’ve done anything like that since college. “It’s time then, Kay. Choose the bigger box.”

_______________

A week later I am still thinking about the conversation. Choose the bigger life. Choose the bigger box. Give up the smaller box.

So, I am making my list - the list that will require me to get a bigger box.

• Go to a place or type of place that you’ve never been.

• Go to a place you’ve been wanting to go with Tom while he is out of town. You don’t have to wait until he is in town to have fun.

• Make sure you are cultivating friendships outside of work and church.

• Sign up for pickleball or mahjong or bridge with a friend or by yourself.

• Check out workshops or conferences that support your interest in websites, marketing, and the Episcopal Church.

• Go to Nickanee’s with Mary.

I challenge you to look at your life and your calendar and consider how you can choose the bigger life or choose the bigger box. It’s time.

Giving Up My Rumspringa

Post #19 of 40

Giving Up My Rumspringa

In the last two posts, I wrote about grief and the period of time after Leo’s death, which was the first time in our married life we’d been without a pet. I called this in-between time my Rumspringa. Deep in my heart, I always knew I’d go back to having a dog in my life. The question was when.

I predicted my Rumspringa would end by Labor Day of 2022. Getting a dog seemed like a summer thing to do. September was coming to a close, and Tom and I couldn’t agree whether or not the time was right.

One interesting insight I had during this time is that “no” often receives more weight than “yes.”

Is it time to get a dog? My answer was yes, and his was no. We are equal partners in the marriage, and yet, it felt right that the no weighed more than the yes.

________________

At the end of September, my mother, sister, and I watched the weather with increasing interest and concern. Hurricane Ian was headed toward Tampa and Fort Myers. My uncle (mother’s brother who visited us when we were in Okinawa) lives full-time in North Fort Myers. Several years ago, my parents bought the house next door to him as a winter getaway.

Uncle decided not to evacuate as did the sisters who live on the other side of my mom’s house. The winds in their area weren’t as bad as in some places, but the houses filled with 5-6 feet of running water. Uncle and the sisters took refuge on the second floor of my mom’s house, the only one in the area with more than one floor. Uncle said it looked like the Mississippi River as he peeked down the spiral staircase to what used to be my parents’ living room.

Everything on the insides of the houses was ruined. Communication was a challenge. Uncle’s phone had been swept away. No electricity, internet, or safe drinking water down there. Any vehicles that had been in the neighborhood were now useless.

I looked at my calendar - I had some important things coming up, but I needed to help in some way.

So, I made my decision. I would buy a plane ticket to Nashville, and I would either work from there and spend time with my mom, or I would drive my mom to Florida, and we would take supplies to Uncle and assess the damage to her house.

The next few days after I purchased the airline ticket went like this -

1. Pack what you might need in a disaster zone. Take a first-aid kit and a crank operated light/radio/phone charger, plenty of trash bags, and clothes that can be thrown away if ruined.

2. Assist Aruni at Kripalu at the Inner Quest Intensive. This was my third or fourth time to help in this program. (Please check it out and sign up if you possibly can. It is transformative!) While assisting, I was determined to stay present. I had more hurdles before entering the disaster zone.

3. The day after I returned from Kripalu, I prepared for my second colonoscopy in six months. The one six months earlier was worrisome, so this was my follow-up.

4. Get the colonoscopy! The procedure is nothing compared to dying of colorectal cancer, so I have no complaints. I just had to get over the prep and anesthesia and procedure quickly in order to get on a plane early the next morning.

Once in Nashville, I spent one night at WOLF with my mom, and then we began our drive at 5am the next morning. Fifteen hours later, we sat with Uncle in his house in damp chairs on a floor covered in dried mud.

During the next few days we shoveled and cleaned, discarded and carried. Volunteers from ECHO, helped with a lot of the heavy lifting — taking the wet, muddy, ruined items to the street. They even mopped the kitchen floor, and then they mopped and mopped again. The young volunteers carried out a refrigerator that had been pushed to its side by the running water. The volunteers tried so hard to contain all of the stinky, muddy water inside. They pulled up wooden floors and carpets and dragged them to the street. They carried sofas, TVs, chairs, printers, books, mattresses, and more.

Our friend, Wayne, who does all the maintenance and repairs on our house in Providence, was in Florida checking on his mom, too. He came down to see me on Sunday and helped us get our oxen out of the ditch - i.e - He helped me get all the interior doors off the hinges and to the street along with some crumbling shelving units and the dryer. When I saw him, my heart leapt. We are not close friends, but seeing a familiar face meant the world to me. He is as close to a super-hero as anyone I know.

This is a video I made for my family to help them understand what we were facing. I never meant for it to be “public,” but I’m okay with your seeing it now that time has passed.

__________________

A few days later, I flew back to Providence long enough to say hello to Tom that night and then take him to the airport early the next day for a business trip — to Florida, of all places. My mom stayed in Florida about three weeks more.

After taking Tom to the airport, I went to Morning Prayer at St. Martin’s, and my brain began whirling; I was involuntarily picturing what the chairs and cushions in front of me would look like if they had been submerged in muddy sewage water. I walked through the hall and imagined what the floors would look like if they had been in the flood. Taking notice of the non-muddy stairs, climbed to my office on floor 3.5. Subconsciously, I think I liked being on an upper floor. Determined to work and be in the moment, I opened my computer at my desk, but before getting started, I took a look at the Small Dog Rescue of New England website.

And, I. fell. in. love.

I’ve never done the online dating thing. When I was dating, online dating wasn’t around. In fact, we didn’t even have online.

Maybe this experience resembles online dating slightly.

This was love at first sight. I thought I knew what I wanted — basically a dog that looked a little like Leo, but instead I saw this chihuahua mix, as different from Leo as you can imagine. His name was Dalton, and he was being fostered.

I started the process while Tom was still in the air.

I talked to the people at Small Dog Rescue of New England. They checked my references. I took pictures of the house and sent them. I talked to his foster mom and arranged a meet and greet. I began sending Tom and our grown-up kids pictures of Dalton, letting them know of my inquiry. Within 24 hours, I was considering names and asking Tom’s opinions. Within 48 hours, I texted him, “The stork visited.”

Dalton came home with me on a Thursday afternoon, and we have hardly left each other’s side since then. He reads my mind and knows what to do and which temperament to present. He brings joy to the folks at the church — the people who work, worship, and meet there.

________________

Tying up some loose ends:

• The results from the follow-up colonoscopy were good. Big Relief.

• What I experienced for a few days upon coming back was most likely the mildest case of PTSD — seeing the flood and the mud and the sewage everywhere I looked, when in reality, everything in Providence was fine.

• What I continued to experience for weeks was a reminder about the temporary nature of…well…everything except God. We have one life on earth. LIVE!

• Having 36 years of marriage in the books and knowing how dogs can positively affect mental and physical health, I adopted Dalton Fletcher Barr without a direct “approval” from Tom. My “yes” finally outweighed the no, and my health did, too.

• Now, Tom and Dalton are the best of friends. Tom knew the day was coming when a dog would once again be in the picture. He just didn’t know when.

Giving up my Rumspringa was an easy decision after dealing in the disaster zone. Do I appreciate having Dalton more having been through my Rumspringa? I can’t say yes to that. Having a dog in my life is like having air or water. Doing without a dog for those nine months was painful.

Oftentimes, at Lent we give up something we love.

I challenge you to look at your life and your Lenten practices and ask yourself if you have a giving-up-practice that might need to be given up.

Giving Up Living With Pets

Post #18 of 40

Giving Up Living With Pets

In my last post, I wrote about our dog, Leo, the attack he endured, and his death a few months later. Today, I want to share with you the period of time after Leo’s death when we had no pets.

We had never lived without pets until the February 2022.

We married at the end of 1986 and returned from our honeymoon a week later in the year 1987. Oddly enough, we left from the “old” Nashville Airport and arrived in the new one. Tom and I brought to the marriage three pets - his guinea pigs, Porky and Beanie and my cat Muffin (joint custody with my sister). We started out as a family of five. Our pet to human ratio varied over the years. Our precious dogs, Delta and Charlotte and Leo, gave us so much joy. Each one was special and just the right dog for the situation at the time. We got Charlotte when Delta was getting old, and we got Leo when Rebecca moved to Turkey and Charlotte was still fairly young. We didn’t get an overlap dog when we knew Leo was toward the end.

After Leo died, I was in deep grief. Delta was a couple dog; Charlotte was a family dog, and Leo…well, we all loved him, but he was my dog.

I told Tom that I thought we should wait until summer before getting another dog, and he said we should wait at least a year, maybe longer.

I decided to call this period of time without animals - my Rumspringa. A rumspringa is a time in an Amish person’s life, when as a teen, s/he leaves the community and experiences life in a non-Amish way. At the end of the rumspringa, the Amish teen decides whether to return to the community or leave. With no disrespect to the Amish, I set out to experience my own Rumspringa, life in a non-dog-owning way.

Here is what I did on my Rumspringa:

• Swimming Lessons - I am a water person, and even if I know how to swim, why not get better, have the advice of an expert, and have a set time every week when I am expected to swim?

• Colonoscopy - I knew the importance of having a colonoscopy. Colonoscopies save lives. Is it time for you to have yours?

• Assisted with multiple retreats/workshop at Kripalu in Massachusetts - I loved assisting Aruni for several programs. I learned so much, and I was able to serve others - that’s important to me.

• Attended “BLOOM” at MFA in Boston - A friend from college who grew up in Nashville now lives in Boston, just an hour away from. How wonderful to visit the Museum of Fine Arts at a relaxed pace with no concern for a pet.

• Officiated a wedding in Florida - and flew to Nashville to drive my mom to/fro - I loved officiating my niece’s wedding. Driving to Jacksonville, Florida from Nashville and then back wasn’t as much fun as the actual event, but I am so glad we could do this without the expense of a dog-sitter.

• Went to Thomas’s 2-year late graduation in Portland, Oregon - COVID messed so much up, including the graduations of our three kids. In the spring of 2020, Thomas received his BA from Reed College; Elizabeth graduated from New England Law with her Juris Doctor, and Rebecca got her master’s degree from the University of Freiburg. In June of 2022, Tom and I were able to attend a real graduation ceremony, complete with the rain that is Portland.

• Took an Alaskan cruise to celebrate 35th anniversary (6 months late) - Alaska was on our list of places to go, and when I stepped onto the land from our ship, it was my 50th state to visit!

• Visited with 3 of my bridesmaids in person and 1 on Facetime. I mourned the loss of the fifth My roommate, friend, and bridesmaid, Michelle, died during my Rumspringa. I found out while at Kripalu, and since she hadn’t wanted an obituary, I was determined to believe that she was alive, and it was just a rumor. I spent Monday digging and calling and emailing and texting. It was not a rumor. She really had died - way too young. I made time in the next few months to visit with the other four bridesmaids in person and on Facetime.

• Planted my first community garden plot - Having a garden was also on our list of things to do. Having an outdoor place to go was lovely. We managed to grow a lot of tomatoes and a fair number of zucchini, but more importantly, the garden provided a meditative activity.

Almost all of my Rumspringa activities would have been a little harder if we had had a pet.

I continued to ache for a dog, and at the same time I tried to live in the moment and appreciate the dog-free days.

I noticed the difference between enjoy and joy.

I enjoyed my Rumspringa and the carefree ways we were able to do so much.

I did not have the deep joy in my life, though, that a dog provides for me.

I was giving up living with pets, but I knew this was temporary.

My heart ached.

My house was not a home.

Giving Up Grieving Alone

Post #17 of 40

Giving Up Grieving Alone

The years 2018 - 2022 are a bit of a blur for me. Those years were challenging for our family, and I know we were not alone.

I look back on the New Year’s Eves of the past few years, and I remember the optimism that came with turning the page. “This year will be better,” I’d think. “We’ve endured what we can endure.”

The hard times started in 2018, when my dad was diagnosed with cancer. We all know that our parents will die from something, and most likely they will die before us. That knowledge doesn’t speak to the heart when the diagnosis is shared, though.

We knew 2019 would be better, and that’s when he had his surgery, and my mom’s femur shattered during a fall while taking care of my dad at the hospital. Healing and everyday activities were a challenge for them, and my sister and I helped as much as we could.

We knew 2020 would be better. I was living the life I had dreamed of - self employed, consulting, coaching, presenting workshops for schools and university departments in various states. I had the flexibility to travel, and in a few short months - from November 2019 to March 2020, I went to Nashville, Denver, New York City, Kripalu in Massachusetts, London, Germany, and Switzerland.

By the time our vocabulary included COVID, “flatten the curve,” and lockdown, we were back in the USA and comfortably settled into our Providence apartment with 17 rolls of toilet paper. Yes, I counted.

I started a Learning Pod - aka Pandemic Pod — in 2020. The podsters’ hugs, curiosity, and challenges helped me stay sharp, focused, and in the moment during a difficult period of time for our family and our country.

By the end of 2020, Daddy had died.

When we rang in 2021, I don’t think we were optimistic or pessimistic, either one. We didn’t know what to expect. Eager to get out of town and celebrate the new year and our 35th anniversary, Tom and I spent a few nights at the Intercontinental in Boston. We ate takeout Thai food and food we had brought from home. By then, a COVID variant was wreaking havoc on Christmas and New Year’s plans for many.

Late in the summer of 2021, our dog Leo, was on our front porch with me when a pitbull bolted onto our porch and grabbed Leo in his mouth and began shaking him. I screamed, grabbed the dog’s head and continued to scream for help. Neighbors and Tom heard, and three of us tried to control the dog and loosen the vice-like grip he had on a now still Leo. I screamed for a hammer. It’s all I could think of. A neighbor brought be a hammer. I asked Tom to try to kill the pitbull, but he couldn’t bear to do it, so I began to beat the skull of this dog who still had Leo in his mouth.

I wasn’t strong enough to do any damage, and maybe I made the situation worse. Three of us continued to hold the dog still and tried to keep his jaws from clamping any farther down on Leo for almost half an hour. The police came, and with a a strong fourth person, Leo was able to be pulled from the mouth of the pitbull. After figuring out Leo was alive, we put him inside and continued to hold the pitbull until the owner could be found, and animal control could take the dog away.

The owner of the dog was kind and responsible. His story is not mine to tell. He did everything he could to make the situation right for Leo and me. I owed it to him to tell him that I had tried to kill his dog. He understood. I also let the police know. They assured me that I had not broken any laws.

A neighbor called the animal hospital so that they knew we were coming. They took him in as soon as we arrived. Tom and I washed the blood off of our arms, hands, and legs in the restroom there.

Leo died a long, slow death - brain damage and congestive heart failure - after the attack. He died early in February of 2022.

__________________

When Aruni asked me to assist her during a program called Grief, Loss, and Renewal in the spring of 2022, I wondered if I was the right person. “I have my own issues, Aruni,” I told her. “I’m still grieving over the loss of my dad, and Leo just died.”

She said, “Then, you are the perfect person to be here.”

I was both an assistant and a participant that weekend.

My biggest takeaways were

• I had no guilt about my father’s death or our relationship. I was so “lucky” to have had a cast on my foot the summer before his death - making it practical for me to stay with my parents for a month in their foot-friendly house. I was thankful that he and I got along and that he was proud of me.

• I did feel some guilt over Leo. Was my timing right when I made the decision to let him fall into that deep sleep on his way to the Rainbow Bridge? Could I have done anything else to make his last few months better?

• Talking and sharing with other people who are experiencing grief did not add to my own. I didn’t take on their sadness or their stories. Each person in the room lifted the other up. How on earth were we able to do this in the midst of our own griefs? I am not shy now about talking to a person about the loss of a loved one, even if time has passed.

• Sharing with other people - even months or a year after a death - is still helpful. There is not a magic button that one can push to be finished with grief.

In a few weeks, I will head back to Kripalu again to assist Aruni in Grief, Loss, and Renewal: Savoring Life’s Lessons. The dates are March 31 - April 2. Even if your loss occurred months or years ago, I encourage you to consider this program or similar ones.

I hadn’t realized I’d been grieving alone until I spent the weekend with others also grieving.

I hope that you will join me in giving up grieving alone.

Leo and I enjoyed some time in Maine the summer before the attack. Tom took this picture on Willard Beach.

Giving Up Deciding Who To Be

Post #16 of 40

Giving Up Deciding Who To Be

During the last year and a half, I have assisted Aruni at Kripalu six times. Aruni is a sage - one of the wisest humans I know.

(I hope you will look her up, read her books, and attend her workshops.)

Basking in Aruni’s wisdom gave me tools to continue my journey of self improvement - of trying to be the best person I can be while continuing to live my own personal mission - to support women and children become happier, healthier, and more educated.

During these six visits, I had the time and space to think about who I really want to be.

At some point, I had these two realizations:

1. I don’t need to figure out who I want to be.

2. I need to be who I am.

When I was a teen and attending church retreats and youth conferences, I remember one of the ministers saying, “If it suddenly became against the law to be a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”

(Some of what folks said at these events was manipulative, and perhaps this is one of those instances, but stay with me.)

I massaged the question: “If it suddenly became against the law to be who you say you are, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”

Before I could answer that, though, I had to clarify who I believe myself to be.

Who do I say I am?

I am…

• a yogi

• a water person

• a singer

• a teacher

• a reader

• an advocate for/supporter of women and children

• a dog person

My list of identities continued, and if you stop and make your list, I bet you will have a long list of who you believe yourself to be.

After looking at the lists, I chose one for this experiment - I am a water person

Then, I looked at my

• calendar

• emails

• phone calls and texts

• credit card bill

• my streaming history

• social media follows/groups/pages

• my bookshelves

• home decor and art

Could I “prove” that I was a water person?

When was the last time I swam laps? How often had I gone to the beach? When was the last time I bought or wore a swimsuit? Had I been on a boat or to Mystic Aquarium or the New Bedford Whaling Museum? What books had I read with water as a theme? What water-related emails had I received? What documentaries or movies had I watched about the sea or sailing or swimming? Did any of my artwork portray boats or ducks or mermaids or bodies of water?

This exercise was fun and encouraging, and it also inspired me to take a boat ride, go to the whaling museum, and go to Bodhi Water Spa with Rebecca during my birthday weekend in August.

If you want to see if you are true to yourself, I recommend you try this exercise:

1. List your identities.

2. Pick one you particularly like or want to explore.

3. Look for evidence in the places listed above and others of your choosing.

4. Figure out a way to add some more “evidence” in your life.

Giving up deciding who to be, and instead committing to being myself is a lot easier and so much more fun! Perhaps this is simply reframing, but if it is my identity we are framing or reframing, please make sure that we include a duck and a sailboat in the picture.

Here I am ready for the one of the water activities of my birthday weekend - a boat ride. In addition to the boat ride, Rebecca and I went to Bodhi Water Spa, the whaling museum, and ate seafood. It was the perfect birthday weekend for a “water person.”

Giving Up An Hour

Post #15 of 40

Giving Up An Hour

The time changed last night.

I didn’t spring forward, though. I crawled.

This whole idea of changing times irritates me. For several years, I kept my inner time the same all year long. My morning alarm would be set for 4:30am during one time period and 5:30am the other time. The idea of not changing my inner waking time came to me when I was in Abu Dhabi and had to rethink my concept of weekdays and weekends. I worked Sunday through Thursday, and Friday and Saturday were the weekend days.

I didn’t attend church regularly while in the UAE, although there were several active churches within a twenty-minute drive. The main services were on Friday. During November of that year, a work-free holiday landed on a Sunday, and an American colleague and I ventured to the Anglican church for a small weekly service usually attended by stay-at-home spouses of expats from the UK. Andy, the priest, told us that most of the Americans attended the Evangelical church. At coffee hour, Andy’s sense of humor was showing, so with a smile on my face, I asked, "Do you think God minds if we worship on Friday instead of Sunday?" 

Without a beat, he said, "God wants us to worship any day and every day. And, if we're going to get technical about it, we should be worshipping on Saturday."

I continue to find time and days of the week fun to ponder. Read Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman if you want to join me in my pondering.

And, at the end of this post, you’ll find a Spotify playlist I put together - revealing my ongoing fascination with time!

——————-

Tom and I live a pretty calm life compared to others, I think. We rarely stay out late at night anymore, but seeing friends and family or listening to live musicians will lure us to stay up past our bedtimes. Last night, we traveled an hour to Worcester to hear Elizabeth’s partner, Matt Vezey, play trombone with the Worcester Symphony Orchestra in Mechanic’s Hall.

The four hours of sleep we got last night between getting home from the concert and waking to get Tom to the airport were not quite enough. Tom made it to Tennessee, and I taught church school for boys and girls who were also tired. The lesson about Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well was in today’s Lectionary, and we talked about the literal water that quenches our thirst and the way that Jesus is our living water hydrating our souls and our lives. The symbolism may have been beyond our bleary eyed kids and their teacher.

When I got home and quenched my literal thirst with some iced tea, I tried to think of what I had gained by giving up that hour, and I don’t see the advantage today - maybe tonight.

As someone who tends to be rigid about my nighttime routine, I am thankful that I got out of my comfort zone and heard live music in a beautiful location with people I love. Matt is family to us, and giving up an hour or more of sleep is what we do whenever we have the chance to honor and celebrate family.

And, while God may quench our spiritual thirst,

music and the love of family and friends

provide balm to my tired body,

after giving up that hour.

——————

This afternoon, I began to think of a Mary Oliver poem named, “Thirst.” I hope you enjoy it.

Giving Up Selflessness

Post #14 of 40

Giving Up Selflessness

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' there is no commandment greater than these." Mark 12:30-31

Last night, Tom and I went to Cindy and Ian’s house for dinner. We’ve known and loved them for over thirty-five years. Tom and I made a lemon bundt cake for dessert, and Cindy and Ian did the rest. When we lived in the South, we made a point to visit them whenever we headed north - whether we were checking out colleges with the kids or spending a summer in Ithaca. Now that we live in New England, we can see them much more often.

The Lemon Bundt Cake was delicious. We used Greek yogurt instead of sour cream and olive oil for the “neutral oil.”

Click here for the recipe.

Because of COVID and a host of other challenges, we hadn’t seen them for three years. We had a lot of catching up to do last night.

Tom and I describe them as “our people.” They are comfortable, unpretentious, and highly educated. They are witty conversationalists, gracious hosts, and wine connoisseurs. Any meal at their home is accompanied by an interesting wine or two.

Cindy and Ian retired a few years ago after long and dedicated careers. During their retirement trip, Ian developed a health issue, which continues to affect their everyday activities.

At dinner last night, my Lenten Challenge came up, and I asked Cindy if she had any ideas. She said, “Giving Up Selflessness.” She explained that in the early days after Ian’s health issue emerged, she committed herself to Ian completely - every waking moment was about him and his healing and his care. She tired of people saying, “Take care of yourself,” and said at one point she fantasized about kicking the next person who said that to her.

At some point she started thinking about the verse in Mark that says we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. With a twinkle in her eye, she said, “The Bible doesn’t say ‘Love your neighbor instead of yourself.’”

Eventually, she took the advice of her friends to heart, and now she exercises upstairs in what she calls her “torture chamber,” takes Mahjong lessons, plays pickleball, and reads over a 100 books a year.

Today, Cindy takes care of herself and Ian and says she has given up selflessness.

Her message to others, at the risk of being kicked by those not ready to listen is “Take care of yourself.”

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Giving Up Eye Rolling

Post #13 of 40

Giving Up Eye Rolling

One of my favorite TV shows of all times is 30 Rock. Tina Fey’s character, Liz Lemon, is known for her witty comebacks and dramatic facial expressions. And her eye rolls? They are top of the line!

---

I lied once in a job interview. I was interviewing to sell computerized shipping systems. The owner of the company asked me if I was in love. I said, “No.”

I don’t know if he was looking for a date for his sons, or if he was wondering if I had distractions, or if he was trying to ascertain whether I was a virgin. In spite of the strange question, I accepted the job offer, making me the only female salesperson in the company.

I promised myself that in the future, I would take jobs where I was comfortable being truthful and in organizations that aligned with my values. I did not keep this promise.

After several values-aligned years in one job, I was asked to report on how many books were in the school library with “gay themes.” Apparently, a parent had complained to the Board. I located one book about two male penguins who fall in love and care for an egg. I reported this to the board president and said that I “couldn’t find” any others. I was asked to remove And Tango Makes Three from the library shelves. I complied.

When I worked in Catholic schools, I was publicly quiet about my support for transgender and gay students and teachers, but the Sisters who ran the schools appreciated the way I helped and supported them. The Bishops in both places would not have been as supportive.

After leaving the Catholic schools, I once again vowed to myself to work only in places whose values align with mine.

So far, I have kept this promise to myself.

Keeping this promise comes from privilege, though.

Not everyone at every stage can do this and still put food on the table and kids in college.

---

Prior to Lent one year when I was still working in schools, I noticed that I found my truth being swallowed more and more. I kept my mouth shut at times when I disagreed with someone, noticed that I wasn’t setting the record straight when people told untruths about me, found myself not wanting to rock the boat. Swallowing and swallowing, this discomfort turned into anxiety and a bad case of the eye rolls.

I realized that I rolled my eyes when I didn’t have the courage to speak my truth.

So for Lent that year, I tried to give up eye rolling.

When someone reported an issue to me, I couldn’t roll my eyes as a sign of sympathy or agreement that communicated, “Oh well, whatcha gonna do?”

I had to be true to myself and my values and say and do the right thing.

What was I to do if Tammy came to me and said, “I asked Jasmine for the report on my division two weeks ago and even followed up today. At first I thought she was just too busy, but today she said that she doesn’t understand why I need it. It’s my division, Kathryn. Why does she make things so difficult?”

There was a time when I was tempted to roll my eyes because we all had challenges with Jasmine.

Giving up eye rolling forced me to decide how to respond. Should I intervene? Should I go to Jasmine? How could I help without stripping away Tammy’s authority? How could I help Jasmine be more cooperative with her coworkers?

It wasn’t enough to roll my eyes even if “everyone” knew how difficult Jasmine could be. I was the “boss,” and I needed to act - or not act if that was better. There would be no in between for me.

More than a decade later, I still haven’t mastered the art of always speaking my truth to the right people at the right time. But, I have definitely improved over the years.

I have made a few rules for myself to TRY to keep me on track:

(Am I the only one who keeps rules for self in the Notes App on my phone?)

• When in a meeting, say what you need to say. Do not keep your mouth shut and then share your opinions with a coworker or Tom after the fact.

• If conversations in a professional meeting turn into gossip or insults about others in a way that is not productive, express yourself - e.g. “This conversation makes me uncomfortable.” You risk being left out of future conversations, but that’s okay.

• Don’t use humor or sarcasm to cover up your truth. Be respectful, but remember it’s okay to express yourself.

• If someone tries to interrupt you when you are saying something difficult, keep talking, or say a quick, “Hold on just a sec,” or use a hand gesture. Be polite, but say what you need to say.

• If something is bothering you enough to roll your eyes or to talk to others about it, then think about who can help with the situation and figure out a way to do something about it.

• If you really have to roll your eyes, look down and do it.

---

These days, most of my eye rolling is reserved for Tom’s corny math jokes that I actually adore, but don’t tell him. My favorite continues to be —

“There are three kinds of mathematicians - those who can count and those who can’t.”

And, I am sure to point out my eye roll to him, sometimes putting it on instant replay and in slow motion format — Liz Lemon style.

Watch the video above if you are going through eye-rolling withdrawal.

Giving Up Conformity

Post #12 of 40

Giving Up Conformity

Please know that I do not try to embarrass Tom; it comes naturally.

Just last Sunday, I slipped into his pew after teaching church school. We shared the Book of Common Prayer and the Hymnal. When it came time to sight read the alto part of an unfamiliar hymn, I struggled. I touched the flashlight icon on my phone and lit up the page. Voila! I could see the notes and words clearly, which increased the likelihood that I would sing the right note and word at the right time. If anyone saw my phone flashlight, would they judge me? And, did I care? Nope. But, I realized it bothered Tom.

I don’t remember the exact moment Tom said to me, “You don’t have to cultivate your crazy!” I was probably dancing in the kitchen, plotting an innocent prank, speaking in some crazy voice, or pulling items out of the trash or recycling for a project.

I come from a line of unconventional people, perhaps even an eccentric or two - people who weren’t necessarily worried about what others thought. I come from world travelers, dreamers, list makers, and people who set crazy goals…and then achieve them. My people include a stutterer, poor farmers, factory workers, a person with a limb difference, a newspaper owner, a judge, a philatelist, a diesel mechanic who taught other mechanics from around the world, a pilot, an accountant, and homemakers.

My maternal grandfather, Murray, perhaps the most eccentric person I have ever known, overcame hardships that might have stifled the goals of the rest of us. Murray was left in Nashville as a young teen after his step-mother had died. My grandfather’s own mother died from the Flu in 1918 along with her newborn daughter. Murray was more or less taken in by the Zibart family, Jewish bookstore owners, where he first sold newspapers on the corner in front of the downtown store. Later, he worked inside the store, eventually becoming the manager of the records department and having a lucrative stamp and coin business on the side. He was known as the stamp man and the coin man and encouraged many a collector. In the late 1960s, he and my grandmother bought the Zibart’s Bookstore in Madison, Tennessee and owned it until they retired in 1985.

In the fall of 1937, Murray boarded a banana boat in Nashville and sailed down the river, to the Gulf of Mexico to South America - just for the adventure! He took a boat back to New Orleans and made his way to Nashville by land. This story has been handed down and talked about since I was a child. When my mother got interested in genealogy a few years ago, she started digging into online information as well as paper files and scrapbooks left behind. She found a ship manifest from his return trip and postcards from Murray to his wife. She also found a hilarious telegram from one of the Zibart brothers that included the humor and vocabulary of a well-read man. Had SNL been around, this Zibart would have been in that writing room.

Murray enjoyed telling stories and sharing his memories. He said he joined the cavalry at the age of 14 and was asked to leave when they figured out how young he was. I’m not sure any of us believed him until a photo turned up of a young teen Murray in uniform on a horse. He told us how, as a toddler, he sat on Buffalo Bill’s lap, and we doubted him until a photo showed up.

We also heard that his grandfather failed to identify members of the Jesse James gang who were accused of robbing the train he had been on. Was my great-grandfather being truthful, or did he fear for his own life and claim a lack of recognition? Of course, we wondered if that was true, until the days of the Internet when we found news stories about the train robbery and subsequent trial.

When stories of the past were exhausted, Murray would invent exaggerations for his granddaughters’ entertainment. He made a claim that he owned the biggest scissors in the world, and my six-year-old self would smile with twinkly eyes wondering what would happen next — every time. Slowly, he would take the tailor’s scissors off the top of the maple hutch, dramatically revealing each millimeter of the length of the blades, and then he would trim his pinky fingernail. I giggled at this demonstration more than once. I now have those scissors, and they still make me smile.

David Weeks was one of the first people to really study eccentric people. Weeks interviewed over a thousand people who self-identified as “eccentric.” In his extensive study, he found that eccentric people are often creative, only or oldest children, bad spellers, non-competitive (i.e. not in need of societal approval), aware of their difference from childhood, and often picky or unusual eaters.

Had Murray read this study, I think he would have agreed that he was eccentric. The rest of my family probably wouldn’t fit as neatly into that category. My grandmother Elaine didn’t tell wild stories or jump on banana boats, but she was PTA president, ran a bookstore, raised two great kids, sewed, made hats, crocheted, traveled around the world, canned and so much more — while having one hand. She didn’t let circumstances or strangers’ looks slow her down.

I think about my dad who grew up in poverty who wanted more than anything to fly airplanes, and he did — for 60 years. He put an airplane on his Christmas list every year as an adult when Janet and I were making our lists. He would say to us, “You can put anything on your list.” At the end of his life, he owned two airplanes, one of which he had built with a high school friend of mine.

My mother quit college when she married, in order to support my dad as he finished college. When I was eleven, and she was thinking about going back to college, I told her to do it! Not that she needed my encouragement, but she did get her degree and her CPA license and worked for justice in school systems and cities. If you stole from schools or cities in Tennessee in the 1980s or 1990s, she caught you.

My sister knew she wanted to be a doctor when she ten. In fact, in her sixth grade autobiography, she said, “I want to be the first woman doctor.” We had no doctors in our family, but she put her stake in the ground early and became a pediatrician.

I admire the courage that members of my family have shown. Each one of them added cobblestones to the road where I can walk and not be too worried about others’ opinions. I can sing and dance in my home. I can move to Abu Dhabi for a year (a story for another day) or yell out the car window complimenting a gardener on her colorful zinnias. If these are the wildest things I am doing, maybe I DO need to cultivate my crazy.

One time Tom said to me, “You know you’re two standard deviations from normal, don’t you?” I love a mathematician who is good with words! And, he loves me, too, even if I am half crazy.

I am happy to give up conformity if it means a more joy-filled, joy-giving, adventurous life.

And, in the meantime, I will get out my phone’s flashlight when needed — even in church.

Murray at the downtown Zibarts

Giving Up Jeopardy

Post #11 of 40

Giving Up Jeopardy

A few weeks ago, Tom and I talked about what Lenten practice would be good for me this year. I talked to him about our evening routine that had become a little stale - dinner, news, and Jeopardy. I told him that I thought I would give up Jeopardy since we seemed to work or play on our devices during much of the show. Having Jeopardy on was different from watching it and engaging in the clues. So, Jeopardy is off the table for now, and we haven’t even missed it.

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My favorite Jeopardy moments are from summer 2020. In late June, a cast was placed on my foot to keep it immobilized long enough for it to heal from an injury I had sustained while trying a ballet move with middle schoolers in 2018.

I decided to live at my parents’ place (aka Woods on Lake Farm or WOLF) for the month since our Rhode Island apartment was on the second and third floors of an old house with way too many stairs. Additionally, walking Leo multiple times a day would have been next to impossible when we could open a door for him at WOLF.

Thomas and his partner, Marika, were living at WOLF that summer, and my being there for a month would be a good chance to spend time with them as well as with my parents.

Daddy had been diagnosed with cancer a couple years earlier and had endured a painful and complicated surgery in 2019. The treatments, the post-surgery routines, and the COVID restrictions made his daily life a challenge. Mama had broken her femur not long before Daddy’s surgery, but by 2020, she was active and doing more to take care care of Daddy and day-to-day tasks at WOLF.

After getting my cast in Memphis, my sister drove me to WOLF. I settled into the second floor bedroom with the help of an elevator, and Janet brought up a borrowed Keurig and a small refrigerator for my “suite.”

Each day I worked in an unair-conditioned storage area at WOLF where Tom and I had left way too many of our belongings when we moved north. I worked until I was too dirty, sweaty, and frustrated to continue. How did we end up with so much stuff?

Many afternoons, Thomas drove the discards to the dump, and the good stuff to the local thrift shop. When I’d had enough, I would return to the house and welcome the air conditioning, a snack, and a Diet Coke, I’d swish off with washcloths the best I could, and I’d blow cool air from the hair dryer down and around my cast until I heard my dad call up from the first floor, “KATH-EEEE…JE-PAR-DEEE!”

I would take the elevator down, and I’d prop up my foot on the end of the loveseat while he propped up in his recliner. We’d try to respond to the clues Alex Trebek provided. Daddy would say, “I’m not smart enough for this show.” And, then he’d surprise himself knowing the answers (questions!) of whole categories - geography, military, aviation, bridges, antique cars.

When I returned to Providence in August, Tom and I continued watching Jeopardy as we had before.

Right before Halloween in Tennessee, Daddy went into hospice at home - no more treatments, no more doctor visits. We began settling into the idea that he would die within a year, probably six months. My calendar was cleared after Christmas so I could be at WOLF if needed.

Right before Halloween in Rhode Island, I watched snow fall onto the warm ground and mostly melt. While walking Leo on Halloween morning, I slipped on ice, breaking my right (dominant) wrist in two places. The cast would have to wait a few days until the swelling went down. I was about to have the second cast of my life and both within the same year.

On November 3, 2020, the election was all we could think about. After dinner, Tom helped tape and wrap my splint in plastic so I could shower before watching the results trickle in. When I turned off the water, Tom knocked on the door and said, “Eddie called. He asked you to call Janet.” I knew what this meant, but until I made the call, I didn’t really know. I pulled a loose, sleeveless, knit dress over my wet hair, and Tom helped unwrap the taped plastic bag from my still sore arm.

Then I called Janet.

Daddy died in his recliner while watching Jay Leno’s show about antique cars on Youtube.

I flew to Nashville the next day, and Mama and Janet picked me up from the airport. Traveling with a broken wrist - not quite solidly immobilized was challenging and uncomfortable. In addition to taking care of all the business that comes after a death, Mama and Janet took care of me a bit.

The presidential election was called on November 7, giving the three grieving women something to cheer about.

Alex Trebek died on November 8, and I felt the baby scab that had just started forming over my grief get ripped off.

I flew back to Providence a week after Daddy died, and Tom and I continued watching Jeopardy after dinner each night we were home. Eventually, the last episode that Alex Trebek taped was aired.

When the episode ended, I cried, tried to cover the newly-formed scab covering my grief, and replayed in my head, “KATH-EEEE…JE-PAR-DEEE!”