A Piece of My  Mind

Kissing is a means of getting two people so close 
together that they can't see anything wrong with each other.  

~Rene Yasenek

        The dreaded call wasn't as bad as it could have been.   "Dad,  my car broke down again. The Hell's Angels picked me up and brought me to Susie and George Williams' in Saratoga."  Having prided myself on not being a worrier, it seemed I was more or less successfully transforming into one of the world's best, brought about because of having kids and calamities in the same sentence, both imagined and real, usually minor, with a threat of danger, rather like cloudy with a 30% chance of showers and an occasional downpour. The reality was that when it came to my kids, I had been forced to face the fact that I wasn't doing as well as I would have liked at regulating every aspect of their lives.  From clueless teachers who lost homework (really?) and didn't have the energy and commitment it took to implement the grandiose ideas of an overly proud-of-her-doctorate principal to bike wrecks and bullying neighborhood children, my ability to protect my children had been challenged rather more than I would have liked.

        Sometimes, however, like when your daughter is rescued by Hell's Angels, you just know you are living right.  What was she, less than 100 miles from Laramie, her car parked on the side of the road, some five and a half hours from home?  Safe and sound with friends.   Mind you, the bikers were hauling their bikes, not riding them, but still.

    I had grown up with a high value placed on doing whatever it took.  The motto was short and sweet: Get the job done.   Figure it out.  Common sense was valued highly, so if your solution wasn't safe and reasonably smart, judgement would be swift, decisive and memorable.   Worrying wasn't really part of the equation.  We did what needed to be done, and we expected the kids to, as well.  They did.  She did.  Figured it out, solved the problem, got help as needed.  Off she had gone to Spain to polish up her high school and advanced classes of Spanish.  My little girl, 18 years old, walking beside me when I took her to the Denver International Airport, looked about twelve.  That made my hair stand on end.  Six months of it made the Hell's Angels look like the Cookie Monster.  (Thanks, tough guys!)  That night she and her dad hit a deer after they headed home with the car hauler loaded with her Ford Tempo.  That prompted installing a deer guard as the next priority on
the to-do list.

     The next time she headed home, she made it a few miles farther down the road before trouble struck again.  "Mom, my car broke down. And it's pouring rain."  Updating me a few minutes later, I learned that a Mexican family in a mini van stopped to pick her up.  "I'm at bar in Jeffery City, but they will be closing in a couple of hours.  Sure hope Dad can come get me."   It was about three and a half hours away, and off he went, once again towing the car hauler. (Is that why we bought the trailer?)  Meanwhile, with her dad en-route, Mindy went home with a couple of girls who worked in the bar, strangers that lived nearby.   Well able to visualize the awkward mingling of the innocent with the worldly aware, I felt the discomfort of the situation.  Uneasily, the hair on my arms seemed to tingle, my neck tensed.  What was to be done? Mindy and Jerry got back to Cody at about 5 a.m. That was the time she and I decided she positively needed a more reliable vehicle.

 More reliable, that is to say, than the Ford Tempo with low mileage that she had purchased for an affordable  eight hundred dollars, from a little elderly woman who no longer drove it.  The plan was that it would serve her well for her college years but soon it had required repairs for about that much again.  The deal of the year went a little sour.

      Then there was the snow storm, that night in mid-winter when she caught a ride home to Cody with a friend.  They ended up stuck behind a semi truck, stranded in drifting snow for fourteen hours, until the highway patrol sent snow cats out from Rawlins to pick them up and take them back to hotels for the night.  We called to check on getting through with our four wheel drive.  Jerry was chomping at the bit, ready to make the grand rescue. The highway patrol said firmly that the roads were closed. "No, you absolutely may not bring your four wheel drive pickup through the closed roads and we will arrest you if you try."  Do they not realize how difficult it is to do nothing?

          We think of ourselves as self-sufficient westerners from strong, resilient stock, from chieftains perhaps, in the olden days, possibly even warlords, riding fast horses over the steppes of ancient Russian or Turkish territory, descendants of pioneers who survived the Oregon trail. At the very least we know there's some strong Norwegian background on my Grandfather's side - probably Vikings, and some hardy 3/4 German as well.  Add to that a large helping of practicality and fairly common sense accompanied with very good imaginations and a healthy dose of fighting spirit.  We read the stories of blizzards, of lone horsemen surviving on their own in the late 1800's, out on the high plains winter prairie,  nursing a warm cup of coffee over a carefully built fire while avoiding hostile enemies who were (hopefully) hunkered down for the storm through which man and beast struggled in the ultimate test of endurance.  And worst of all, I had memories of North Idaho winters.  Whiteouts and black ice, blizzards.  Crawling at a snail's pace down highways coated in thick shining ice.  Cars off the road, in ditches as we crept by, breathing a sigh of relief when we weren't one of them.  One Toyota pickup standing upright on it's grill in the meridian.  Not mine, thank goodness.  One brilliantly white and icy Sunday afternoon I had watched helplessly as the impact of my staid and sliding tank-like sedan, with a sickening crunch, destroyed the large green fender of an antique truck, whose driver was an innocent bystander pulling people out of the ditch.

     We know the dangers, we've seen what it's like out there in our present day heated luxury vehicles, traveling through a vast wasteland of paved byways where the buffalo roam and the antelope play.  Where nothing stops the piercing wind and the relentless, dangerous cold of winter has it's way and you don't see another car for miles, where the long arm of the law is literally across the road, a barricade closed firmly behind you, the last car through by the skin of your teeth, the cold tubular steel rod representing the solitude of the vastness, the choice to venture out where ice and blowing snow could mean death or danger.  We've driven those roads with all manner of winter gear, a coffee can full of dry matches, newspaper, a candle, extra blankets stuffed in our trunk, and some dry snack food along, just in case.   And they tell us to wait. Our daughter is out there. They don't understand.

           When we are in trouble we figure out how to fix it.  We aren't city slickers, dependent on a bunch of rules and regulations, sitting around waiting for someone to do something, encumbered by red tape and delusions of peaceful solutions that make everyone happy.  But no. We had our orders.  We waited. Through howling wind and freezing cold, the hours passed slowly, long and monotonous, as if we were sitting in a car with a ferocious storm blasting icicles at us through the whiteout.  Road conditions no longer mattered very much.  They wouldn't be going anywhere for awhile, and apparently, neither would we.

        Anxiously, we checked in again and again.  Snow blew and swirled through the night.  The car was buried in it,  Ominously, they finished eating the snacks that were in the car. We paced and waited, amazed and thankful for cell phones and cell phone service.  Their voices were clear as bells. We were informed. From when the heater quit working, until they abandoned the vehicle and joined up with the guy in the pickup behind them for a more reliable heater, we got the latest update, the tense play by play.  Giving up a lost battle with concentrating on anything else for the evening, we anxiously peered out the window into the darkness,  as if we could see something happening 300 miles away, as if they would soon be on their way, and seeing nothing.  Distant across the night, moments lengthened and stretched into hours.  We napped fitfully, until at last the news came that the snow cats were arriving to carry the stranded travelers back to Rawlins, and for what was left of the night, we would all try to get a little rest.  In the morning the cars were dug out of snowbanks and hauled back to Rawlins.  Our children would complete their journey home following the snowplows, storm abated.  As if the blizzard of the previous night was only a bad dream, the sun appeared, sparkling brightly across the white landscape as if to say, "What were you worried about?"  Gladly, I retrieved my travel weary but smiling daughter.  Present adventure over.  For a few short hours she was home.  I treasure those rare moments when I can shelter them, keep them safe.  The moments when I know where they are and what they are doing, when I can fend off any bad guys from my doorstep, when the greatest threat to their well-being is an overly protective mom.

And all too soon, I stand on the doorstep waving as they go again, into the unknown.

Through it all, there is one lesson.  Certain thoughts creep in: fear, devastation, worries.  The mind sometimes reels under the very real impact of unthinkable possiblities.  I am tempted to walk away from a challenge when a thought appears testing my purpose and resolve to conquer something new.  I wonder where these thoughts come from, and more importantly, how to deal with them.

So here are my rules in case it helps someone else:

1.  Acknowledge.  The thought is there, has made it's appearance.  Therefore it exists.  The fear that is behind it, although from unknown sources, is real.  

2.  Think of it as a garden.  If it isn't a thought that is helpful to you, it is a weed thought.  Not a seed thought.  Pluck it out, toss it away.  If allowed to grow it will take water and sunshine from the things you want to grow, from the plants that are there for a reason.

3.  In our garden, we plant seeds.  Things that will feed and nourish us.  The thoughts that don't help us simply need to be removed.  That is really all there is to it.  

4.  Thankfulness.  A simple solution is the knowledge that there are people, (perhaps at present we may not see them, but they exist) who care about us so deeply that there are thoughts they would never want us to entertain.  They have even told us, perhaps, not to think a certain way when we have felt discouraged.

5.  Take the next step.  Push through the momentary doubts.  Just move on if you can.  Or rest completely.  Sit still, feel, think.  Be real.  

6. Try one more time.  My doubts come on pretty strong when I'm physically pushing myself on the exercise rings, or sweating it out on a new and difficult cardio routine.  Just do what you can for this time.  Next time is another time.  And just maybe, you'll do better.  

In trying to get our own way, we should remember that kisses are sweeter than whine.  

Ancient lovers believed a kiss would literally unite their souls, 

because the spirit was said to be carried in one's breath. 

 ~Eve Glicksman

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

Robert Frost

Faith is a knowledge within the heart, 

beyond the reach of proof. 

Khalil Gibran 

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young,

compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, 

and tolerant of the weak and strong.  

Because someday in your life you

will have been all of these.  

George Washington Carver

Love is much like a wild rose, beautiful and calm, but willing to draw blood in its defense.  

~Mark Overby

 Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it was made

For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.

~William Shakespeare

 Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.  

Albert Camus

 How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.  

Annie Dillard

The doctor must have put my pacemaker in wrong. 

Every time my husband kisses me, the garage door goes up. 

Minnie Pearl 

 God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offense into everlasting forgiveness. 

Henry Ward Beecher 

How did it happen that their lips came together? 
 How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, 
the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the 
stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill?  
A kiss, and all was said.  

~Victor Hugo

Humility is the only true wisdom by which we 

prepare our minds for all the possible changes of life.

George Arliss

 Has fortune dealt you some bad cards?  Then let wisdom make you a good gamester. 

 Francis Quarles

Full Moon and Some Other Stuff

 Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery. 

 Dr. Joyce Brothers

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. 

Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. 

George Washington