Jolina Petersheim

Desperate times call for...humiliating measures

2012-02-19T18:17:00.000-08:00

On Valentine’s Day a routine ultrasound revealed that our daughter, at thirty-nine weeks gestation, had flipped from the standard vertex position into the footling breech. Instead of celebrating our love with flowers and candlelight, my husband and my every thought started revolving around how to turn her back. Thus, I spent the majority of that evening with my feet above my head, a cold pack at the top of my stomach and a hot pack at the bottom while my husband, Randy, moved his hand clockwise around my outy belly button and spoke to our daughter in firm but affectionate “you will obey your father” tones.

The next morning I awoke and immediately touched the top of my stomach. Adelaide Anne’s sweet round head was protruding from the space where her tush used to be. Tears filled my eyes as my optimism faltered: If we could not get her to turn, early Tuesday morning (the day before our daughter’s official due date on February 22nd) I would have to go to the hospital where the doctor would relax my womb before performing an external cephalic version, which means that he would manually turn her from the outside. Although this routine is said to be painful, it did not fill me with fear as much as the possibility that Addie’s heart rate could drop from the stress of being maneuvered and from the medication given to relax my womb. If her heart rate did not return to normal, the doctor would have to perform an emergency c-section that even my husband could not attend.

After eating breakfast, my determination recovered. Randy helped me climb up on the inversion table and handed me the hot and cold packs. We played Beethoven through headphones connected to the laptop in an attempt to lure Addie down. Twenty minutes later, I climbed off the inversion table and leaned over an exercise ball and rolled my pelvis to work my daughter loose. Even while writing, replying to emails, or talking on the phone to reassure my mother that I was not in labor and would let her know if I was, I would be in some incredibly awkward position the Internet promised would flip breech babies.

Big shocker. The Internet lied.

When my husband returned at 5:30, the baby-turning boot camp truly began. With my legs fully extended and my hands flat on the floor, I “elephant walked” up and down our hallway, which -- at this stage of pregnancy -- looks far more ungainly than it even sounds. Afterward, Randy slid a blanket beneath my back, lifted me off the ground, and shook the blanket back and forth to wiggle little Addie’s foot out of my pelvis. Back on the inversion table, we tried administrating hot packs, cold packs, lukewarm packs, frozen packs and played through the headphones every classical selection I had.

Our daughter, with typical firstborn stubbornness, refused to budge.

But neither did her parents.

For a touch of comic relief, Randy started speaking to my stomach through a paper towel roll. I began threatening to ground Adelaide until puberty if she did not obey us and get her behind in gear. The next day I went to a chiropractor who adjusted my pelvis to dislodge Addie’s foot, then I followed this up with a massage (figured I should get some benefit out of the deal).

Tomorrow we find out if our efforts to flip our daughter have worked. But either way, the desperate times calling for humiliating measures will not cease. This afternoon we purchased castor oil that I am going to chug as soon as we see that Addie is head down. If she is not head down, I still have twenty-four hours until the external cephalic version. And, believe you me, I will be spending every minute of those twenty-four hours elephant walking up and down the hallway with a cold pack at the top of my stomach and a hot pack at the bottom.

But soon, very soon, we will get to hold our baby girl.

In the end, nothing humiliating matters.

Reaching Beyond Ourselves

2012-02-12T17:09:00.000-08:00

On October 28th, 1953, in Jonesboro, Arkansas, David Ring was born dead. Thinking the infant had no chance of recovery, the doctor set him on a table in a corner of the hospital room and for eighteen minutes David’s blue body fought to come back to life. Once it did, the time lapse without oxygen left David with cerebral palsy that impaired his ability to speak and to walk.

But this was not his only obstacle.

By the time David was fourteen, he was an orphan who shuffled between families without ever having a family to call his own. Assaulted with a feeling of hopelessness, every other day for two years David attempted suicide but was never able to accomplish it. Then, at a revival meeting his sister forced him to attend, David accepted Jesus as his Savior and -- along with a new sense of self-respect concerning his physical challenges -- found his life’s calling...

A preacher.

Time and time again, David was told that he could never be used in such a way. His speech impediment was too severe; he did not possess enough control of his limbs. Despite these setbacks and partly because of them, David did not relinquish his calling. In 1973 he began sharing his testimony at various churches and today is a nationally-known speaker who each year speaks with over 100,000 people not only at churches, but conventions, schools, and major corporate events.

This morning, as I sat in the congregation and listened to this man speak, I was awestruck. Honestly, I thought that someone who had been through as much as David Ring would be an inspiration to listen to, but I did not expect to be entertained. His sense of humor was pitch perfect and had the audience laughing to the point of tears. After talking about how cerebral palsy was a blessing because he was the only man in the world with four children who had never changed one diaper, he said that every day he thanked the Lord for giving him cerebral palsy because without it he would not have such a platform on which to speak.

Having learned of Whitney Houston’s passing last night, I realized that her talent had been her downfall, but David Ring’s tragedy had been his triumph. Whitney experienced incalculable wealth and fame in her forty-eight years. She was known for her beauty and for her voice that captured the attention of the world. Despite these achievements, in the end they could not bring her happiness.

David Ring, at fifty-eight, is not a wealthy man. When invited to a church, he does not inquire about the size of the congregation to calculate what the offerings will be. Instead, he goes where he feels led and prays that the Lord will take care of his family’s needs in the process. Due to his physical limitations, David is not very pleasing to look at or to hear. Yet this morning he exuded such joy as he stood up behind that pulpit, waved his limp arms back and forth, and said as a means of encouraging the congregation to do more, “I have cerebral palsy, what’s your problem?”

What was my problem, indeed.

Here was a man whose entire life had been burdened with challenges and still he continued to reach out to others instead of focusing on himself. Because of this perspective, David Ring had found true joy that lasted far longer than any euphoria brought on by wealth, beauty, or fame.

What a challenge. What a challenge to us all.

Who is someone who challenges you to reach out to others instead of focusing on yourself, and how have you risen to that challenge?

To learn more about David Ring, visit http://www.davidring.org/

A Prison Cell Called Home

2012-02-05T17:29:00.000-08:00

Seventeen days until my daughter’s estimated arrival, yet she has no idea the transformation about to take place. As her body daily expands with the insulating fat that will sustain her, I can feel every ripple of her limbs in the ever-shrinking globe of my womb, and this movement makes me long to hold her, to trace her tiny features that she has inherited from either her father or from me. But I am sure our daughter does not feel the same anticipation surrounding our meeting as her parents.

Although she can hear the cymbal-like clash of pans as I cook or leaps whenever Randy, my husband, pats the tiny protrusion of her bottom or knees, she has no concept of the world she is about to inhabit. I am sure if given a choice she would remain in that cozy cavern rather than being ejected into such a frightening expanse where, for the first time, she will feel cold, hunger, and pain. Why should she trust me or trust her father to care for her? She has never seen either of us, and I am sure our voices, though familiar, are distorted in the jetsam of other mysterious sounds.

The more I contemplate the stark elements our unborn daughter will soon face, the more I compare it to Jack’s experience in Emma Donoghue’s novel, Room. The story’s harsh premise -- a kidnapped woman who bears and raises the child her captor fathered -- softens through the eyes and voice of five-year-old Jack. Since his birth, his mother has shielded him from the reality of their entrapment by convincing Jack that their life in that prison cell is the entire world; that no life exists beyond it. But once Jack and “Ma” escape, Jack is horrified to realize that the world is far larger than that 11 x 11 room.

Raindrops striking Jack’s face, syrup on pancakes, walking down stairs, grass beneath his feet: all these things fascinate and terrify Jack almost to an equal extent. Because he has never understood that he and his mother were cruelly confined, he wants to return to the safety and predictability that 11 x 11 foot room represents and cannot understand why Ma does not want to join him.

Over time, though, Ma agrees to return with Jack -- and with the addition of police escorts -- to the now emptied room. Jack then realizes while looking around that cramped space he once considered cozy that his worldview has changed and expanded, and he is grateful to leave Room although for months his every thought was of his return.

How often do we view our lives with the same perspective of an unborn child or five-year-old Jack? We relish in the familiar as it does not evoke fear and will often do whatever it takes to keep our 11 x 11 foot worlds spinning in perfect orbit. We cling to darkness because we do not know what it means to step into the light; we remain stunted by destructive choices because we do not want to lose that which should've never been gained; we continue walking down a path we should have never traveled because we cannot imagine what it will take to turn back around.

But imagine if my unborn daughter in seventeen days decided that she was never going to come out; that she was going to spend the rest of her life trapped in the cozy cavern of my womb rather than being ejected into such a frightening expanse where, for the first time, she will feel cold, hunger, and pain. Imagine all of the experiences she would miss -- her mother’s first caress, her father’s tears splashing on her cheek, the warmth and comfort of her grandma’s hug -- if she chose to remain stunted by the familiar. Imagine how different Jack’s life would be had he remained in that 11 x 11 foot room and not chosen to return to the life found outside it.

So, dear reader, take courage in the fact that you are not alone. Many have chosen to remain in prison cells of their own making because they fear what life will be like on the outside. But sometimes what we fear doing the most is exactly what we should do. During the “birthing” process, you will probably experience fierce cold, hunger, and pain. But you will also experience a freedom unlike anything you have ever imagined, and you will find that life is far more beautiful beyond the confines of that prison cell you have made into a home.

"Can You Hear Me Now?"

2012-01-29T18:41:00.000-08:00

Unaccustomed to a vehicle that doesn’t rattle apart at 65 miles per hour and with the addition of the car’s butter leather interior and electric butt warmers, I felt like a queen as my new Subaru glided onto the interstate behind my husband’s Jeep.

The euphoria did not last long.

We had barely made it out of the city where we had purchased the vehicle when a pebble kicked up behind my husband’s rear tire and cracked my windshield. The crack was only about the size of my thumbnail, but it was in my line of vision and my jubilant mood quickly turned sour.

I tried calling my husband’s cell phone to tell him the news and saw that I had no service. At a stop light I rolled my window down and waved my left arm. But he did not see me. We drove for about thirty more minutes when Baby Girl became bored with the scenery and decided to use my bladder like a trampoline. I pulled over at a gas station and waited for Randy to put on his right blinker. Thinking that he had seen me, I parked and trotted into the gas station. I used the restroom, refilled my water bottle and purchased a granola bar--taking my time as I was in no hurry to cram my seven-month-pregnant stomach behind a steering wheel.

When I came outside, I looked right and I looked left, but Randy’s vehicle was nowhere. I didn’t panic too badly as I figured he was parked up the road waiting for me. Climbing into the car, I pulled out of the gas station and drove for a few miles while keeping my eyes peeled for his white Jeep.

Nothing.

I still did not have any cell phone service and did not know how to get home from that location, so I swerved across two lanes of traffic into a seedy-looking gas station and walked across the parking lot. Feeding quarters into the pay phone, I listened to the operator requesting for me to “please hang up and try again.” I did as she suggested, but the pay phone still wouldn't work.

My heart started pounding. I searched the road again for Randy’s white Jeep. In the turning lane there was one exactly like his, but when the light turned green and the vehicle pulled out of the glare of the setting sun, I saw it was being driven by a blue-haired lady with a beehive hairdo.

Definitely not my husband.

Trying to squelch my fear, I waddled back toward my vehicle while sticking out my stomach as a means of soliciting compassion and asked a nice-looking lady if I could use her cell phone. She asked what the number was and punched it in. Clenching it in her hand in case I had a hormonal inclination to snatch it, she placed it on speakerphone and we both listened as it went straight to my husband’s voicemail.

He had no service either.

I thanked her and returned to my new car with the butter leather interior and cracked windshield. Oblivious to both, I cranked the engine and pulled back onto the road.

I drove to the first gas station where I had gotten separated from Randy, rested my head on the steering wheel and began to cry. Even more frustrated by my sniveling than the situation, I hissed at myself to get a grip and marched into the gas station. I asked the attendant if he had a map that I could borrow. He mumbled something and pointed to the back wall. I walked back there and looked at the map that was not the shape of the state I was expecting.

“I’m in Kentucky?!” I cried right as a burly guy exited the restroom and gave me a scared look.

Once back in my car, I started driving north while praying I would miraculously download a mental GPS that would navigate me home. I drove east while blinking back tears and wiping my sweaty hands on the leather seat. I drove west while yelling at myself for my stupidity and threatening to chuck my cell phone out the window for not having any service. While driving south, I accidentally hit my windshield wipers when assaulting the steering wheel but did not know how to turn them off.

Peering through my windshield through a haze of hysterical tears, I saw my husband’s dusty white Jeep parked next to the pay phone that I had tried to call him from forty-five minutes before. His driver’s side door was standing wide and he had the phone crunched between his ear and shoulder while I am sure he listened to that operator requesting for him to “please hang up and try again.”

Laying on the horn with a mixture of relief and panic that he would leave before I could cross the two lanes of traffic, Randy turned and saw me in our "new" Subaru Forester with the wipers whipping back and forth across a cracked, completely dry windshield.

Over an hour and a half had past since we’d become separated from each other. With our reunion, my survival mode fell away and I started crying and babbling as I jammed the vehicle into park and maneuvered my belly out from behind the steering wheel. Randy hugged me and rested one hand on my heaving stomach. I could feel his body trembling from the stress of having misplaced his wife and baby in one fell swoop.

“I thought you saw me pull over,” I sobbed. “You put on your blinker and everything.”

Randy shook his head. “No, I just looked in my rearview mirror and you were gone. I went back up to the interstate to see if I could find you.”

“I headed this way,” I said.

After my tears and Randy’s stress had subsided and we had climbed into our separate vehicles to continue the long journey home, I thought of how our separation was an analogy for the necessity of communication in marriage: We had both started in the same direction, but over time outside influences had caused us to enter upon different paths that made us lose sight of each other. Only because we had refused to continue forward until the other had been found were we able to reclaim our union.

Yep, it was a great analogy for communication in marriage, but it sure would’ve been a whole lot easier just to have cell phone service.

Shower The People You Love With Love

2012-01-22T21:03:00.000-08:00

This weekend, at my baby shower, I experienced how it must feel to eavesdrop on my own memorial service.

While I sat in a rocking chair surrounded by a heap of exquisitely wrapped pink and green gifts, my mother passed around a toilet paper roll and told the women to tear off as much as they might need. I had played games like this before and guessed that the toilet paper was either going to span my stomach and the person closest to the correct circumference would win a prize or for every square of toilet paper the unlucky lady took, she was going to have to dispense baby advice. Surprisingly enough, neither of those things happened; instead, the women were simply asked to share how they knew me. My girlfriends from high school were there along with those who remembered when I was two years old and scrambling across a restaurant tabletop (some things never change), so the memories were as variegated as the people telling them.

As I continued to listen to these precious loved ones reveal how our lives had intertwined, I began to feel undeserving of such warmth and attention. This discomfort only increased as one young friend tore at her toilet paper pile and whispered that I was just so sweet. Don’t get me wrong, I was deeply touched by her sensitive spirit that overlooked all the times her older sister and I would make her feel unwelcome whenever she dared step foot in the room where we were listening to music while discussing the mystery surrounding the opposite sex. But I had to wonder: What if I would have invited that willowy teenager into my life back when she was a smiling, freckle-faced five-year-old? I could only swallow around my regret as I briefly imagined the deep relationship the two of us, a decade later, would now have.

Although listening to my friends’ kind words caused me to become painfully aware of the many times I have failed in keeping up with these friendships that have so enriched and even altered my life, I also realized what a blessing it was to hear their kind words while still alive. In our society, we do not often sit around and tell someone what he or she means to us until he or she is truly gone. We tell our spouses and our children that we love them, but we do not take the time to tell them why we love them; why he or she has so enriched and altered our lives. For all of our means of communication, sometimes our modern world does not communicate very clearly at all. We are so concerned with keeping up with our social media accounts that we fail to keep up with each other.

So, as I drove home through the fog with the backseat piled high with baby gifts, I vowed just like that old James Taylor song that I was going to shower the people I love with love and tell them why I love them; why they have so enriched and altered my life. For we never know when this life may leave us, and we do not want to wait until a memorial service to celebrate a life beautifully lived when the one who made that life so beautiful is already gone.

What event in your life -- wedding, anniversary, birth, funeral -- caused you to pause and reflect on the loved ones in your life and how much they mean to you?

Marriage Does Not Mean Seeing Eye To Eye

2012-01-15T16:19:00.000-08:00

My husband and I often do not see eye to eye, and that is not just because of our twelve inch height difference.

I have a weakness for wrapping babies like little burritos until their scrunched, reddened faces are the only things peeping out. I myself have always been fond of tight spaces; some of my best childhood memories involve my family’s fourteen hour road trips to our relatives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where I sat in the backseat of the wood-sided station wagon while piled beneath brightly-wrapped Christmas presents and a Tupperware container heaped with jelly nut cookies and sand tarts (between my brother and me, they never lasted past Virginia). I would think that just having come from the cozy, dark cavern of the womb, an infant would have a similar attachment to cramped quarters, but my husband, Randy, does not agree.

You must understand, my husband cannot wear the beautiful sweaters I keep optimistically purchasing for him because the long sleeves make his burly forearms feel trapped. Whenever we go to sleep, no matter how crisply I have tucked the sheets around the mattress, Randy must kick them out with his feet so that his toes can breathe. I, on the other hand, love to burrow down beneath so many quilts and pillows, Randy will often end up cuddling with our down comforter while thinking it is his wife (considering I am five and a half weeks from giving birth, this is an honest mistake).

Burrito-baby swaddling is not the only area where Randy and I differ. For all of my relentless questions (What if my water breaks in public? What if my pelvis’s fused? What if I don’t dilate? What if I can’t nurse? What if the baby has colic?), I am actually pretty relaxed when it comes right down to the moment I have been dreading as I figure everything’s now out of my hands and must work itself out.

My husband is a wee bit more proactive.

Case in point: Two nights ago Randy and I were getting ready for bed when he whipped out his handy dandy cell phone and began timing my “contractions.” I started laughing until the cell phone’s glow illuminated his furrowed brow and I realized this was no laughing matter. At my standard checkup the week before, the midwife had taken my high blood pressure and the baby’s irregular heartbeat into account and believed I might be having premature contractions. After fifteen agonizing minutes hooked up to a fetal heart rate and contraction monitor, the midwife realized my “contractions” were really just from our feisty baby girl kicking against the contraction band.

When I called my husband upon leaving the birthing center to tell him about my first experience with labor, I did not start out by telling him that all was now well. Oh, no...coming from someone who loves hearing a good story as well as telling it, I had to run down through the blood pressure debacle and the warm goop the midwife had squirted on my stomach; the monitor thing they attached to my stomach that looked like something from The Matrix and sitting there while not knowing if an ambulance was about to be called. By the time five minutes had passed, I could hear Randy’s own blood pressure starting to rise even through the phone.

“So everything’s all right?” he asked.

Deflated that he had rushed my dramatic narrative, I just said, “Yeah.”

I believe this histrionic tendency might have upped my husband’s proactive level as every night he is now practicing timing the duration and frequency of my “contractions,” and every morning making a quart of raspberry leaf tea infused with stevia and honey that I am to drink to prepare my body for labor. For the past few days he has also been instructing me to compile the numbers we need if case I actually do go into labor.

“Eh,” I waved my hand, “I got six weeks to go.”

“So you’re gonna wait ’til you’re giving birth to find out who to call?”

Sighing, I grabbed my cell phone and scrolled down through the numbers for the women’s center. “I have the number already in here,” I said, feeling all high and mighty.

“You’re sure?” Randy folded his arms and raised an eyebrow.

“Sure I’m sure. See--” I hit the green button and pressed the phone against my ear. “Since it’s after hours, they’ll just give me the extension for the midwife on call.”

The phone rang and rang. I listened to the voicemail in English, then in rapid-fire Spanish. Sure enough, it mentioned something about an extension, but I was supposed to have that party’s number on hand.

Turning off the phone, I smiled through tight lips. “Now that I think about it, I think they might’ve given me those numbers a while back, but I lost them when I lost my notebook.”

Randy just looked at me. He didn’t have to say a word.

Another area where my husband and I differ is the way to decorate the nursery. If it were up to Randy, our daughter would be sleeping in a padded white room that looked like she was a candidate for one who flew over the cuckoo nest. Everything would be incredibly sterile and sparse, and she would be sleeping on a white crib with a thin white mattress and a breathable white sheet carefully scrunched up around her calves so her little precious piggies could breathe.

I do not like sterile or sparse; I like texture and color and pizzazz. After pointing out that Randy cannot really see color anyway due to his color blindness, I finally talked him into painting the ceiling the same pale mint as the walls and purchasing the Tiffany-style light fixture that would cast unique stain-glass effects across the room (honestly, once it arrived, the only effect the light gave was a slight nauseous feeling). Randy’s really been a good sport about catering to my decorative whims, but for whatever reason he put his size twelve boot down when I told him I wanted to hang teacups from the ceiling.

“From the ceiling?!” He looked up at the nursery ceiling as if I had already hung the cups there and he had been too distracted by raspberry leaf tea-making and contraction counting to notice.

“Yeah, from the ceiling,” I said. “I saw it done at a coffee shop.”

“Well, the nursery’s not a coffee shop,” Randy said.

“I’ve already got the ribbon and everything. You just hafta trust me.”

“I don’t want to be dodging teacups every time I go in there to change her diaper.”

“Oh, you won’t,” I explained. “They’ll be hanging way, way up and they’ll be over Addie’s crib.”

Randy shook his head. “Nu-huh, you’re not hanging tea cups over my daughter’s crib. They’ll fall down and hit her in the head.”

I bit my lip and stared at the ceiling. “I have thought of that,” I admitted. “Do you think command strips would work?”

“No,” Randy said. “How can I even explain that to her? Sorry about that gigantic bruise on your forehead, honey, Mommy’s 'artistic'.”

“Fine. I’ll take the ribbon and command strips back.” I looked at that ugly stain-glass light fixture I had insisted on and smiled. “Hey!” I cried. “What if I turned this light upside down and used it like a lamp instead?”

My husband just groaned.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

2012-01-08T19:36:00.000-08:00

"We experience moments absolutely free from worry. These brief respites are called panic." ~Cullen Hightower

I was on the floor doing mandatory stretches for birthing class when I paused mid cat/cow to eavesdrop on the girl whose strident voice was asking the doula (a pregnancy support coach) about a severe pressure in her lower abdomen. Glancing up, I met my husband’s eyes and we smiled with conspiratorial slyness. Every Thursday night for the past three weeks we have had to listen to this girl worry about everything from stretch marks to constipation, and although I also struggle with fear surrounding my first child’s impending birth, at that moment I felt superior to her until she started complaining about a clicking in her pelvis whenever she walked.

“Oh, that’s great,” the doula replied. “That means your pelvis’s loosening in preparation for labor.”

Still on all fours in the sage-colored Zen room, I swiveled my pelvis from side to side then hissed up at my husband, “My pelvis won’t click. You think it’s fused?”

Randy just rolled his eyes and reached down to offer me his hand. “You’re fine,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

The next afternoon, rather than taking the elevator, I ambitiously ran up three flights of stairs to the natural birth section of the women’s health clinic and was ushered back to meet with one of the four midwives. After taking my weight, she had me sit on the examination table and took my blood pressure, then paused and took my blood pressure again. The midwife pressed the heart rate monitor to my stomach and a steady thumping filled the room. She shifted the monitor to the other side and more thumping filled the room, only faster this time. A line formed between her eyebrows, but she still tried to smile.

“Got squirrels in there?” she said.

“No, maybe twins.”

“You have had an ultrasound, right?” she joked.

The midwife listened to the heart rate for a few more minutes and said she was having a hard time distinguishing between my heart rate and my daughter’s.

I said, “I did take the stairs.”

The midwife just nodded and explained that I might be compressing a vein by lying on my back, which could be slowing the baby’s heart rate. She asked me to follow her into another room. Squirting some warm goop on my stomach, the midwife had me sit on a recliner and attached the fetal heart monitor to my stomach and wrapped a contraction band above it.

She powered on some kind of machine that immediately started spitting out a record of the baby’s fluctuating heart rate, then left the room to research the herbal concoction a mother of fifteen had given to me. I watched the red numbers on the black screen fluctuate from 110 to 150 and began to panic. I didn’t know much about the medical profession, but I did know that Addie’s heart rate had always stayed in between 140 and 160; it had never dipped that low before. My own heart rate increased as I stared down at the contraction band and wondered why the midwife had wrapped it around my stomach. I glanced around the empty room while wishing for the midwife’s return, then looked back at the contraction monitor. I didn’t know what the spike on the paper meant, but I didn’t think it was good. I started talking to my daughter, trying to calm both her and myself down.

It did not help.

They’re gonna put me on bed rest. What if I’m in labor at thirty-three weeks? What if they have to do a C-section?

My stomach rippled as Addie swam laps through the amniotic fluid, and I wondered if she was moving so much because she was in distress.

I was giving the worry wart from birthing class a run for her doula when the midwife reentered the room and picked up the paper scrolling from the machine. Her blue-green eyes grew wide. “Did you sit up?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“Did you move at all?”

Again, I shook my head.

The midwife pointed to the lower spike on the paper. “Looks like you had a contraction.”

“But I didn’t feel anything,” I said.

“Sometimes you won’t.”

The midwife stared at the machine, and we watched another contraction spike being etched out on the paper. She knelt before me and gently kneaded her fingertips into my stomach.

“You're not tight,” she said.

Right then Addie shifted beneath the contraction band and the midwife smiled naturally for the first time since my visit began. “She was pushing it up,” the midwife explained. “That’s why the shape of the contraction’s all wrong.”

“What about her heart rate?” I asked. “It’s never been so up and down before.”

“But look here,” the midwife said, pointing at the lowest point of the numbers. “Her heart rate has a good base line; it doesn’t degress at all.”

Just to be on the safe side, the midwife kept me hooked up to the monitor for a few more minutes and checked my blood pressure again. Everything looked fine, but as I descended the three flights of stairs on shaky legs, I realized how blessed my pregnancy has been and that I would never, ever again judge the girl from my birthing class for her strident voice or for her worry.

Experienced mothers to us expectant ones: What were your biggest pregnancy fears and how did you conquer them?

On the Precipice

2012-01-01T17:09:00.000-08:00

As I stand on the precipice of 2012, I find that my entire life is changing as rapidly as my body is altering its form, yet I do not fear a thing. Part of it might be due to the crisp air swathing these Smoky Mountains like gauze or the smell of wood smoke permeating this tiny cabin tucked against the rocky cleft. Part of it might be from the warm sourdough bread bowls filled with creamy Thai soup or the hot chocolate whose chips have been melted and milk frothed on the stove just like grandma used to do. Part of this peace might come from the lack of outside interference: no Internet, TV only for movies like Little Women or Romeo & Juliet, cell phone reception only if you remain outside. Part of it might be due to my daughter who is unfurling inside my womb like a flower, and I can feel every brush of her tiny petal hands against the stems of my ribs. Part of it might be due to the absence of my precious husband and how that absence only solidifies my love for him and for our growing family.

No matter what is causing this peace to reside in my heart even as I am standing at the beginning of the New Year -- a new year that, in a few short weeks, is going to bring with it the overwhelming beauty of motherhood -- I am tremendously grateful. My only hope as this year ventures forth is that I give it everything I have. That I do not allow these 365 days to slip into the void without reaching out to others and reaching beyond myself. That I do not allow the gifts I have been bestowed to become tarnished by lack of use. That I love with every fiber within my spirit and forgive with every morsel of my flesh. That I quench my tongue when I want to scald someone with a sarcastic reply. That I dig deeper into what it means to die even while I live. That I become a better wife, a better mother (although I do not know what being a mother entails), a better daughter, and a better friend.

So, I challenge you to step away from yourself and step away from it all, to be alone with the creation and with the Creator, to unplug from the Internet, from the TV, from your smart phones and your iPods. Allow a bubbling stream or the piercing cry of a red-tailed hawk to be your only interference and see where this year -- where this life -- is destined to take you. When you come back down out of the mountain and reenter the hustle and bustle of the daily nine-to-five, you will see everything with a clearer vision than you had before, and you will see the people around you and the stories that have haunted and changed their lives with a purer, more patient intent than you have before.

Step away from it all; step outside of yourself and see what beckons to your soul from just over that crisp, mountainous horizon.

What changes are you hoping to make in 2012?

How did you usher in the New Year: with a party or quiet and contemplation?

Here's the book I recommend to start these 365 days off right: Praying for Strangers

Towanda!

2011-12-26T07:20:00.000-08:00

Whenever I wake up to go to the bathroom (again), and look over at my husband blissfully sleeping on his stomach with one leg hiked up like he’s leaping hurdles in his dreams, I feel like taking the gigantic pillow I use as a prop for my aching back and hitting him in the head. Whenever people look at my belly and murmur, “Seven months?! But you’re so small!” I envision duct-taping a watermelon to their stomach and forcing them to lug it around for weeks on end, and then letting them tell me just how “small” fifteen pounds actually is.

But the crazy part is, this fearsome aggression has extended even beyond pregnancy.

Two weekends ago, the stray dog we would officially keep if she didn’t have a fetish for nibbling on little old ladies’ ankles, was attacked by our neighbor’s four sheep dogs while hunting on our land. The dog, Dingo, is about the size of a fox and has no way to defend herself against a pack that size. When my husband -- who was outside working on our well -- saw what was happening, the oldest dog out of the four had Dingo in her jaws and was shaking her back and forth, trying to crack her neck. My husband took off running and yelling, but the dog still wouldn’t release ours. He threw his drill at the dog and missed, which I was later disappointed about (see what I mean?), but the dog was spooked and released Dingo from her jaws.

I didn’t know any of this had happened until I went for my daily walk and saw that Dingo’s coat was matted with saliva and Randy explained the incident. Immediately, this empowering fury surged through my veins, and I snapped, “Well, I’m gonna go up there and give [insert neighbor’s name] a piece of my mind!”

That sentence, which I have threatened pretty often in the past trimester and a half, is always guaranteed to make my husband turn white. Randy shook his head. “That’s not going to change what happened,” he said. “Plus, it’s not like [insert neighbor’s name] can do anything about it.”

“But [insert neighbor’s name] needs to know what his [or her] dogs are capable of!” I cried. “He [or she] always told me they would never hurt a fly!”

My husband sawed off a three foot piece of PVC pipe and passed it to me. “Here,” he said, “this’ll keep them away.”

Wielding that PVC pipe like a baseball bat, I went trucking up the road with my pregnant belly swaying like a metronome monitoring my wrath. Dingo was obviously unharmed as she pricked alongside me with a drooling grin and wagging tail, but that did not matter: nobody dares lay a finger on my husband, my babies, or my strays!

As soon as I crested the hill, the four dogs came running down from the house while barking and snarling as they have every day for the past two years, but this time they did not come close enough to hit (which I would’ve only done out of self-defense, I swear). Still, one of these walks I’m hoping the mongrels will come chomping after me or Dingo when my pockets just-so-happen to be weighted down with more throwing stars and nunchucks than Le Femme Nikita.

Maybe then I’ll get lucky.

Last week, I drove to Green Hills to have lunch with some dear writer friends. While driving past Cookeville, I briefly contemplated running my Jeep through the carwash, but figured the pouring rain would surely mask the eight months’ of grime accumulated from gunning it up and down our pot-hole ridden dirt road.

Of course, the rain stopped right outside the swanky part of Nashville. I am used to driving vehicles that teeter on the brink of clunkers and even take a certain amount of pride in having driven, during college, a $500 ex-gangster Beretta with peeling tinted windows and chrome rims worth more than the car itself, but this was a nice restaurant (the kind of restaurant that has reading glasses on hand if you can’t read the menu), and I felt a little car-conscious as I circled my rattling Jeep around and around the parking lot, trying to wedge it into a space.

After wasting seconds I did not have to spare, I cried out in triumph when I saw a parking space in between a bran-spanking new BMW that was parked sideways and a champagne-colored SUV. I knew I could make it work; what I didn’t know was if I could get out of my vehicle once I had parked it. My mind briefly flashed with the image of me trying to wedge my watermelon stomach through an opening that was three inches wide, but I rationalized that Baby Girl’s gonna have to get used to those tight fits and it might be good for her to get in some practice.

I didn’t think much of it when the owner of the Beemer exited her vehicle after grabbing some Christmas presents from the backseat, but then she stood there in her clunky high heels and frizzy red hair and just watched me! Granted, I look like a kid since I can’t see very far over the steering wheel and my Jeep is a little worse for our pot-hole ridden road, but I wasn’t the one who had parked sideways!

I could feel that empowering fury surging through my veins again, which I imagine makes my skin turn green and muscles bulge beneath my stretchy-band pants, and I knew that my pregnancy aggression had taken over. Angling my rearview mirror, I watched an expression of repulsion slither across the woman’s features, and it was all I could do not to sideswipe my crusty Jeep down the length of her slick Beemer.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I unspooled my scarf from sweaty neck and whipped off my seatbelt. I pushed the button to lower my window (yes, my Jeep has automatic windows; it’s not entirely luxury-free) and leaned out. Looking that sneering woman right in her carefully made-up face, I smiled with my teeth oozing saccharine sweetness and said, “You wanna straighten your car up for me?”

The woman gestured to the truck beside her car while using the Christmas present. “I can’t,” she whined. “I’d have no room to get out.”

No room to get out! Your stomach’s not carrying a fifteen pound watermelon!

Although these two sentences roared through my head, I did not utter them. Instead, I just nodded, pushed my window back up, and surged my Jeep forward without being as careful about her BMW as I had been before.

It took three minutes to maneuver my belly through that three inch space in between her vehicle and mine. I was hoping the woman would still be there watching me whenever I finally did squeeze out through, but of course she was gone.

I think it probably had something to do with all that fire shooting from my eyes.

The Christmas Cactus

2011-12-19T08:48:00.000-08:00

At the end of June, one of the two 6 x 8 window panes in my husband’s and my apartment imploded from the torrential power of straight-line winds. Glass, acting like pieces of shrapnel, gouged the wood in our kitchen floor and table and decapitated the row of plants beneath the shattered window. The plants’ chopped leaves were blown as far as the glass shards (the latter were discovered beneath our office door), and rain lashed through the hole where glass used to be, fluttering the few blinds that had survived the blast. The wind’s force shoved up numerous tiles of the apartment’s drop-down ceiling, exposing streamers of pink insulation that looked like decorations for an end of the world party.

For days afterward, my husband and I wore shoes to avoid stepping on glass woven into the fabric of the carpet and found specks of potting soil in the oddest places: microwave, fridge, cabinets, and stove. As we put our apartment and our life back together, I found that what I mourned the most was not the mutilated kitchen table that had been a wedding gift from my in-laws or the kitchen floor that was spongy and warped from the water that had saturated too deeply into the boards to dry, but the house plants I had kept alive through four years of college and numerous week-long road trips, through attacks of spiders mites and aphids. In one fell swoop, over half of them were destroyed, so I carried the mortally wounded plants down to our store’s warehouse and unceremoniously dumped them into the industrial-sized trashcan. I was about to toss the Christmas cactus that had been a gift from my mother when I lifted the severed leaves and peered down at the plant’s base. Although the potting soil sparkled with glass and over half the plant had been squashed flat, I realized that the cactus might be salvageable. I plucked glass pieces from its leaves and soil and watered the pot in the store’s sink. I then carried it back up to our apartment and set it in front of the other 6 x 8 window pane that was not boarded up from the implosion and decided it was up to the cactus to either perish or survive . . .

To read more, visit me at Kellie Elmore's beautiful blog, Magic in the Backyard, where she graciously invited me to share my guest post.

Review of Pamela Beason's Berkley Prime Crime Mystery, ENDANGERED

2011-12-11T20:08:00.000-08:00

Endangered, the first mystery in Pamela Beason’s absorbing new series released in December 2011 by Berkley Prime Crime, focuses on the female Indiana Jonesesque protagonist Summer “Sam” Westin whose high-tech freelance job allows her to combine her love for photography and wildlife biology. But when Sam returns to a national park in Utah to do a story on the family of cougars she helped rehabilitate and a three-year-old boy disappears, Sam’s story quickly loses precedence as she and FBI Agent Chase Perez scour the rocky canyons for clues that the child, Zachary Fischer, is still alive.

As the hours pass into days and no trace of the boy is found besides his red tennis shoe and toy truck, the media latches onto the theory proposed by Sam Westin’s high-profile news anchor boyfriend that the rehabilitated cougars might be responsible for Zachary’s disappearance and death. Tensions soar as hunters illegally descend upon the park to dispose of the cougars -- forcing the park rangers to choose between their continued search for the child and their maintenance of campground safety -- and a ransom note is sent to Zachary Fischer’s parents demanding fifty grand. Although the FBI captures the two high school boys the same night they pick up the ransom money, the mystery escalates as the boys reveal that they were to receive a cut of the money from a shaggy-haired man whose description closely resembles the missing boy’s father.

Frustrated by the media's hasty conclusions and her own plethora of dead-end clues, Sam Westin decides to take the boy’s disappearance into her own hands by journeying into Utah’s rugged high country completely alone--that is, until handsome FBI Agent Chase Perez destroys her solitude and her focus by choosing to accompany her.

From Sam and Chase’s moonlit hike across Rainbow Bridge, a tight-walker strip of limestone that spans the width of the canyon, to their rappelling into a crevice where “bands of pastel-colored rock rippled down like flowing curtains,” Beason draws upon her own experiences as a private investigator and wilderness adventurer to conjure forth Coyote Charlie -- a free-spirited vagabond who roams the cliff sides and howls up at the night sky along with the coyotes -- as vividly as the ancient ruins of The Anasazi:

The walls of the ruins were stacked sandstone, some still chinked with red mud mortar. A two-story town house stretched up to meet the limestone ceiling of the overhang. Tiger stripes of black desert varnish cascaded down from the arch above onto the buildings, furthering the illusion that the ruins were an overgrowth of the cliff.

Packed with as much poetic descriptions of nature as it is with suspense, Pamela Beason’s Endangered is a fast-paced mystery sure to leave readers in awe of the wilderness even as they peer into its tangled undergrowth, searching for either the cougar or kidnapper's glowing eyes.

To read more about Pamela Beason, click here.

To order Endangered, click here.

To visit with Pamela on Twitter, click here.

The Great Mystery

2011-12-04T19:55:00.000-08:00

It is impossible to imagine what our child will be like coming from parents so starkly contrasted in both personality and looks. I’ll go so far as to squint at my husband -- attempting to transplant his square shoulders and mountain-man scruffies onto a baby girl with my coloring and pointed chin -- and I get stuck.

“What?” he asks. “Got something on my face?”

Then I try to figure out the amalgam between Randy’s introverted personality and my own, which at times has been compared to a hyperactive golden retriever, and the same thing happens. What kind of child can be created from one parent who rates meeting new people right up there with the Apocalypse and one parent who considers the checkout girl at Wal-Mart to be a potential best friend?

Even the way my husband and I cook is polar opposite. I believe recipes are mere suggestions whereas Randy adheres to every teaspoon and pinch as if his culinary soul depends upon it. He always keeps a damp cloth handy so he can wipe down the stovetop if a speck of food dare leap from the pan to mar its shiny black surface, and every item is immediately returned to the cupboard as soon as my husband finishes uses it. The first five seconds I cook are as organized and calm as a Martha Stewart production. But when dinner hits the table fifteen minutes later, I am wearing an apron made from whatever mystery ingredients were involved and the walls around the oven resemble a Jackson Pollock canvas.

I am also slightly disheveled when it comes to home repairs. Eight years ago I traveled with my husband’s family to Bogota, Colombia, where we painted an entire floor of an orphanage. By the time we left two weeks later, my skin was coated with more sea-foam green than the walls. My husband seems to be scarred from this memory. I don’t know if he doesn’t want his wife looking like a knockoff version of the Wicked Witch of the West or if he fears for our home, but he always plugs his ears and hums whenever I bring up a project involving paint, glitter, hammers, or caulk.

I would love for Baby Girl to adore the arts like I do -- to play the cello, read Shakespeare by candlelight, and wear long prairie skirts and feathered earrings -- but as far as business smarts are concerned, I hope she takes after Daddy.

This week we drove to Knoxville to look at a new vehicle since my Jeep has been on its last tire for the past decade. As my husband pulled into the used car parking lot, I said, “You offered below the asking price, right?”

Randy nodded.

“What did he say?”

“He’d take it.”

“I knew it!” I swatted the dashboard. “We shoulda offered less. He’s obviously chomping at the bit to sell.”

Randy shook his head. “We’re already offering a thousand below the asking price, we certainly can’t ask lower now.”

I agreed, but if my husband hadn’t been there, I still would’ve tried dickering with the salesman even after coming to an agreement over the phone. As it was, that salesman just didn’t feel like giving me any more of his time when I finished looking at the car we had traveled an hour and a half to see and wanted to test drive another just for fun. I think it had something to do with how I'd pointed out every minute imperfection on the first car’s body and said -- so that the higher ups in the offices could hear -- that the vehicle looked like it had hail damage.

Hopefully, Baby Girl will take after Daddy when it comes to keeping her mouth shut, too.

Author Renea Winchester Proves "Stress-Free Marketing" Is Not An Oxymoron

2011-11-27T20:13:00.000-08:00

Shortly after Renea Winchester released her award winning book, In the Garden with Billy: Lessons About Life, Love & Tomatoes, she realized that publication was just the first rung on the ladder of writing success. Whether a book was traditionally or self-published, in the end the author's job was for that book to reach its target market. Winchester realized that though there were books ranging from landing a literary agent to hammering through writer’s block, no books gave marketing advice for newly published authors. Thus, the idea for her book, Stress-Free Marketing: Practical Advice for the Newly Published Author was born.

Saddened by numerous writers whose basements were flooded with unsold, self-published books, Winchester wanted to write a book that not only answered the questions facing inexperienced authors, but to answer these questions in a way that was informative yet easy to understand. Stress-Free Marketing accomplishes just that. With marketing advice so practical it should be commonsense such as, “The first step is to get out from behind the computer, unplug from Facebook and get into [book]stores,” to a precise breakdown of publishing acronyms like LCCN (Library of Congress Catalog Number), which allows libraries to identify books in their systems, Stress-Free Marketing is an entertaining instruction manual that places the power of book sales back into hardworking authors’ hands.

“Every author has a choice when faced with rejection: give up, or continue pressing forward," Stress-Free Marketing says. "Only those who continue to press are rewarded with publication.” Winchester does not hold back when sharing her own struggle to break into the strongbox of the publishing industry. After sending independent booksellers e-mails including blurbs for her book, a synopsis, website links, and a PDF of the book’s cover, Winchester believed that her professional stance would incite their response.

Rather than being setback when nothing happened, Winchester surged forward and -- while armed with business attire and a warm smile -- personally visited each buyer of these local bookstores. It only took two minutes for Winchester to convey her determination to make her book a success, and after following up this face-to-face interaction with a “snail mail” thank you note that included pertinent book information including the ISBN number and retail price, each bookseller eventually responded and now keeps her book in stock.

Renea Winchester's candid suggestion when faced with a bad book review, “Don’t call your mother in search of sympathy. What’s done is done. Instead, grab a container of double chocolate chip ice cream and a large spoon. Enter the closet and lock yourself inside,” is just the kind of kick-in-the-pants advice a fledgling author needs, yet the closing chapter of the book asks the reader to repeat:

I am ready.

I am ready to invest time developing a marketing plan.

I am ready to incorporate ideas and create a niche market and platform.

I am ready to introduce myself to strangers then cultivate and nurture these newfound friendships.

I am ready to step into the unknown with courage and confidence.

I am ready to be the next fresh new voice of the publishing world.

I am ready.

Through the suggestions and encouragement provided in Winchester's Stress-Free Marketing: Practical Advice for the Newly Published Author, I feel like I am ready to climb another rung on the ladder of writing success.

Now, writer, the question is: Are you?

To learn more about Renea Winchester or to order her book, click here.

Some Experiences Are Better In Hind Sight

2011-11-22T08:10:00.000-08:00

Once my husband and I married, I decided to join him on his annual hunting trip to Wisconsin. I piled the floorboard at my feet with my laptop and books and we made the thirteen-hour drive. As we drew closer to the dairy farm where Randy’s relatives lived, the marshy flatlands rose up to rolling fields crop-striped dull yellow and green. A majority of the farmhouses had coils of steel-gray smoke twisting from their chimneys, and the only color decorating that fall landscape came from the red barns, navy Harvester silos, and bright orange hunting gear the men (and women!) had snapped to the clothesline to disperse their own human scent.

The opening morning of buck season, my husband flipped on the lights while outside the sky was still dark and the Wisconsin wind howling and scrambled into his camo gear layered over with orange. Putting on enough clothing that I resembled the Abominable Snowman, I stumbled downstairs while dragging my blanket and pillow like a disgruntled child.

That first year I settled into a routine. I would sleep a few hours in the cold Jeep, then awaken and type until lunchtime when I ate a military MRE (meal, ready to eat) and walked the waterway to help drive out deer toward my husband. Afterward, I would return to the Jeep and resume typing until dark when Randy and I would go back to his relatives' house, shower and change, then eat the meal his aunt had prepared that was worthy of Thanksgiving.

The second year did not go as effortlessly as the first. My husband parked our Jeep in an area populated by other hunters and Holstein cows. I did not know any of this was a problem until I was abruptly awakened to a sensation that I was being rocked in a cradle. But I wasn’t in a cradle; I was sleeping inside a Jeep.

Wiping the drool crusted across my face, I sat up and looked out the window to see another face staring back at me. A huge, black and white face with limpid brown eyes and a long pink tongue that licked the side mirror like a lollipop. But this wasn’t the only huge black and white face staring in at me. The entire vehicle was surrounded by cows. By so many cows I honestly feared I was going to be stampeded even while shielded inside the Jeep. Seeing this commotion from the woods, Randy’s uncle -- garbed in an orange jacket, insulated boots, and with a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder -- waved his arms and tried to shoo them away.

To this day, I believe my life is indebted to him.

The morning after my brush with a herd of curious bovines, I sat in the Jeep typing until my fingers were about to fall off. Whereas some old writers sustained themselves while chain smoking cigars or knocking back whiskey sours, I slurped on juice boxes. On so many juice boxes the floorboard was littered with them. I didn’t consume much else that morning, and I was in the middle of a cow field, surrounded by hunters who I couldn’t see except for a rare glimpse of electric orange amid a plethora of brown.

Beside a tree, there were no plumbing facilities out in those woods and after all that juice without anything to soak it up, I realized I had to use the restroom and that I had no time to make the drive back to the house.

Randy’s grandfather, Elam, was shot through both calves when he sat in the hunting camp and changed his socks, the flash of white being mistaken by a passing hunter as the tail end of a deer. Recalling this accident, I knew I was faced with a quandary: When using the restroom did I continue to wear my bright orange vest and hat so that I wasn’t shot by a hunter, or did I take it off and risk getting shot when my white tail was mistaken for an altogether different kind of Whitetail?

In the end, I chose to protect my end and wore the orange hunting cap and vest. I did roll my hair up behind the cap and strut into the woods with my hands in my pockets like a boy, hoping that Randy’s relatives wouldn’t recognize me as his wife.

Saturday, which marked Randy’s sixteenth-annual hunting trip to Wisconsin, the opening day wasn’t too eventful until my husband climbed down from his twenty-foot tripod stand, returned to the Jeep and tried to crank the engine. For hours I had been editing on my laptop that I had plugged into the power adapter, but I had taken a break at lunch and traveled back to the house to fortify myself with chili, cornbread, and a thermos of hot chocolate.

Only four hours had passed since lunch, but the Jeep battery was dead.

My husband’s cell phone was also dead, and I didn’t have his cousin’s number. So we just sat there in our Jeep parked in the middle of a dark, soggy cornfield--listening to the cold rain plinking on the windows, trying to figure out what to do.

I used my cell phone to call my sister-in-law in Tennessee, and my sister-in-law scrawled through my mother-in-law’s phone until she found the number for Randy’s uncle. We called him and Randy’s cousin came, but Randy’s cousin didn’t have any jumper cables and neither did we. We rode out of the cornfield in the cousin’s car, fetched some jumper cables at the house, then Randy and I returned in his cousin’s car to our forlorn Jeep.

It didn’t take long to jump off our vehicle, and I climbed into it and tried to drive back up the slick hillside with my husband following behind in the car. Randy had warned me that he might get stuck and that I should wait to make sure he could get out.

But when I pulled over and watched the car lights in my rearview mirror -- making sure he was indeed making it okay -- then shifted into drive again, I realized that I was the one stuck.

The tires slung mud across the field without gaining any traction. Shifting into four-wheel drive, I tried again but went nowhere. Randy pulled up in the car and ran up in the rain. Opening my door, he reached over me to shift the Jeep into a different gear, but all we heard were grinding sounds.

“Did I kill it?” I asked.

Shaking his head, Randy motioned for me to get out. I stood shivering in the rain while Randy maneuvered the Jeep out of the gulch, then I climbed behind the wheel again. I had to gun it down the valley to make it up the hill, and as I did I fishtailed all over that soggy cornfield with the cold rain plinking the windshield and my headlights barely spearing the foggy haze.

Yet the next morning, when my husband flipped on the lights while outside the sky was still dark and the Wisconsin wind howling, I still put on enough clothes to resemble the Abominable Snowman and stumbled downstairs while dragging my blanket and pillow like a disgruntled child.

Some experiences just look better in hind sight.

Review of THE SISTERS, a novel by Nancy Jensen

2011-11-13T18:10:00.000-08:00

Sacrifice misinterpreted as selfishness becomes the catalyst that drives two beloved sisters, Mabel and Bertie Fischer, apart in Nancy Jensen’s compelling, multi-generational debut novel, The Sisters, selected as the #1 Indie Next Pick for December 2011. Initially set in the rural town of Juniper, Kentucky -- where everyone’s dirty laundry is aired regardless if it’s hanging on the line or not -- Mabel’s departure with Bertie’s sweetheart on the day of Bertie’s eighth grade graduation appears to both her sister and the town as an unforgivable act.

Propelled by the betrayal of the two people she had trusted and loved the most, Bertie’s bitterness and refusal to read or answer Mabel’s numerous letters explaining her actions causes the sisters’ previously inseparable lives to remain adrift. Through the lean years of the Great Depression, the Second World War, Vietnam, to present day, Mabel and Bertie continue to grow and change without the other sister taking part in each other’s transformation from girl to woman, wife to mother.

Nancy Jensen, in unflinching prose that captures both the poetic beauty and pain of frayed familial bonds, effortlessly braids together the threads of three generations of Fischer women -- of sisters -- whose lives follow the same pattern of heartbreak and misunderstanding as Mabel and Bertie. From Bertie’s daughter Alma who yearns to be Shirley Temple in childhood so she can make everything right again and draw close to her distant mother, to Grace whose name exemplifies her ability -- unlike the other sisters -- to reach beyond her circumstances and find healing through unconditional love and art, The Sisters does not draw upon a cache of clichéd characters, but each sister is made unique in her many struggles and triumphs.

The Sisters is based on the untold story surrounding Nancy Jensen’s own grandmother whose sister was not known to the family until an announcement revealed both her existence and her death. Because Jensen was never told her grandmother's motivations for denying having a sister throughout her life, Jensen allowed her imagination to conjure forth her grandmother’s reasons and how these reasons for denying her sister’s presence might have affected not only her grandmother’s life but Jensen’s as well.

Though weighted with the hard-bitten truths surrounding dire familial misunderstandings, the ending of The Sisters conveyed through the dynamic character Grace’s eyes makes the journey over the span of eighty years and three generations of unforgettable women far worth the trip.

The Sisters: A Novel by Nancy Jensen

Available from Amazon.com

■Hardcover: 336 pages

■Publisher: St. Martin’s Press; First Edition edition (November 8, 2011)

■Language: English

■ISBN-10: 0312542704

■ISBN-13: 978-0312542702

Talk About A Rude Awakening

2011-11-06T17:19:00.000-08:00

My older brother was always the one who would wander the halls at night and was once found sleeping at the edge of the loft outside his bedroom; a ten foot fall my father had tried to prevent by shoving furniture in front of the precipice like a barricade. But my brother had just pushed this away, then curled up against the edge with his hands tucked under his chin like a child.

Railings were put up the next afternoon.

In comparison to my brother’s nocturnal misadventures, a few sentences mumbled in my sleep were really quite mild. Oh, I did have a few bouts here and there that revealed my proclivity towards drama even in dreams. When I was fifteen, during our family’s trip out West, I was sleeping against the side of the ’70s popup camper when a zipper brushed my cheek and I thought I was trapped inside a suitcase. I sat up and started frantically unzipping everything, trying to claw my way out of the camper, until my best friend put a hand on my shoulder and gently rocked me awake.

In college my roommates were often entertained by my one-sided conversations in the dark that revealed more than what I confided to them during the day, and if my roommates tried to hold a conversation with me that unveiled even more, I -- uninhibited -- would let them enter my dreams, and we would chat with each other like were discussing the weather over a pot of tea.

After I married, my sleep talking increased quite substantially. I don’t know if my bare leg kept brushing my husband’s furry one or what exactly occurred, but he and I hadn’t been hitched two months when I leapt straight up out of the covers like I had strings attached to my back and screamed, “MOUSE!”

My husband jolted upright. Blindly smacking his hands against the dresser, he finally found the lamp and pulled the string. That is when he saw his newly wedded bride with hair all over her head, a la Mr. Rochester’s mad wife, prancing in place and screaming, “Mouse! There’s a mouse!”

Not knowing any better because I hadn’t warned him that I could be dramatic in my sleep, my poor husband believed me. Plus, I seemed so awake. I was talking coherently (okay, screaming coherently), and even as a minute passed, the panicked glaze would not leave my eyes.

“Where is it?” he calmly asked.

I pointed to a clump in the bed.

Taking a deep breath, my husband charged across the covers. He pounced like Tom on Jerry, trying to trap the pesky little varmint beneath his hands, but there was nothing there.

He looked up at me. I looked down at him. “Don’t move,” I whispered. “There’s a whole nest of them!”

Groaning, my husband staggered to the top of the bed and climbed beneath the covers. “There’s no mouse,” he mumbled, pulling the pillow up around his ears. “Go to sleep.”

The next four months, although nothing could compare to the mouse incident, I did have dreams that there were puppies in our bed, spiders, and I would have fluent conversations in English or Spanish (I don't really speak Spanish) until my husband shook my shoulder and told me I was sleep talking again. But once I became accustomed to having someone share my bed (and my covers!), the talking in my sleep settled down. If I ate late or watched or read something that disturbed me, I would often solve the world's problems in my dreams, yet these episodes over two and a half years of marriage were really quite rare.

Then I got pregnant.

During the first trimester, when I could still sleep on my stomach and Baby Girl wasn’t thrashing around like a fish, I could sleep undisturbed. But the bigger she grew and the more active she became (think Thing One and Thing Two trapped in the space the size of a soccer ball), the more difficult it was to tumble into slumberland. I dreamt that Baby Girl was born as slippery as a butterball turkey, and I would keep trying to bathe her in the sink and she would shoot across the room. I dreamt that my husband and I were riding in a car that veered off the interstate and sailed across the sky. I dreamt of spiders again and after watching something on snakes, I dreamt about them, too. The more active my baby became in my womb, the more active my dreams until I awoke as tired as when my head hit the pillow.

My husband started sleeping with one eye open, his arms poised to grab even when he was half-awake, for often these dreams of bathing our child and riding in a car that could also fly were acted out until my husband feared I would lunge off the stage of our bed and hurt myself.

I had no idea how deeply my husband’s paranoia about my sleep situation ran until the other night when I stayed up late reading. I will often do this as it helps me to unwind and replenish the imaginative juices I have drained throughout the day. I love to pull the covers over my head in a creative cocoon and angle the flashlight so that the beam floods the page and splashes across the sheets, then read until my frequent yawns keep me from being able to discern the words.

I don’t know if my husband heard me clap my book closed and this awoke him, but when I started hauling my body out of bed, he bolted upright and wrapped his arms around me.

“Honey?” he rasped, thinking I was going to take a swan dive off the bed into an imaginary sea or something. "You okay?"

Laughing a little, I said, “I’m fine.”

But my husband wouldn’t let go. “You’re sure you’re awake?” he asked, somewhat skeptically.

“Yes,” I said, untwining myself from his arms. “I’ve gotta go the bathroom.”

He said, “Okay,” but he still kept one hand on my back while I got off the bed.

The next morning, when my husband and I awoke, I looked over at him and patted my stomach. “Ugh. I don’t think I’m going to sleep sound until after this baby’s born.”

He laughed. “I don’t think you’re going to sleep very sound then either.”

Groaning, I pulled the covers back over my head. Talk about a rude awakening.

You Can Take The Girl Out of The Country...

2011-10-31T12:03:00.000-07:00

My front tire’s explosion was really not as dramatic as I thought it would be. I always thought if you were going down a four-lane interstate at eighty miles an hour and your tire exploded that the steering wheel would whip out of your hands and you would lose control. I am here to say that this is not the case, but it is still very disconcerting when you simultaneously hear a blast and feel the unsteady thwhacking of shredded rubber on cement, then your nose is pricked with a scent like scorched hair.

An hour and a half later, I made it to Nashville, elbowed my way into a parking space located in the library’s claustrophobic garage, and started hoofing it up toward the Legislative Plaza so I could at least catch the last snippets of River Jordan’s reading. Perhaps I was contemplating her spiritual memoir, Praying for Strangers, which encourages us to step outside of our comfort zones and reach out to others, or maybe I was recounting the times my family and a few others had met on various streets in Nashville for church--often having three or four different homeless people join our “service” at a time. Regardless, as I walked toward the homeless man seated on a bench with a floral comforter wrapped around his legs and garbage bags clustered at his feet, I imagined the deluge of people who had hurried by him on their way to the Southern Festival of Books and determined not to be another one.

Meeting the man’s dark brown eyes, I nodded and smiled with as much cheerfulness as my harried heart could muster. The instant I was parallel with his bench, the homeless man uttered something so foul I was sure I had misunderstood him. The pace of my steps quickened as did my breathing. The homeless man called out something in my panicked wake, just loud enough for me to hear and no one else. The phrase was as equally crass as the first, so I knew I had heard both correctly.

It was mid afternoon on a busy street; I wasn’t fearful, but I still felt slimed by those words as if the homeless man had hocked them in my face. Wiping sweat from my forehead, the day’s events became magnified by the vulnerability of my pregnant state and I thought to myself with tears in my eyes, Boy, I really do not like the city.

Two weeks later to the city I returned so I could attend Literary Libations at Union Station -- a gathering that helps thwart the solitude of the writing profession -- then attend author Lisa Patton’s reading at Vanderbilt’s University Club before meeting at a restaurant with some girlfriends from high school.

I am about as geographically impaired as a June bug tethered to a string. Seriously, put a blindfold over my face and spin me around and I could get lost in my own backyard (which is pretty big, but still). Because of this I knew I would have to preprogram my GPS with all of my destinations, which I did, but there are only so many things you can prepare for.

I have been to Union Station at least a half dozen times; therefore, it really was no navigational feat when I made it without any trouble. We only stayed for one hour rather than the usual two so we could make it to Lisa Patton’s reading. Two ladies came in as we were paying for our checks and buttoning our coats who did not know about the reading and that Literary Libations was going to be cut short. Somehow it got out that I had been to the University Club before, and that the location was also programmed in my GPS. The two ladies asked if they could follow me. Having only known them for a few minutes and trying to appear professional, I did not feel like I could explain about my geographical impairment that could or could not be magnified by the color of my hair.

Instead, I let my pride overrule my common sense and I told the ladies that they could follow me. Besides, my GPS had taken me to the University Club before. What really could go wrong?

We were about to find out.

The two ladies were kind enough to drop me off at my Jeep. I ran over, cranked the engine, flicked on my lights, and tried to get my GPS to load as quickly as possible. Of course, it took forever, and we were already late to the reading. I threw some dollar bills at the parking attendant and pulled out in front of the ladies’ tan car. The light turned green. I gunned it, not even paying attention to the fact that the vehicle on the other side of the street had the right of way. Swallowing, I looked into my rearview mirror. The poor people following me were probably already terrified of my driving and we hadn’t traveled one hundred feet. I dried my sweaty palms on my dress and listened to my GPS directing me down the convoluted roads.

Then my GPS did the unthinkable: it flashed black and red and said it was going to power off in twelve seconds. My desperation was so intense that I felt like I was in a James Bond movie; that once those twelve measly seconds were up, my Jeep was going to explode. I hit the GPS. I contemplated calling it bad names and threatening to chuck it out the window, but then -- according to Baby Center -- Baby Girl can now hear Mommy’s voice.

I wiggled the charger in the smoke thing. I hit it. I gave it such a look it knew the virulent words running through my mind although I did not say them. Regardless of my attempts, it shut off. Just like that, I had lost what little navigational prowess I had, and these two ladies I did not know were following me, trusting me to lead them like Moses through the desert of the city although I did not know where in the world to go.

I whipped my Jeep into a parking lot, and the other ladies pulled in, too.

“My GPS stopped charging,” I explained, trying to keep panic from my voice. “Put it in your car, then you can lead.”

The ladies were at first reluctant to do this, but I insisted. I knew the Vanderbilt University Club was located near Vanderbilt Hospital (I know, I know; you stand in awe of my critical thinking), but I couldn’t remember how to get there from where we were. They plugged my GPS into their own smoke thing and powered it on. I hit the University Club under favorites, and it seemed that all was good to go.

They turned around and pulled out into the street, and I was relieved that I was no longer leading. Then a group of people all wearing Predator hockey jerseys walked right in front of my Jeep like they actually trusted me not to hit them. Frantically, I tried to keep my eyes trained on the tan car, but I lost them in the visual tangle of vehicles, Predator jerseys, and taillights. I knew I could not just pull out or blast my horn, forcing the people to scatter for their lives, but I contemplated it. The crowd cleared; I squealed my Jeep out into the street and tried to remember which way the GPS was directing me before it had powered off. I turned down a street, but hadn’t gone a block when I knew I was in the wrong direction. I turned around, hoping to see the tan car again.

Nothing.

Three blocks later, I was even more lost and more frazzled, and the author reading was going to be over in twenty minutes. It was so late I was embarrassed to still attend the reading, but I was hoping I would run into the ladies there and retrieve my confounded GPS. I called my best friend who lives near Nashville. She navigated me to the hospital, and I yelled out the window to Vanderbilt students who gave me a slightly scared look, then directed me to the University Club.

Parking haphazardly, I sprinted into the brick building, found the room where Lisa Patton was reading, and stumbled into a seat before almost landing in the lap of a white-haired gentleman who looked all debonair in a crisp suit jacket and specs (I was beyond caring about professionalism at this moment).

I scanned the heads of the people in attendance, but I did not see either of the ladies who were driving the tan car. After the reading, I waited fifteen minutes, but then I had to meet my friends from high school. So I left, hoping my Jeep would pull a Love Bug and somehow know which way to go. It didn’t. I got lost. Again. I hadn’t seen these girls in six years, and I was really wanting to act like I had everything together now. That I didn’t get lost or drop change or fall into creeks anymore. That I was as professional and debonair as that white-haired gentleman in his suit coat and specs.

It didn’t work that way.

Ten minutes later, my friend called and asked, “Where are you?”

“I’m--I’m kinda lost,” I said, which is like saying you “kinda” killed someone. “I’m heading past Vanderbilt.”

My friend said, “Hold on, I’ll pass you to Sandy.”

My other friend proceeded to lead me to the restaurant. Five minutes later, I passed my Jeep gratefully off to the valet and ran over and threw my arms around my friend, who I would’ve erected a statue in her honor at this point.

Smoothing my hair, I walked into the restaurant with its low lighting and posh décor. My other friends were all seated around the table. They came and gave me hugs. I hoped my all-natural deodorant was working; I was sweating buckets beneath my blue wool coat. We took seats in the booth and smiled at each other. My gum fell out of my mouth onto the carpeted floor. Fifteen minutes later, I went to drape my napkin gracefully over my lap when I dropped my fork with a tinny ping.

Releasing a sigh, I gave up. Six years later, I am still the same as I always was. I still get lost and drop things. I fall into creeks and get ink stains on my clothes. If I smile at a homeless man, I am sure to get verbally assaulted. If I am wearing white, I am sure to go to someone’s house serving spaghetti. If I order a salad at a restaurant, I am sure to give a soliloquy with spinach stuck between my teeth. If I wear pantyhose and a skirt, I am sure to leave the restroom with the latter tucked in the former.

I know that people and their opinions can change, but I know two things about me that won’t: I will always be about as professional and debonair as a female version of Jed Clampett from The Beverly Hillbillies, and I will never, never like the city.

Finding My Way Through The Wall

2011-10-24T11:23:00.000-07:00

Sure, I get to sit here in my stocking feet with a mug of tea beside my computer and look outside where a sparrow is trying to head butt his way through our Hardyboard siding, but sometimes -- despite these perks -- this writing life can be a lonely business.

I don’t often mind the solitude as each day I am spending hours and hours with my characters who are as real to me as living, breathing human beings. But whenever they are not conforming to the plot I have mapped out and I am waiting for them to lead me down the path they would instead like to go, I am abruptly pulled out of my fictional world and tossed back into the real one.

This is when I become cross-eyed while staring and picking at the split ends of my hair. Anyone from the outside looking in might think that inhabiting a world full of fictional characters has finally fried my mind, but what they wouldn’t realize is that this is a very high-tech method recommended by Writer’s Digest (okay, that’s a lie) that helps me to refocus and calm my nerves.

Especially when I rock back and forth while humming the Barney theme song.

If this high-tech methodology doesn’t do the trick, I take a Yoga-worthy breath and roll my ankles in and out, out and in until the old injuries I sustained in cheerleading (yes, cheerleading; the truth had to come out someday, people) make a snap, crackle, popping sound. I keep hitting Refresh! Refresh! on the Internet tab although I have disconnected from it hours ago when I was feeling all disciplined and authoress-y and actually wanted to avoid distraction rather than inviting it in to stay awhile. Like a child trying to postpone bedtime, I will get up and pour myself a glass of water. Go to the bathroom. Lay down on the floor and flail my arms. Complain to the dog that I have leg ache and need a banana.

Exhausted by these efforts, I will stumble back to my laptop and check on my characters, trying to see if they have seen the error of their errant ways and are willing to negotiate a deal.

No such luck. The main character still glowers at me with her arms crossed and foot tapping like the cursor on the screen.

This is when I get up and walk over to my bookshelf. Take down some of the best novels I have ever read and pour over the passages, trying to figure out how these authors trained their characters to talk so mannerly, to sit in a corner with their hands in their laps rather than running and screaming through the manuscript like Thing One and Thing Two before tranquilizer guns became available.

But then I hear a tappity tapping on the glass. I return the book to the shelf and peer through the window. That sparrow is still there, still butting his head against the electric meter, against the Hardyboard siding, against the fascia sealing in the eaves of the house as if he can actually find a way in.

And you know what? With every smack of his head against the glass, against the siding, it seems to knock some more sense into it, and he learns to fly up higher, then a little higher still. He flies until he comes to a small crack in the structure of our home between the fascia and the siding, and he slips his way right on through.

Which I guess is pretty bad considering this is a new house, but as I sit here in a cross-eyed glaze while picking at the split ends of my hair, I have to hand it to that little fellow:

You made it, Buddy; you found your way through the wall.

Encouraged, I return and look at my computer screen’s blinking cursor because I know that soon I will find my way, too.

Image taken from: http://weeboopiper.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/various-bits-from-the-harbor/

You Know You're Living in the Boonies When . . .

2011-10-20T09:17:00.000-07:00

This is feeding in your front yard.

Wild boar roast, anyone?

Now this explains that woman's scream I keep hearing.

The 7 Links Challenge -- A Roundup of the Best (& Worst) of THE HAPPY BOOK BLOG

2011-10-16T18:14:00.000-07:00

When my Twitter friend Julia Monroe Martin, a freelance editor and blogger working on her novel from the coast of Maine, contacted me to let me know I'd been nominated to participate in the 7 Links Challenge, I couldn't have been more relieved! Over the weekend I knew I was going to be in Nashville for the Southern Festival of Books, doing some research for my novel-in-progress at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital, then coming home to put up applesauce with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law. Needless to say, I knew any new blog post wasn't going to get the attention that it deserved. I hope you all enjoy the links I have posted below. Don't think of this as a rerun, but as a behind-the-scenes peek. : )

Most Beautiful Post: I believe that the best writing evokes emotion and that emotion evokes the best writing. Both of these posts were written through tears, and I still cannot read over them without missing my dear friend in A Window of Borrowed Time or being so grateful that my best friend made it through her cancer battle described in Wading Through Troubled Waters.

Most Popular Post: This post continues to receive the most hits out of any I have ever written. So, if you are ever trying to drive traffic to your blog, just write a post that should be a "What Not to Do" in a marriage counseling seminar. You won't be disappointed. The Litmus Test for Marriage.

Most Controversial Post: I still can't believe that PETA isn't breathing down my neck for this one. All I can say is RIP, little Ratatouille, I’ll know better next time. Why I Am No Bear Grylls

Most Helpful Post: This very tongue-in-cheek post is one I wrote after becoming weary reading about the gadgets every writer supposedly needs to become the next Stephen King or Stephenie Meyer. 10 Gadgets Every Writer Doesn't Need But Should Definitely Have Around. Oh, yeah . . . sure hope y'all don't have a thing for Adam Lambert or Lady Gaga.

Most Surprisingly Successful Post: Apparently, revealing that your writing insecurity is so bad that you want to remove warts from people's feet for a living instead of crafting sentences is another great way to drive traffic to your blog. Who knew. I sure didn't, or I would've laid it on the table a whole lot sooner. The Truth Behind My Fiction (Or Why I Should've Been a Podiatrist)

Post That Didn't Get Attention: One night I was helping my father type up a query letter for the country gospel song he'd written when I realized he and I are now both chasing the same seemingly unattainable dream of publication. This was another post that brought tears to my eyes while writing it, and I was surprised that it didn't get the same amount of traffic as the ones that had made me cry before. Chasing My Father's Dreams

Post I Am Most Proud Of: The reason I am so proud of this post is because it took a lot of guts to publish it. Believe it or not, I do not always like to portray myself as a dumb blond. Especially a dumb blond with snot running out her nose. Because she's sobbing. Because she lost someone's bank deposit. Living Up to My Hair Color

And now here are five other bloggers who I enjoy reading and who I now nominate for the continuation of the 7 Links Challenge:

Christine M Grote: Random thoughts from midlife

Paige Crutcher: Ringing out my balalaika

Kimberly Brock: What She Would Have Said -- Tales of a Storyteller

Stephanie Alexander: The Cracked Slipper

Amy Lyles Wilson: "It Is The Sharing of Our Stories That Saves Us"

Little People Can Have Babies Too!

2011-10-10T09:26:00.000-07:00

My husband and I were sitting on the couch, having our morning coffee, when I paused in the magazine I was flipping through and showed him the picture.

“Do you think our daughter’ll look like that?” I asked.

Taking a sip from his mug, my husband squinted at the image of the rosy-cheeked little girl with flaxen pigtails and a gap-toothed smile.

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. She looks like her parents are both normal sized.”

“Normal sized?!” I screeched, slapping the magazine closed and slinging it across the coffee table. “Whatdaya think I am, an elf?”

“Well, no,” my husband replied. I could see the wheels in his mind quickly spinning backwards. “You’re just--just a little person.”

Exactly one month ago I went in to my hairdresser’s because I had forgotten her phone number and needed to have my hair cut before my pregnancy hormones caused me to hack it off with a dull butcher knife.

“Why hey!” she cried. “Haven’t seen you in a while!”

I apologized for this and asked if she had anything available next week.

She said, “Just a haircut?”

“I’d like some highlights, too, but . . .” I glanced over at the man seated on the stool with a plastic cape draping his shoulders. “Well, I’m expecting. In my second trimester. My midwife said it was fine--”

My hairdresser waved her hand. “Believe you me, Honey, it is fine, or I wouldn’t’ve been allowed to do highlights when I was pregnant myself.”

The next week I was seated in the very stool that customer had occupied, with the same plastic cape draping my shoulders, while my hairdresser jerked my hair through a cap in a way that made me think her former occupation was with the KGB.

“You liking being pregnant?” she asked, ripping out a chunk of my scalp.

“It’s been great,” I said although my expression in the mirror was a mask of pain. “No morning sickness, tons -- ouch! -- tons of energy. The only problem is, people think I’m a pregnant teenager.”

My hairdresser paused in her torture. “Ya know,” she said, waving the metal hook at me, “funny you should say that. Last week after you left, that guy I was working on was quiet for a while, then said, ‘It’s sad about that girl.’ I said, ‘Why?’ And he said, ‘’Bout her being pregnant and all. She really had a lot going for her.’”

For three months after I discovered those two pink lines on a home pregnancy test, I pestered my family with one question: “Can you see it now?”

This query was always accompanied with me arching my spine and sticking out my stomach while my hands supported my lower back. If we were in a portion of a grocery store/department store/restaurant/sidewalk that wasn’t too congested, I would even whip up my shirt and point to a little bump on my lower abdomen that could’ve been a full bladder.

“Right there,” I’d ask. “Can’t you see that?”

Then I went up to Pennsylvania to visit my husband’s family. For three solid days I lived on pig stomach (which is actually far tastier than it sounds), cheese curds brought in from Wisconsin, Good’s potato chips fried in lard, scrapple, and peanut-butter rice crispy treats slathered in chocolate. By the time we started back to Tennessee on Sunday, my belly could barely fit in the car.

On Tuesday, after the ultrasound which confirmed we were having a baby girl, I was sitting in our front yard typing when I heard a sound like a woman’s scream. I thought it was a mountain lion or bobcat and heaved my pregnant self up from the camping chair and took off into the woods. I crawled under barbed-wire fences, hacked through brambles while using my stomach as a battering ram (sorry, Baby Girl), climbed over logs and rocks. I was very Sacajawea meets GI Jane, but no mountain lion or bobcat was sighted.

I came down out of the mountain and collapsed into my camping chair once again. I was happily typing when I felt something crawling across my arm. A seed tick. Lifting up my shirt, I discovered another. I practically sprinted into the shower and scrubbed until my skin was tickled pink. By the next day, though, I realized my intervention had been too late.

My kneecap to my ankle on my left leg alone was polka-dotted with twenty chiggers. (Tiny mites that burrow under your skin and hibernate until you go wild and scratch them out. Want to move to Tennessee, anyone?) I had chiggers on my shoulder blades, my collar bone, my back, and other sundry places I would rather not describe.

That night I was putting fresh sheets on our bed when the chigger on my stomach started itching. Heaving up my shirt, I started pawing at that sucker like an old bear scratching his back on a tree. I looked down. I gasped. In addition to being able to play Connect-The-Dots with the red bumps spattering my skin, I also had an outy belly button at five months pregnant.

I blame it all on that pig stomach and scrapple.

This week my husband and I watched a National Geographic video I rented from the library called In the Womb. The first hour was great. My husband and I sat with our heads tilted together like two love birds, and I held one of his hands and affectionately rubbed my stomach with my other. As the narrator would describe what our child was doing right then -- how she was stretching and yawning and learning the sound of her mother’s voice (sorry again, Baby Girl) -- we would look at each other all googley-eyed and smile.

Thirty minutes later we were led into the fortieth week, and the hearts and flowers narration took an ominous turn. The camera panned in on a woman squatting next to a hospital bed, the hands wrapping her husband’s shaking, while she screamed like she was being ripped in two. And it was no slow birth, either, let me tell you. That camera got all up close and personal with the mom, and I dropped my husband’s hand like a hot potato. I shied away from my laptop screen as if the pain of her labor could somehow radiate through it.

“Is that--is that the umbilical cord?” I asked, pointing at a twisted, purple protrusion that looked twenty feet long.

My husband nodded.

“Is that--” I started to ask and my husband just patted my hand. I thought I was going to be sick.

On camera, the Irish midwife called to the mother in a soft, lilting voice, “You’re almost there, deary. Just one more push.” That midwife then grasped the baby’s head and tugged out the rest of her mottled body like she was just a turnip being plucked from a field.

My husband shut down the computer while I continued staring at the screen, my mouth hanging wide.

Ten minutes later, long after we’d kissed and said goodnight, I tossed back the covers and cried, “But she looked like a cow!”

Putting his hand on my hip, my husband sighed. “I guess we’ll just have to remember that little people can have babies, too.”

A Beautiful Sight to Behold

2011-10-03T07:18:00.000-07:00

The year I turned twenty my best friend gave me a book called Wide Angle that was filled with beautiful images of people and places throughout the world. My best friend said that this book had two options: it could either set on my coffee table in my future home or the images could spur me on to see the sights and the people for myself.

That birthday was a difficult one. I remember sitting on a bench beneath a crab apple tree and thumbing through the book’s pages, wondering what future path I should choose. After college graduation I was contemplating joining the Peace Corps or an organization like it, yet I was dating a man who had no plans outside the States at all. I knew from various conversations that my best friend had not given this gift as a way of manipulating me toward one decision over the other. She was just trying to show me that there was a decision I would soon have to make.

Looking back, I am not really sure how I chose the path I am on now. I know a lot of it had to do with the events that unfolded over the next two years; events that showed me I could not leave my family or those who had become like my family because I wasn’t sure what would happen to them while I was gone. And, simply, the path of my life was formed because I fell in love. I fell in love with the man who sat with me on a rustic dock overlooking a Pennsylvania farm and began to cry over the death of my dear friend before I could even find emotion to relieve my grief. I fell in love with the man who drove four hours to my school and held me while revealing the unthinkable: that my best friend’s cancer had returned. I fell in love with the man who embraced my family’s idiosyncratic behavior and loved them all the more for it. I fell in love with the man who -- once cracked free of his introverted shell -- was the funniest person I had ever known. I fell in love, and so, after college graduation, I did not fly off to a foreign land.

It has been three years since that evening in late September when that man and I became one. As in every marriage, there have been good times and there have been bad. That first winter after I moved out here, into our apartment adjacent to our grocery store, was the loneliest of my life. I knew no one in the area besides my husband, and for the first time I had no idea how to go about making friends. I wasn’t writing, and I truly believed that I probably never would. Then we met a family through our store who invited us over to their home for supper. We ate pea soup and buttered homemade bread while sitting at their long wooden table in front of a fire. A speckled dog was sprawled on a rug brought close to the stove for warmth. In that simple conversation, in that simple breaking of bread, so many things came alive, and when they asked what I did, I began to tell them that I worked in our grocery store. But then I stopped, looked down at my white soup bowl filmed on the bottom with green. “Well,” I said, swallowing, “what I really want to be is a writer.”

That night, although I did not know it until months later, was a turning point for me. Through that family, I met a group of girls who all loved the written word as much as I. Through reading, my desire to write returned, and by the next winter I completed my first full-length manuscript and immediately began working on another. In the meantime, my husband and I purchased forty acres of land in a valley tucked against the base of the mountains. On the weekends we would spend hours out there: combing over the woods and exploring the caves and the local derelict home where Civil War legends were said to have died. I quickly realized that one of the reasons I had struggled those first months after marriage was because of not having this refuge, this land to sift through my fingers and the sun to dapple across my face.

Now I am sitting on a camping chair outside of our new home with the sun on my face, our land spread beneath me like a quilt, our baby girl swirling around inside my stomach. And although I am not inhabiting a foreign land and we do not have any intention to do so in the future, I find that I wouldn’t mind raising our family in this rich Tennessee soil. I wouldn’t mind facing the coming obstacles and triumphs while living in our house tucked against the base of these mountains. For I know if our lives, and those of the people we have met, were placed in a picture book similar to the one setting inside on my coffee table, they would be a beautiful sight to behold.

You Know You’re Taking Advantage of Your Pregnancy When . . .

2011-09-26T10:14:00.000-07:00

You claim that baby really wants Daddy to watch Pride and Prejudice with him/her, the five hour version with Colin Firth and the pond scene.

You preface every chore around the house with a sign and “I would do it, Honey, but you know . . .” and point to your stomach and shrug.

You stuff your shirt with a pillow so no one looks twice when you (and your six-week-pregnant belly) waddle from your car parked in a towing zone.

At 9:00 p.m. you send your husband out for an aus jus sub from a deli across town because the baby needs protein.

You claim your unborn baby is allergic to anything not made with organic cotton so Aunt Mildred’s not offended when you return her gift of a pink polka-dotted onesie . . . for your son.

You start carrying Mace at five months so you can blast the next person who lays a finger on your belly.

The smell of laundry detergent and/or dish washing soap conveniently makes you nauseous whenever someone with opposable thumbs is around.

You ask your husband if you are showing and when he replies that you are, you look over your shoulder and stare him down like he’s just uttered the grossest profanity.

You blame any obvious gastric expulsions on the baby whose digestive system is the size of a lentil.

If you and your husband are having a disagreement, you splay your hands protectively over your stomach and say, “Don’t worry, Baby. Daddy really loves Mommy.”

You walk around Sam’s Club from 12-3 on Sunday afternoons with your hands on your lower back and your belly thrust out so you can get first dibs on the food samples.

You stop shaving your armpits at two months pregnant because you claim you can’t reach them.

Your husband is so used to calling in Chinese food at midnight that he has Won Ton’s on speed dial.

You carry a gallon of water around during Black Friday so you can pour it all over the concrete and scream, “My water just broke!” right as sales personnel are opening their doors.

You make gagging noises while in the bathroom so that your husband thinks you are still having morning sickness into the third trimester and will take pity on you.

When standing in line for the salad bar, you use your stomach as a battering ram so a little old lady doesn’t get her paws on the fresh batch of rye croutons.

You make sure to eat your weight in salt, then place your swollen feet in your husband’s lap and throw some lotion at him.

You extend the need for maternity clothes into the Macy’s shoe aisle, purchasing six new pairs of strappy heels you claim will perfectly coordinate with your muumuu-style smocks.

On a road trip all your bathroom breaks are mysteriously synchronized with exit signs for Baskin Robbins.

Whenever the theme music for Monday night football can be heard from the den, you waddle in and say that baby really needs father/daughter or father/son time. This will often include rereading all your old love letters while gazing into each other’s eyes or a backrub for Mommy while telling her how beautiful she is.

The first glimpse of our baby GIRL Petersheim, due on February 21, 2012!

The Girl With the Star Tattoos

2011-09-19T07:15:00.000-07:00

I was reading in the waiting room when the girl burst through the double doors of the women’s health clinic and strode past me. Peering over the pages of my book, I covertly took in her black-on-black scrubs, her pink and green sneakers, the stars tattooing her elbows, her magenta hair with tangled roots growing out in a mousy brown. She took the seat three down from mine, and from my peripheral vision I watched how her face -- still softened in a way that was more girl than woman -- roiled with an anger belying her years and her lower lip, fish-hooked with rings, trembled.

I was wondering why she was there, wondering what high school altercation had upset her to such an extent, when the clinic’s double doors opened and a silver-haired woman supporting a woman much older than she started hobbling through.

Again, I was caught off-guard by their appearance. Ninety percent of the women in that clinic were expecting; the other ten percent had newborns tucked into carseats, which they rocked with their foot while flicking through magazines. Why were these women, obviously beyond child-bearing age, here?

My question was answered soon enough. Lowering the elderly woman into a chair, the one with the silver hair scraped back in a long red ponytail walked over to the girl in the black scrubs and said, “Now he’s coming up here. You’ve just gotta remain calm. Let him talk himself out.”

By this point I had read the same paragraph in my book four times. Sliding my thumb between the pages, I turned toward the double door to see who was coming through it.

When the boy came swaggering into that pastel health clinic with the burbling fountain, low lighting, and framed photographs of naked babies gift-wrapped in satin ribbon, I never knew a person could look so out of place. He was as young as the girl with the tattooed elbows and black scrubs, but his freckled face was as sharp as a felon’s. Even the way he walked across that room was a challenge to everyone in it. Throwing himself into the seat only two down from mine, he leaned in close to the girl in the black scrubs and hissed something that I couldn’t hear. A majority of their conversation was lost to me, but there was no way I could have missed the tone of their exchange. With every word spewed from that freckled boy’s mouth, my heart pounded harder and the women sitting around me sat up straighter, covering their infants or their extended stomachs with a protective hand.

“Do you want me to get back with my ex?” the boy snarled. “Is that really what you want?”

I watched the girl shake her magenta hair and her fish-hooked lip tremble.

As the heat of their exchange radiated throughout the entire waiting room, the receptionist with the blond pageboy glanced between the two of them with wide blue eyes that appeared as alarmed as my own felt.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, the girl in the black scrubs was called back.

“Do you want me to go with you?” the boy asked, confirming that she was expecting and he was indeed the father.

The girl nodded and they stood. I watched them walk over to the reception desk, then I glanced over at the silver-haired woman with the red ponytail. The elderly woman, who I assumed was the girl’s grandmother, was probably hard of hearing and was exempt from the verbal abuse of that exchange. The other woman, though, who so closely resemble the girl in the black scrubs that she had to be her mother, had no excuse at all. I found myself literally biting my tongue as I wanted to ream her for allowing her daughter to be with such an abusive boy who would surely grow into a bigger, stronger, more abusive man.

I looked at the reception desk again. The boy and the girl were still there. I watched how the girl reached out and wrapped her fingers possessively around the boy’s lean waist. From that simple show of affection after he had berated her in such a publicly humiliating way, I knew this girl would do anything within her power to keep that boy by her side. And what if the time came when she had to choose between this boy and her child? In that simple caress, in that desperate grasping gesture, I could imagine not only her future but that of the child’s still inside her womb. This more than anything was why I knew I could not remain silent.

As the girl was just going through some preliminary testing before her main exam, the boy was sent back to the waiting room. He strutted across the tiled floor while rolling his eyes and muttering under his breath like he had just gone through an ordeal while he was the sole perpetrator of it. This infuriated me to the point I could feel heat climbing up my neck and settling in my cheeks. He was walking past my chair when I looked up at him and said, “You shouldn’t talk to her like that.”

The boy stopped so abruptly it was as if his body had struck a wall. Staring down at me with green eyes as hard as granite, he said, “What did you say?”

I wouldn’t even allow myself to blink. “You shouldn’t talk to her like that.”

“Why don’t you mind your own &%$#9 business!” he roared along with a slew of words so riddled with curses the majority of them I could not understand.

I felt like telling him if he demeaned his girlfriend in such a public setting, he was making it all of our business. The glittering rage in his eyes, though, forced me to swallow my words.

The boy sat down again, still only two seats away from me.

Call me back, I thought while staring at the receptionist with the blond pageboy. Just call me back.

When the nurse finally came out and called my name, the anger I felt toward that foul-mouthed boy was replaced with fear.

Now he knew my name. If he wanted, he could easily get a hold of the information card we have to fill out and set in a wire basket on the reception desk. I’m sure I was the only Jolina in that basket.

The nurse led me back to a room and took my blood pressure. I warned her that it might be higher than normal, for my heart was still pounding in my ears, but amazingly enough it was fine.

While waiting for the midwife to come in after the nurse left, I remembered my first visit to the women’s health clinic. They had given me a questionnaire to fill out. It had asked if my partner ever abused me, had ever threatened to hurt myself or my loved ones, even my pets, in attempt to bend me to his will. It asked if he had ever cursed at me or used demeaning language.

I remembered how I had laughed while filling out that questionnaire. It was so fully removed from my husband’s and my relationship that I had no basis to understand it, no experiences to compare it to.

But sitting in that antiseptic room while knowing the girl with the magenta hair and star tattoos was probably sitting in the one next to it, I didn’t laugh. I imagined they were handing her that same questionnaire right then, and I prayed no one else was with her while she filled it out; that somehow she would find the strength to tell the truth so her child could be brought into a non-abusive world.

The midwife came in wearing a white lab coat and a smile. “How are we doing today, Mama?” she asked.

I shut the book I could not focus on and smiled in return. “Fine,” I said, hoping that in the room next door the girl with the star tattoos was being far more honest than I.

Now the question we need to ask ourselves is how to reach out to girls such as this one. How do we tell them, show them, that they deserve more?

To Everything There Is a Season

2011-09-12T07:45:00.000-07:00

The five puppies were born on our property five weeks ago to a stray dog with a black muzzle and ears like a dingo. She birthed them in a hollow of mud tucked between a dry creek bed and the base of the mountain. Because the mother used to be as wild as the dingo she resembles, I tried to respect her privacy and her decision to birth the puppies in such a remote setting. When the rains came, my husband brought down a stray bale, which we layered around the pups, and he built a wooden lean-to that would protect them from the elements. For four weeks the five puppies and their mother remained in the woods until I came down to check on them and discovered a sandwich baggie of leftover waffles in front of the puppies. I called my husband and my father to see if they had brought it down, and they both said they had not. The only conclusion we could make was that the mother knew it was time to wean her puppies and had foraged through our trash for anything that could bring them sustenance.

After my walk the next evening, I put the five wiggling puppies in my t-shirt and carried them up to our house. Amazingly enough, both they and their mother did not seem alarmed by this transport at all. Using straw bales, leftover carpet, and a few cinder blocks, my husband and I built a bed for the puppies beneath the carport, and by the time we shut off the porch light all five puppies and their mother were tucked in a corner of their new home, sleeping.

On Wednesday I took a break from writing to check on the puppies and found the off-white one with golden spots tattooed over its back, tail, and right eye hunkered against the straw bale, shivering. My best friend, her fiancé, and I had given them all baths the day before, and I feared that this one’s body temperature hadn’t risen enough to combat the cold. Wrapping him in a blanket, I brought the pup inside and set him on my lap while I typed. He remained there for the rest of the afternoon: yawning, stretching his back, pedaling his little feet while he dreamed. Rather than distracting me, I found it easier to write with that little warm body curled up against my stomach and a discouraging writing day turned out to be one of the best I had had in weeks.

The next evening when I pulled in the driveway, I saw my husband was bent over while digging through the tin underneath the carport. At first I didn’t think anything of it since the off-white puppy with the golden spot around his right eye seemed to think he was a parody of Houdini, wedging his plump body into corners he could not come out of and whimpering until we could find him. This time, though, my husband and I lifted up the tin and boards and searched the fence rows and the gullies around our home, but Houdini could not be found.

“Maybe we’ll find him tomorrow,” I said.

“No, Honey,” my husband sighed. “Something must’ve gotten him. He would’ve showed up by now."

I wouldn’t allow myself to believe that, and the next morning I walked outside once again, searching for that lost puppy as thoroughly as the widow in the Bible searched for her lost coin.

It was of no avail.

When I returned from our store that evening, I saw the vultures circling overhead while I was still driving in the lane, but I reasoned that so many wouldn’t have gathered for an animal so small. I got a drink of water and some fruit in the kitchen and ate it while standing on the porch. With a handful of grapes still in my hand, I started walking toward the corner of the field where vultures were gliding on the wind. The mother dog followed until I walked down into the dry creek bed. She then stopped as if her body had struck a wall, huffed, stomped her forefeet, and turned back. Swallowing, I watched her go, then walked across the creek bed and climbed the fence into our neighbor’s field.

It was a beautiful afternoon. One of those days where fall is nipping at the heels of summer and the sun swirls across the horizon, creating colors as vibrant as the insides of a kaleidoscope. Even then, becoming more and more certain of what I would find in that neighboring field, I had to stop and stand there, bathing in the contrast of the purple flowers blooming up amid the tangle of grasses and weeds.

It didn’t take long to find the off-white puppy tattooed with a golden ring around his right eye; the vultures led me to him. It was a horrendous sight, and in response I screamed up at the sky, cursing the red-tailed hawk that had snatched him, and started to weep so loudly that I am sure the owner of the field must’ve overheard. But I didn’t care. I ran over to the fence row and ripped up the tall reeds that grew there. I draped them over the body of the puppy, futilely trying to keep the vultures away, and stumbled across the field with tears and mascara streaming down my face and walked back across the dry creek bed onto our land.

That night, to take my mind off the loss, we went to get some frozen yogurt and then to Sam’s Club. As my husband was checking out items for our store, I went over to look at the books and found one on pregnancy. I propped it up on the shelf and flipped through the pages, but soon I couldn’t see the pictures for the tears clouding my eyes. The reality of life’s vulnerability is often magnified to me even by the smallest death and looking at those images of that baby on the page the same size as the one inside my womb, I could’ve just leaned over that shelf and wept and wept.

How was I ever to raise a child in this world rife with sex trafficking and terrorism, with prostitution and pornography, with so many evils that -- like that mother dog who didn’t know that danger was imminent until it came swooping down from the sky -- can catch us off-guard and change our and our child’s lives forever?

On the way home, my husband asked what was wrong. Letting the tears flow that I had held back in the store, I told him that if I couldn’t keep a puppy alive, how was I -- in five short months -- to nurture a child in a way that not only let it thrive in society but also be a benefit to it?

In response he said, “Do you remember, when we moved, how you wanted to unpack everything in the house in a single day?”

I wiped my tears and nodded.

“Well,” he continued, “that’s how I think it will be raising this child: We can’t expect to know everything in five months that we’re going to use for the rest of his life. We’ll just learn to unpack wisdom as we go. One box at a time.”

Now, three days after the puppy’s death, I am sitting in a camping chair strategically placed next to the carport. Four five-week-old puppies are frolicking at my feet, and their mother is close by. An hour ago my lap was full of puppies when one of them rolled backward and fell onto the concrete carport. She squealed in fright more than in pain and immediately the red-tailed hawk that had killed her brother came swooping out of the woods and hovered over the sky.

Rather than being filled with such anger that I wanted to shoot that red-tailed hawk if it was legal to do so or not, I watched that majestic creature spread its wings and soar higher than seemed possible. I then realized that death is not the archenemy of life, but that it is the reinforcer of life. Without the threat of it constantly hovering over us, nothing in this world would be held precious: not our children, not our marriages, not even our pets.

And so, as Tuck in the children’s novel Tuck Everlasting learns after he inadvertently drinks from the fountain of youth and lives for ages and ages to tell about it:

Everything’s a wheel, turning and turning, never stopping. The frogs is part of it, and the bugs, and the fish, and the wood thrush, too. And people. But never the same ones. Always coming in new, always growing and changing, and always moving on. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. That’s the way it is.

I'm No Pioneer Woman

2011-09-06T13:39:00.000-07:00

Let’s face it, I've been living in the sticks for a little over a week and already I’ve let Caroline Ingalls down.

When a large brown van came barreling up the lane in a cloud of dust the first day by my lonesome, I realized how truly vulnerable I was. Going over to an unpacked box near the coffee table, I extracted my husband’s hunting knife, tucked it behind the couch cushions, and stepped out on the porch. I watched through narrowed eyes as the vehicle parked behind mine and a tall man dressed in a brown shirt and matching shorts stepped down out of it. “Are you expecting a package from UPS?” he asked.

I really should start wearing my glasses.

Then you’ve got the care of the livestock on our forty acre farm, which consists of a small stray dog and her five four-week-old pups. I went out to tend them soon after I woke up and only counted four puppies. The fifth was wedged somewhere beneath the boards and leftover piping stowed under the carport. Its pitiful whimpers filled my ears, and I got down on my hands and knees (in my pajamas, mind you) and tried to lift the boards off of it. As my heart started thumping, I recalled all those stories of hundred pound mothers who lift a two ton car off their child by sheer adrenaline and will power alone. I gritted my teeth and heaved the boards until my arms shook. The boards went nowhere. Carefully lowering the boards back down, I leapt to my feet and ran inside the house.

“Honey!” I called. “A puppy’s stuck!”

My mountain man, more attached to the pups than he lets on, hurried outside and together we found the panting fluff ball flattened between a board and a piece of tin. The only way it was still breathing was because the position of its fat stomach over the indention in the metal.

But protecting our "livestock" is not the only pioneer duty I have failed. I’m also not too great at keeping the home fires burning . . . or at putting them out. The second afternoon I was alone on our property, I was writing outside when I was hit with a pregnancy craving for goldfish crackers. As soon as I opened the French doors and stepped into the living room, my nose was pricked with the acrid smell of something burning. When you have spent the past four days unpacking boxes in your brand new house, that is the worst scent in the world. I ran to the laundry room and sniffed at the washer and dryer. I ran down to the basement to see if the water heater had exploded. Only when the burning smell continued and I could not locate the source did I call my husband who told me to flip the switch on the breaker box.

“It--it won’t flip!” I cried, frantically jerking on the lever. Finally, once my shoulder was about wrenched from its socket, the stinking breaker flipped into the off position. Randy then did some quick research online and told me that our fridge, which we had purchased a week before and already had to have one part replaced, was probably burning up.

“Burning up?!” I cried. “Is it going to burn down the house?”

Randy reassured me that it was not going to do any such thing and that it was safe to flip the breaker back on.

“Safe nothing!” I thought but did as he’d suggested because I didn’t want to lose the pickles and ice-cream.

Over the next three days, when our new HE washer started into the spin cycle and a part began rattling inside of it, when I noticed a strange rotten-egg smell wafting up from the bathroom drains, when I almost toppled out of the upstairs window while trying to wash the “easy to clean” windows, I understood that though I hadn’t had to fight off any paint-streaked Indians or sweep the dirt floor of my soddy house with a grass broom like Caroline Ingalls in Little House, dealing with a slew of brand new modern conveniences sure brought with it its own kinda problems.

Pioneer woman or not.

What NOT to Say to a Pregnant Woman

2011-08-28T16:21:00.000-07:00

Every six months our health inspector arrives at our outlet grocery store with a clipboard wedged under his armpit, a stained governmental baseball cap covering his balding head, and a mouth on him as garrulous as a pubescent girl’s. Because he is our health inspector whose good opinion is vital to our store, I always act like he’s my best friend who I just love to catch up with twice a year.

In reality, I dread his arrival.

Last March when he saw me sitting in the office while working on my manuscript, he nodded at my laptop, then said, “Is that there one of them trashy romance novels?”

I reassured him that it was not and he said, “Well, my wife always said she’d like to write a romance novel, but she just ain’t got ’round to it yet.”

“Is that right?” I said while trying to smile.

He smiled in return. “Sure ’nough. She wants to write one just like Nora Roberts.”

For the next half hour I was given a lecture on the publishing world -- which was about as informative as a groundhog holding a symposium about the moon -- but it was worth it. When the lecture was over, the health inspector took a look-see around the store and gave us a ninety-nine out of a possible hundred points.

Needless to say, when the health inspector poked his baseball-capped head into the office this week and bellowed, “How-dy!” it was all I could do not to groan.

We made small talk for a few minutes, then he asked, “How many kids y’all got?”

“Actually,” I said, “we’re expecting our first.”

“Welllll! I thought you were expecting the last time I was here!”

I wanted to ask how he had thought this but feared the answer.

“My cousin just gave birth,” he said, then shook his head and clucked his tongue. “She had a real hard time. She was in labor for hours and hours, and the baby got stuck in her…” He grinned sheepishly and lowered his voice. “Well, in her ca-nal. They had to cut her open, but by this time she’d been laboring so long and so hard that she had a fever and the baby had a fever. When the baby come out, they had to stick an IV in her, but they have to be real careful that they didn’t blow out a vein.”

At this point all I wanted was to plug my ears or tell the health inspector to keep his horror stories to himself, but then we also needed a good health score on the inspection sheet, and I did not want to say anything that might thwart that. So, I simply let the man keep on talking. And keep on talking he did.

“The baby wouldn’t even nurse right after that,” he continued. “She lost a whole bunch of ounces, but the doctors said that’s pretty normal for being in the hospital.”

Seeing an opportunity to change the subject and not realizing I was opening up a whole new can of worms, I snapped, “I’m not giving birth in a hospital, but a natural childbirth center. My husband and I just visited the facility this week.”

“Wellllll,” the health inspector said.

I didn’t even let him gather steam. “Yes, we watched this video called, ‘The Business of Being Born,’ and it talked all about the increase of C-sections over the years and how we can avoid them.”

“Oh, I’ve already got my opinion on that.” (Somehow I didn’t doubt he did.) Lowering his clipboard to the desk, the health inspector moved his hands in the hour-glass gesture. “You see . . . when you look at a cow and she don’t got hips wide enough to give birth, then you just don’t breed her. It’s the same with women: The ones with narrow hips aren’t meant to have children, so they hafta give birth through C-sections. Then they pass that narrow-hipped gene on to their girls and they give birth through C-sections, too.”

He looked up and smiled. That’s when he saw my frown.

“Of course,” he said, pointing at my boyish hips like I was just a cow going up for auction, “gals your size give birth all the time, and they don’t got a stitch of trouble.”

“Is that right?” I said while trying to smile.

He smiled in return. “Sure ’nough.” Grabbing his clipboard, the health inspector then touched a finger to the brim of his governmental cap and clomped down the office steps into the store. Five minutes later, he handed me the pink and yellow papers to sign. At the top was the usual ninety-nine out of a possible hundred points.

Suddenly that number seemed pretty stingy to me.

The Secret's Out!

2011-08-21T14:05:00.000-07:00

If someone confides in me, you couldn't get the information out if you were using the water boarding technique, but if the secret only concerns myself...well, one look into my eyes and I commence to babbling like a crazy person. My husband often laughs about this trait, saying it will keep me honest by default, but this time my being an open book wasn't funny. The secret involved the two of us -- one who plays his cards close to his chest; the other who doesn't even know what all those hearts and clovers stand for -- so I had to keep it quiet.

I tried, honestly I did. I lasted a whole eight hours before my sister-in-law came into our store the morning after the discovery and gave me her usual bone-popping hug. When I started blushing and staring pointedly at the computer screen, she knew something was amiss. I tried to shrug it off by the "woke up on the wrong side of the bed" routine, but then I sleep between my husband and the wall--not a whole lot of options there. Five minutes later, I caved and my sister-in-law collapsed onto the floor and just stared up at me, her mouth agape.

For almost a month, she was the only person besides my husband who knew, then I visited my friend and she unveiled the secret before I even had a chance to blurt it out.

Two days later, I told my book club girls. A week after that, my parents, my brothers (the elder yelled the news to his best friend as soon as I had relayed it; the younger curled against the couch and stared at me like I was some blond version of Edward Scissorhands). Next, I told my husband's parents, his siblings, and our nieces and nephews, then our cashier who probably found out the same day as my sister-in-law. But there was still someone I hadn't told: my best friend who was traversing across Europe and wouldn't be back for another month and a half.

I didn't want to share such a secret on some social media medium like Facebook or Skype, so I knew the only way I could tell her was face-to-face. I imagined taking a long walk and running back through all of our quaint childhood memories. Just as the sun was about to set, I would look over, smile with the mystique of da Vinci's Mona Lisa, and tell my best friend the news.

It didn't happen that way. Not at all. For two whole months I hadn't talked to her in case I would let the secret slip. I had just sent her terse little messages that could've been transposed from any generic greeting card. But the day after my best friend's return to the States, I called her so we could make plans to meet the following afternoon. We exchanged small talk, then she said, "We have so many stories to tell."

I simply replied, "Yes, we do have a lot to catch up on."

The line went silent; I winced and looked at the shattered screen of my cell phone. Then my best friend said what I had been wanting to tell her for over sixty days: "ARE YOU PREGNANT?!?!"

Now it was my time to be silent as these words, probably plagiarized from some country song, ran through my head: Do I lie tonight and tell the truth tomorrow? But as soon as I started stammering and blushing, I knew any chance of subterfuge was for naught.

"Uhhh--huhhh, yes..." I said. "I'm--I'm expecting."

Although it wasn't the Big Reveal I had imagined, as I listened to my best friend scream, then her family echo her as the wildfire of news spread and as they called my mother and put her on speakerphone -- playfully berating her for keeping this from them for so long -- I realized the best moments in life are often those that don't go according to plan.

There's Still Time For You...

2011-08-14T17:12:00.000-07:00

When I was fifteen, twenty-five seemed so far away I wrote out a to-do list I hoped to accomplish within the span of a decade. I tried to be easy on myself, since I hate having goals that I fail to reach. In my straggled, teenage handwriting I wrote on a piece of torn notebook paper that I wanted to darn a sock, bake an apple pie from scratch, stand beneath a proscenium arch and kiss the love of my life in the rain.

I wanted to run in a marathon, get straight A's throughout college, master the mandolin, and publish a book. The rest of the goals I cannot remember; there were over a hundred of them and the list was lost somewhere between college and home, but these few remain with me, and I believe they always will.

Tomorrow I turn twenty-five -- a quarter of a century if you're trying to make my impending age sound really old -- and I haven't darned a sock. In my defense, that was really a stupid goal to write. Nobody wears socks anymore that you can even darn, and long ago I bucked against my Old Order Mennonite heritage by refusing to sew the apron my mother thought would make a great summer project. Instead, I swam in cow ponds until my patriotic one piece turned red, brown and blue. I "rescued" baby snappers from along the banks of the creek with my brother and let them scramble across our claw-foot bathtub. I went spelunking with my best friend, envisioning the watery caves filled with treasure belonging to lost Old World explorers. No wonder I never really learned how to sew on anything except buttons.

That apple pie I was going to bake from scratch never happened. It's not that I don't like to bake, but that I am terrified of butter--and how can you bake an apple pie without that? For a while there I tried to replace all oils with prune puree and plain yogurt. My husband, who will usually eat something only fit for the dog and with a smile on his face, would tentatively taste some of my tweaked recipes and wrinkle his nose. After a year of this, I finally gave in and used applesauce as a butter replacement instead.

I've never actually stood under a proscenium arch, and I don't think I would remember what it looked like even if I did. I think it resembles the Arc de Triomphe, and the closest I have ever come to this was a sweetheart display at Dollywood my husband and I posed under last year.

Kissing the love of my life in the rain? That might've happened once or twice, but I'm pretty sure they were only goodbye pecks, not the From Here to Eternity rolling around in the sand scene my adolescent heart had envisioned.

The marathon...well, that's another goal I never reached unless you're counting when I decided to run in a 5K I had not trained for, and my lungs felt like they were splintered by the time I crossed the finish line and stumbled back to the Jeep. Now whenever I hear the techno music I was listening to on my iPod that sleeting winter day, I am conditioned like Pavlov's dogs to sit down with my head between my knees or else I will barf.

For a while there the straight A's through college looked good until the liberal arts university forced me -- an English and Communication Arts double major! -- to take a math class. By the time I remembered how to divide and multiply fractions, we were on to algebra. By the time we were on to geometry, I was sitting at my desk in tears. I was one of the last to turn in my final, but all my mental drudgery was to no avail: I received my only college level C while taking basic math.

Somewhere between my mother's desire to turn me into the next Barbara Mandrell and Nickel Creek disbanding, I lost the desire to master the mandolin. Those thirteen years (yes, thirteen; I wince just typing that) I clipped my nails so I could press down on the instrument's strings and sat in a folding chair, plucking out grating notes, while my teacher tried to withhold his/her frustration, were not all for naught. Whenever I hear a song like "Ode to a Butterfly," my dream to play like Nickel Creek will unravel itself from the cocoon of my childhood dreams. I'll take that $100 baby out and pluck a few chords, then -- discouraged by the skill I have forgotten -- I'll put the mandolin back in its ancient case where it will wait until I remember it's there and come at it with my feather duster once again.

Out of all these goals I have failed, the one that haunts me the most is the one I thought would be easier to reach than darning a sock: I haven't published a book. To those of you reading, I know the ease in which I hoped to accomplish this was somewhat naive. Okay, a whole lot naive. But by fifteen I had already written a book that filled up my two-hundred page journal. I had notebook after notebook filled with my thoughts, stories, and general pubescent musings. Example: Does 8797 like me? Oh, I hope so! (I never put real names in my journals. With two brothers and a mother who believes journals can be subpoenaed by suspicious parents, naming my crushes felt as dangerous as naming Watergate informants.)

Now what felt like an infinity of years has passed in the colorful streak of a decade, and I have no book credits to my name. I am daily working toward that goal, yet it is still one I have not reached. At times I tell myself it does not matter as much as not having darned a sock or baked an apple pie from scratch does not matter, but deep down it does.

Then I remember what a bearded wise man once said (or maybe it was a fortune cookie): Sometimes the goals you seek the most, once accomplished, are those that let you down. So that's why I must remain true to the craft and not to the goal: I must write because writing helps me make sense of the world, not because it will give me a place in the world; because writing is my tether and also my wings; because the ability to write may take years and years to fully hone, but when it's all said and done, it's impossible for me to just let my keyboard or journals set around like my mandolin and collect years of leftover dreams and dust.

Not when there are such characters to meet and stories to tell.

This song's for all of you with goals that haven't been reached. Regardless if you're fifteen or fifty, there's still time to reach them. What do we have to really lose? We've only got a hundred years to live.

Home Is Where the Oddballs Are

2011-08-07T17:08:00.000-07:00

Although my husband and I have been very content living in our apartment adjacent to our outlet grocery store, I am ready to rock the sunset into dusk on our front porch while overlooking the fog-swathed Cumberland Mountains. I am ready to blare Andrea Bocelli without having to worry that the customers will overhear. I am ready to wake up to the sun, which will seem as odd as a nuclear explosion after three years waking up in our windowless bedroom.

But, as in everything, I also know that with this new home there will be things to miss about the old: Oddball characters being one of them.

I recall how my husband had walked up into our apartment and was standing against the kitchen sink, taking a long pull on a glass of water, when he heard the toilet flush and an ancient woman in an ankle-length flowered skirt and razored white hair stumbled out of our bathroom. She was just as shocked to see a man standing there as he was having a complete stranger taking advantage of our private plumbing facilities. To her credit (and my husband's) neither of them screamed, and I came up and we carefully led the woman back down the steps into our store. She was so incredibly feeble, it was a mystery to us how she had ever climbed up them.

Then there was the time I was sitting on the couch late one evening, typing on my laptop, when I heard someone jiggle the locked handle to our front door. Not only did the person jiggle it, but he twisted and pulled as if trying to force it open. My head popped up, and I looked over at the turning door handle in horror-movie disbelief. I then slapped my hands on either side of my face (a la Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone) and screamed, "Somebody's trying to break in!"

Being the go-getter that he is, my husband slapped open the door between our office and apartment, tore across the living room, unlocked and flung back the front door. He was going to wrestle the robbers barehanded, I guess. Three minutes later, he came inside and looked at me sitting on the couch while still trying to decide if I should grab a tennis racket and go help my husband or call 911.

"The cops..." he breathlessly explained. "They were doing their rounds, and they tried the door to make sure it was locked."

Since my 6'2'' husband came charging after the LPD, they haven't been back to do their security rounds. I think they figure with such an intrepid owner, our store does not need their assistance.

This past fall, when my father had just started living with us three days a week while working part time on his and my mother's new house neighboring ours, my husband and I heard a knock on the door. I decided it must be my father coming back to get a tool he had forgotten, so I casually walked over in my bathrobe and slippers and opened that front door wide.

My face burning just as brightly as the FedEx man's, I slammed the door shut just as he -- not knowing what else to do -- held the computerized clipboard out and mumbled, "Sign here." Being far more modestly garbed, my husband went outside to talk to the FedEx man who kept apologizing over and over since he thought the door that said "Private" just referred to our offices.

Then there was the Monday afternoon I went up to the apartment for a snack and saw a maroon SUV parked right next to our Jeeps. By the time we had closed the store the SUV was gone, but the next Monday -- sometime in the afternoon -- it reappeared. I didn't think too much of it since many people will use our parking lot as a meeting point, but one time I just so happened to go outside for the mail and witnessed the man and woman who were meeting outside our store.

The man wore a white collared shirt, slacks, tie, polished shoes, and a dull wedding band. The woman in the SUV wasn't so nicely groomed. She had badly permed and peroxidized hair that sprayed around her face in fried little tufts. Her makeup was so thick it surely wouldn't melted down her wattled neck if she stared too long at the sun. She wasn't dressed like the profession I suspected her of and the soccer-mom SUV threw me off so much that I told myself I had to be wrong. But then I went inside and waited. I stood there and nibbled on an apple for ten minutes instead of my usual two. I then slitted open the blinds and checked to see if the man's tan car was gone.

It was.

Walking outside as if to get something from my car, I looked over at the motel located right next to us and my suspicions were immediately confirmed. The tan car was now parked over at the motel. Two hours later, the SUV and the tan car were both gone.

The next Monday, when I went up to the apartment for the snack I had no appetite to consume, I looked out the window and saw the woman getting out of her maroon SUV and into the married man's car. I was so infuriated by the situation that I ran down into the store and told my husband I had seen them again.

Knowing exactly who "them" was, my husband ran up through the store and out the apartment. The man and woman had left our parking lot and were now over at the motel. Peering through the blinds, I watched my husband stalk over to the motel right toward that tan car. He then said something to the couple and pointed back to our store.

One minute later, the man dropped the woman off at her SUV, and they pulled out of the parking lot in their separate vehicles, but not before the woman spewed her limited vocabulary upon my husband.

When he came inside, I asked what he had said to get them to leave. He just shrugged. "I told them I knew what was going on, and they couldn't use our parking lot for such things. If they ever came back, I told them I'd report their license plate numbers."

"Could you?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Probably not, but they don't know that."

Now, as I type these stories, I am sitting on my front porch overlooking the softly rolling Cumberland Mountains, and I find that I am so eager to move here that the time until we do cannot come quickly enough. But then, I know that I must remember: My husband and I wouldn't appreciate this picturesque setting if we hadn't lived in our apartment adjacent to our grocery store and experienced all the oddities and oddballs who came along with it.

So, thank you, disoriented elderly lady, the local police force doing their nightly rounds, red-faced FedEx man who was definitely not my father, and the couple who I hope are a couple no more. Y'all've certainly made these three years interesting, I'll give ya that.

The Letter

2011-07-31T09:42:00.000-07:00

Folding the letter along the creases, I placed it in the envelope and slipped it into the back pocket of my jeans. Then, as if in a trance, I walked off the deck, across the grass, and climbed the wobbly barbed wire fence into Joel Hershel’s property. I paced back and forth over that windblown field--ruminating over Randy’s words just as thoroughly as those cows were down over the hill chewing their cud.

I didn’t know how to respond to such a letter and to the revelations it contained. For in no way did I desire to abandon Randy's friendship, but I also didn’t know how we could possibly maintain the semblance of a normal one, knowing all the while he wanted something more. I couldn’t ask him to wait on me because I wasn’t sure I actually wanted him to. What if he did wait, and I found someone at college? It just simply wasn’t fair: either stringing him along like a puppet in case I wanted to pick him up again and toy with his heart over winter and summer breaks or severing all ties between us. He’d surely get hurt in the process if I did the latter. And, if that percentage of intercollegiate marriages was correct, he’d get hurt in the process if I did the former.

Regardless of the different perspectives I took, the four years of college in front of a future relationship between Randy and me made the chances of it every coming to fruition not exactly improbable, but still quite uncertain. It was like looking through a kaleidoscope of Time: turning the cylinder filled with shifting patterns and starburst color while trying to predict what images the tenth turn would bring. There were too many variables swaying in the balance to know where I would be, or even who I would be, when 2008 rolled around.

It was odd, but I found relief in the fact no relief for the moment could be found. Thus reassured by futility, I wove through the grasses and went to climb the fence bordering our yard. But before I did, I looked through the French glass doors of our white rancher and saw my family moving inside like lead characters in a shadow box play. Father was seated at the kitchen table: his red suspenders hanging off his salt-stained shirt; his yellow accounting pad spread before him; his calculator (with the extra-large buttons for his 49-year-old eyes) to his right, and his carpenter pencil poised in his sandpapered hand. Standing between the coffee table and the couch, Mother looked like a teenager in tank top, shorts, and hair looped into a feathered ponytail. She was folding a pile of laundry, and the prim set of her mouth said she wasn’t enjoying it. Six-year-old Caleb was stretched across the rug before the empty fireplace, creating all sorts of politically incorrect mayhem with his anatomically correct action figures. Our older brother Joshua wasn’t home yet, but there was a covered plate in the fridge, a freshly made bed, and four anxious hearts awaiting his return.

I began to cry for the appearance of ease in their lives even though I, at the moment, was not counted among them. And the next morning when I left for college, this shadow box image wouldn’t be just an appearance but an actuality: my part shifting to that of an understudy from the place of a lead. Releasing the rusted wire of the fence, I sank down into the grasses and pulled my knees up to my chest. My hair hung over both sides of my face, and I wept behind the comfort of its curtain. I must’ve remained that way for quite a while, for the shadows behind me lengthened as the porch lights winked out one by one.

“Jolina,” Mother’s voice called from deck, “where are you?”

“Over here, Mom,” I said, but my voice was hoarse from crying, and I doubt she heard me.

A flashlight beam swept the yard. “Jolina?”

“Over here,” I repeated.

She drew closer and closer. “There you are,” she said, when the light ignited me in the darkness. My mother, also barefoot, clambered over the fence--her ponytail swishing like its namesake’s. She leapt over with a slight groan and asked, “You okay?”

Glad for the darkness, I stood and wiped my face on the shoulder of my shirt. “Yes.”

“It’s time for bed, you know.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. Come in, now. You’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

She helped me climb the fence, and I helped her. Using the flashlight beam to guide us, we found our way to the deck. Her hand on the door handle, she suddenly stopped, turned, and held me to her. “I love you, my girl,” she whispered, and her cheek against mine was wet.

“Love you too, Mom.”

“Look,” she said, pointing above. The beam from the flashlight centered between our bodies sliced the night like a lighthouse beacon--letting me know that, whatever happened, I could always find my way back home.

Randy and I married four years later on September 27, 2008.

The Bull's-eye of Love

2011-07-24T19:21:00.000-07:00

A few times every summer my family would travel down to visit the Petersheims who had a twenty-three-year-old son who I greatly admired, but who I wouldn't allow near my heart because of our six and a half age gap. Needless to say, it didn't work. This is the second snapshot of my husband, Randy, and my unusual beginning.

The land was as ruggedly beautiful as the mountainous terrain looming over it. With every breath of wind, the untamed grasses swept back and forth, in and out like the waves of the sea. The sun played peek-a-boo behind clouds that tumbled across a robin’s egg-blue sky. I found it impossible to do anything besides just stand there, completely mesmerized by the undulating beauty like a country girl cooped up in the city for far too long. I realized, then, how deeply I’d missed the all-encompassing acreage we’d carelessly lived on for eight of my seventeen years. Even though we still lived in the country, five acres bordered by Miss Odessa and Mr. Charmain’s dilapidated bungalow and Highway 67 couldn’t substitute for Springcreek’s 365 of rolling hills and freshwater rivers.

Soon, though, my reverie was broken as Randy and my older brother Joshua came to stand beside me with black paint smeared across their cheekbones; nine mm pistols jammed into the pockets of their baggy camo pants, and Ruger Mini-14 and .22 rifles crisscrossing their bare shoulders. They looked like extras from Oliver Stone’s Platoon or marauding militia members, but they were simply planning to use the property’s mildewed hay bales for target practice. Regardless of the weaponry tucked into every crevice of Randy and Joshua’s clothing, I was not entrusted with anything from a tomahawk to a toothpick. Joshua was solely to blame for this segregating behavior; for, like the evening preceding it, he didn’t seem to want me there at all.

Following the overgrown GI Joes as they wove through a tangle of grasses and trees, I heaved a sigh more to puff up my sweaty bangs than from frustration and swerved into place behind them. Randy must’ve heard my exhalation for he, much to my brother’s annoyance, ambled back. “You doing all right?” he asked, shifting the gun strap on his shoulder.

I wrenched my gaze away from his bare skin and replied, “Yep. But I didn’t know I’d sighed up for Sunday afternoon boot camp.”

“Oh, didn’t you? Sorry. Thought Josh would’ve told ya.”

“Told me what?”

He grinned, and the slash of paint on his cheekbones crinkled. “This is the world-renowned Petersheim Boot Camp--P.B.C. for short.”

“That’s funny, never heard of it.”

“’Cause it’s top secret. Only the very special get to take part.”

“Am I still counted among the ranks, then?”

He reached out and touched my arm so quickly I thought it was more to flick off a fly than to offer reassurance. “You betcha,” he said and winked.

We hiked for another fifteen minutes until the flap of gray road couldn’t be seen and we were flush with the back of the property. GI Petersheim then unrolled a sheaf of long white paper covered with a man-sized target. Joshua tacked two papers to two hay bales, and Randy tacked another paper to a third. “This one’s for you,” he called to me over his shoulder. Randy made me put in a pair of yellowed earplugs -- which I hoped was their natural color and not an accumulation of ear wax -- and the boys began blasting the targets while I sat in the grass, searching my legs for the red specks of chiggers. Finally, when my skin felt shrunken by sun, Randy said, “You ready?”

Unless you counted the time I decided to become Annie Oakley rather than Anne of Green Gables and “borrowed” Joshua’s BB-gun for the day, I’d never touched a weapon. I was a little nervous of its reactionary kick, for Father had horrified my childhood with stories of knocked out teeth and eyeballs to induce a fear of guns I innately felt. But Randy promised me those stories were just exaggeration. As the tangerine sun seeped upon us, he stepped closer and gently positioned the Ruger Mini-14 against my shoulder. I held the barrel in my hands and squinted one eye to see the bull’s eye better.

“Got it?” Randy asked. I glanced over at him: all tussled brown hair and bare-chested brawniness.

“Uh-huh,” I muttered nonsensically. I shook my head and focused on the position of my hands rather than on his proximity. I peered through the scope’s site, lined up the crosshairs, and pulled the trigger. The donkey kick I’d been expecting was more like something a bunny’s feet would do.

Randy ran up to the bale and searched the paper for the bullet’s puncture. “Wow, Miss Miller,” he yelled (due to my earplugs). “For a first-timer, you sure know how to hit a target.”

I smiled with pleasure as he trotted over and stood in front of me again. The sun’s swirling rays combined with the contrast of his cheekbone’s black paint transformed his hazel eyes into a vibrant, shimmering green.

“Thanks for the compliment,” I said, tugging out my earplugs.

“You’re very welcome.”

My brother, leaning against a hay bale with his arms folded, cleared his throat.

Randy and I looked over and saw Joshua’s face, set in the scowling expression of a disapproving schoolmarm. I felt my own face flush. I knew Joshua, to punish me for monopolizing his friend’s time, would tell our parents I’d been throwing myself at a twenty-three-year-old man. And although part of the reason I’d come to Winchester was to investigate the enigma of Randy, I truly wasn’t flaunting myself before him like a sultrily dressed, undercover detective to accomplish this. For where I’d struck the bull’s eye literally, the person beside me was attempting it in the figurative form. Maybe it was my Nancy Drew skills simmering to the surface, or the first strands of my womanly intuition weaving into place, but somehow I knew GI Petersheim’s next target was the core of my commitment-skittish heart.

My Knight in Wet Armor

2011-07-17T19:14:00.000-07:00

Today my husband and I traveled down to the town along the Alabama/Tennessee line where he and I first began. In honor of our love's ten-year journey, over the next three weeks I am going to post snapshots of how the two of us eventually became one. This snapshot took place the summer after Randy and I met: I was sixteen, and he was twenty-two. This is the story his sisters say proved to them that he was in love.

Randy had just started telling us about the chilling, occult occurrences taking place in the forest surrounding Sherwood when a barefoot man in tattered jeans and a cut-off shirt came stumbling out of the woods and leapt in front of Randy’s truck. Randy, mid-sentence, slammed on his brakes, and my forehead bounced off the back of his seat. The man stood in front of us--his scarecrow arms waving, his gaping mouth nothing but a dark hole studded with gnarled teeth and his eyes completely white except for a marbling of veins. I’d never felt such demonic-induced fear and looking up into the rearview mirror, I could tell Randy felt the same. While the man continued waving his arms in a series of jerky movements, Randy shifted into reverse, then into drive, gunned the engine, and swooped past him. It didn’t take long for the Dodge to put distance between us and the emaciated lunatic, but his frightening appearance had impacted us, and no one said anything for ten minutes.

Randy was the first to speak. “Everyone all right?”

Our eyes met in the rearview mirror, and I nodded.

My brother, with shaking fingers, tapped his cigarette ash out the window and said, “What in the world was that?”

“Well, I’m not sure it was of this world,” Randy said.

Joanne whispered, “Really?”

“No,” Randy replied. “He’s probably just on meth or something. There are meth labs all over these mountains.”

Randy drove a little longer and pulled onto a square of grass with a small sign stating the length of the Buggytop Trail and those responsible for its creation. We slipped on our backpacks, weighted with a week’s supply of food, and followed one another like dominoes into the South Cumberland National Park. The trail was beautiful. To keep Mother Nature from being injured, the tree-hugging students from the nearby university had only used hand-held tools for the clearing, and the path that resulted was thin and supple like a chocolate-colored ribbon looping across the forest floor. The hardy trees, left to their own devices for so long, soared above our heads, and golden needles of light punctured through their thick branches and the netting of leaves strewn above.

But the day was hot, and no amount of forest beauty could change that fact. Sweat beaded our backs, and humidity crept down our throats. Randy and my brother casually shucked their t-shirts like they were stripping husks from a corncob; the girls and I remained modestly garbed but green with envy. It was hard to remain focused on my footing with Randy’s broad, sun-speckled shoulders in my line of vision. For the most part I kept my gaze carefully averted, but when I heard the sound of water tumbling over rocks, I took this as my cue and began running in the direction of the noise. Within a few seconds I arrived at the creek, which had been created by rainwater rushing down the mountain furrows and crashing together in a blast of white foam. Heedless of my socks and tennis shoes, I sloshed through the shin-deep, cool water and found the source from which the tumbling sound emanated. Black rock the size of Roman boulders had been broken away by the pounding water, creating a twenty foot precipice from which the gushing water fell.

Clenching a cedar branch, I stepped upon a tablet-sized portion of the smooth black stone. I peered over; the water at the base of the boulders churned like a witch’s pot. I was still watching when the branch I’d been clinging to snapped; my wet sneakers grasped for traction on the wet stone and found none, and I went tumbling over with all the kinetic control of the water cascading around me. I emitted a reactionary, blood-curdling scream and flung out my arms, searching for anything to break or alleviate my fall. My right hip collided and skidded down a chunk of rock; this provided enough time for me to seize the lip of rock above and keep from falling fifteen more feet onto the protruding rocks below. In the distance, I heard a deep voice calling my name. Something thundered through the underbrush toward me with all the erratic noise and maneuverings of a panicked elk.

“Jolina!” the voice yelled again; I recognized it as Randy’s, and heat flooded my face.

My voice faltered, “Mmmh--I’m okay. I’m down here!” For the moment I knew I was safe, but my throbbing hip and adrenaline-steeped blood made it difficult to concentrate.

Randy’s face, white with worry, appeared above me. “Can you hold on a little longer?” he asked.

I sarcastically drawled, “Don’t have much choice, do I?”

My attempt to lighten the situation did not shift Randy’s face in expression or color. “Just a sec,” he said.

He reappeared with a thick, knotted branch and held it down to me. I bracketed my feet in a niche of the rock and held onto the branch with both hands. He tugged on the branch, and I slowly came up with it. When I was within reaching distance, he grasped my hands and pulled me the rest of the way. Once I was safely standing beside him, his chest began heaving, and his face regained some of its hue. His shirt was torn from running through the brambles, and the water from the creek had soaked his blue jeans black. He glanced down and realized our hands were still intertwined.

“You’re sure you’re all right?” he asked, releasing my hands to swipe a trembling one through his sweaty hair.

“Yeah. I bruised my hip pretty good, but I’ll survive.”

He nodded, then just looked at me. “You gave me quite a scare.”

“I can see that, Mr. Petersheim.”

The faintest smile christened his mouth and his eyes sparked, but the moment was lost as our group broke through the brush and barricaded us with questions and dramatic reenactments of Randy’s charge through the forest to come to my rescue. I could tell he was embarrassed by this, but I was enamored by the fact that he cared for me--at least a little.

Why I Am No Bear Grylls

2011-07-10T20:23:00.000-07:00

When the dog started yipping the second we came in the door, my sister-in-law and I at first paid her no mind. We’d just returned from a day of 4th of July shopping in Nashville, and we were hoping for some down time before we got ready for fireworks that evening.

But as the Bichon Frise continued to bark, we realized "down time" was no longer part of the agenda.

Setting her shopping bags down on the island in the kitchen, my sister-in-law, Joanne, knelt and looked under the sidebar to see what all the ruckus was about.

"Oh, no!" she cried, hazel eyes wide with panic. "There’s a mouse caught on the sticky trap! And" --her squeal echoed that of the trapped mouse-- "and it’s still alive!"

I groaned. Joanne and I are both adamantly against sticky traps since the mice stuck to it will often tear themselves limb from limb in an attempt to get free like some horror version of Br'er Rabbit.

"What’re we going to do?" I asked, kneeling and looking at the writhing Ratatouille.

Joanne said, "We’ll hafta kill it, I guess. We don’t want it to keep suffering." Standing and stretching herself across the island, she groaned, "I hate this!"

Since there was just the two of us at my in-laws' house, we knew one of us had to soon play the part of the Grim Reaper. Drawing myself up to my full height (5'2''), I said in my most assertive voice, "Don't worry, I'll handle it."

"No!” Joanne screamed. “If I’m to live on a foreign land, I must get used to these kinda things!"

I just looked at sister-in-law and grinned. Beneath her summer tan, her face was as white as a sheet.

I said, "Do you think I should use a hammer?"

"Ugh! Its guts would get all over you!"

"You're right. Let's look in the garage for something else."

Trooping into the garage in our patriotic attire, Joanne and I searched through my father-in-law's tools and held up each before shaking our heads and deeming it too violent.

She suggested, "We could hit it on the head with a board."

Wielding a hammer like a character in the Hunger Games, I shuddered and said, "No, I don't want to look at it while I’m killing it."

My sister-in-law paused, then looked over at me, her face lit up with an Eureka! moment. Picking up a box without a lid, she set it on the ground and grabbed a Swiffer mop.

I said, "Huh?"

"See...you take the box and you set it on top of the mouse like this. Then you take the Swiffer mop and you do this." Grabbing the Swiffer mop with both hands, my sister-in-law smashed it down into the box, expertly "crushing" our invisible mouse and promptly ending its pain.

"Okay," I said. "I think I could handle that."

Exiting the garage, we entered the kitchen, and I rolled the sidebar out of the way. I picked up the sticky trap the mouse was on, and it flailed its little gray arms and made squeaky sounds.

"Ummmm, Joanne? This thing can't get off, can it?"

"No," she said, shaking her head sadly. "Once it's on there, it's on there for good."

I looked down at the squirming varmint and thought otherwise. I knew if it leapt down off of that sticky trap, I would probably scream bloody-murder and stomp it to death out of sheer panic.

Not exactly the most humane way to go.

After I deposited the sticky trap on the front porch beside the luscious hydrangea planters, Joanne passed me the box with the solemnity of a nurse assisting in experimental brain surgery.

I set the box down on top of the mouse as gently as possible. It squeaked, and I shuddered. Grabbing the Swiffer mop, I lifted the handle up beside my head and stared down at the box, trying to think like Bear Grylls stabbing a fish with his handmade spear.

I quickly learned: I am no Bear Grylls. My arms began getting stiff from holding the Swiffer mop at such an awkward angle, and my stomach heaved with the idea of what I was about to do. In disgust, I threw the mop on the porch and muttered, "I can't do this. I thought I could, but--"

Joanne interrupted with, "--it's okay. Let's run over the mouse with the truck."

I looked over to gauge her seriousness. Her face was as serious as a heart attack.

Lifting the box off of the mouse, I picked up the sticky trap and set it down into the box. We then picked across the graveled driveway in our barefeet, and I moved to get the sticky trap/mouse out of the box.

"No. Leave it," Joanne said, climbing into the truck's cab. "That way we won't have to clean the mouse up; we can just throw the whole box away when we’re done."

I nodded and put the box directly behind the truck's left front tire. Shaking my head at the absurdity of using a two-ton truck to kill a .75555 ounce mouse, I asked my sister-in-law, "Shouldn't we just use my Jeep instead?"

"No," she said. "This'll work."

I thought, No doubt about that.

I was standing there, waiting for Joanne to shift into Reserve, when she stuck her head out the window and asked, "Aren't you going to get in here with me?"

I laughed, then -- seeing her face -- quickly obeyed. I went and sat in the passenger's seat, and Joanne turned the key and looked over at me with tears in her eyes.

"Just do it," I said, wiping away tears of my own even while trying not to laugh.

Nodding, she tightened her jaw and shifted into Reverse. Her eyes locked with mine the whole time we were backing up, and when that box went under the tires, it sounded like a thousand mice spines being crushed to powder.

She screamed; I screamed and laughed about the fact that I was screaming. But we kept moving backward, down the lane. After a few feet, Joanne looked over at me and whispered, "Do you think I should run over him again?"

"No," I said, "I think that did the trick."

We sat there for another thirty seconds. Finally, I flung open the door and got out. Walking around to the driver's side, I looked inside the crushed box, but there was not a thing in it. Panicked, I searched all across the gravel, but there was not a hint of mouse remains. Then I looked at the tire--at the huge, knobby tire belonging to the two-ton truck.

Sure enough. The sticky trap was stuck to the tire as stubbornly as a piece of gum. Bloody innards were squishing around the trap, and I saw the mouse's gray tail peeping out from under the bottom of it.

Swallowing, I said, "Joanne, I think--I think we got him."

"Is it bad?" she asked.

"No, the sticky trap's stuck to the tire. I can barely see anything."

Clambering down out of the cab, she took a look, then looked at me and said, "We'll let the men handle it from here."

I couldn't agree more.

One hour later, when I returned home to shower and get ready for the firework show, I came in the door and called out to my husband, "Have I got a story for you!"

Padding out of our bedroom, he said, "What?"

"A mouse got caught on a sticky trap at Mom and Dad's, and Joanne and I ran over it with Dad's truck."

Tilting his head, my husband looked at me. "You know, if it's not too messed up, you can usually get a mouse off a sticky trap with a little warm water."

I groaned and slapped my forehead.

RIP, little Ratatouille, I’ll know better next time.

Giving "Cat Fight" a Whole New Meaning

2011-07-03T17:31:00.000-07:00

The biggest fight my husband and I ever got into was over a cat. We were taking a leisurely stroll after supper when the sound of pitiful mewing met my ears. Although my right forearm bears 17-year-old bite marks from the time, as a child, I tried to domesticate a wild feline and failed, I was not deterred.

Kneeling on the side of the road, I called out to the cat in all the ridiculous ways an animal lover can. Ten seconds hadn't passed when a little fluff-ball came bouncing out of the tall grass into my arms. It was a long-haired tiger that looked up at me with trusting green eyes illuminated by the streetlight's glow. It hadn't even licked my hand with its pink sandpaper tongue when I knew my heart was smitten.

My husband's, on the other hand, was not.

As I beseeched him with my biggest eyes and asked, "Can we keep it?" he replied with the answer I already knew was to come:

“Honey, you know we can’t have a cat in our apartment. Plus, it probably belongs to someone anyway.”

I decided I would at least find out if the kitten belonged to the neighbor before I took any drastic actions like stuffed it under my shirt and hightailed it for the woods.

As I tiptoed across the neighbor’s lawn with a mysterious bundle pressed against my chest, the little old lady who lived inside was probably so shocked to be receiving visitors at such a late hour, she didn’t dare answer the door.

I didn’t know what to do after that. I knew I couldn't take the kitten home with me, but neither did I want to leave it as an appetizer for wild animals.

Then my husband said, “Just leave it. It probably belongs to that neighbor over there, and it just got separated from its mom.”

In reply, I more or less said how could he even think to suggest such a callous thing, but I still set the kitten down in the grasses from which it had leapt into my arms. Giving the fur-ball one more weepy look, I took a few steps away from it, and it started hopping and mewing after me.

My heart couldn't stand such suffering! Turning around, I started to run back toward the cat when my husband put his hand around my upper arm and stopped me. Jerking that arm out of his grasp, I looked up at him with venom in my eyes and spat, "Don't you ever manhandle me again!"

My poor husband was as befuddled as the cat I was in the midst of abandoning. He wasn't manhandling me; he was just trying to keep me from complicating a situation that seemed so incredibly simple to a pragmatist like him.

One week later, as we were driving back over to my in-law's, my husband said, "Look there, Honey. You see that cat? I told you he lived there."

I looked out the window and couldn't believe my eyes. Right there was my little tiger, merrily hopping around with his littermates in the neighbor's yard. And here I would've catnapped him without a second thought.

Two years have passed since that kitten debacle, but I still haven't lost my penchant for rescuing critters that might already have homes. Today, during my walk, I came across four puppies with fox-like markings and the prettiest golden eyes. They kept yipping as I approached them, so I crouched low and called them toward me. They came scampering down the embankment and licked my palm.

I didn’t want them to get hit on the road, so I whistled and clapped for them to follow me back down toward our property. All but one trotted behind me. I tried and tried to get him to follow, too, but he kept growling whenever I drew near.

The puppies were too tired to make it the whole way down our lane, so I tucked them in the shade and went back to talk to my husband.

I said, “I did a bad thing.”

“What?”

“I found four more strays.”

Sighing, he said, “Honey, we can never get a dog of your own if you keep taking care of everyone else’s.”

“I know that,” I said. “I don’t even want to keep these. I just don’t want them to starve.”

Randy nodded, and soon afterward we headed out the lane in our separate Jeeps.

I drove in front because I didn’t want him to accidentally run over the puppies. Sure enough, they were still there--panting and wagging their plumed tails. I got out and called them to me. They were scared of the vehicle at first, but then they came up and licked my ankles.

Randy got out and grinned.

Seeing this, I said, “Aren’t they cute?"

He nodded. “I can bring food out for them tomorrow if we can just leave them here tonight.”

I agreed to this, then searched both of our Jeeps for water. We had drank all of ours, but we did have some cookies that I crumbled up and set before the pups.

Petting their heads, I clambered back in the Jeep and pulled out of the lane. I knew Randy would have to close the gate, so I thought I might have just enough time to grab the other puppy and take him down to his siblings.

When Randy pulled out of our lane, he saw his wife's Jeep haphazardly parked on an incline (I used my emergency brake, people) while I climbed up the embankment in a purple sundress, trying to get a growling puppy to come closer.

My husband shifted into Park and stuck his head out the window. “Your car’s going to get hit right there!”

I looked back at my Jeep. He was right; plus, the puppy and I weren’t exactly bonding.

Comforting myself with the fact that Randy would be back with food tomorrow, I slid down the embankment, got in the Jeep and drove out the road with my husband following.

Before we pulled onto the highway, my husband honked his horn. I put on the brake and waited for him to jog around to my driver's side.

“Did you forget your cell phone out at the land?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No, I left it at the apartment.”

He nodded, then said, “The puppies were already going up the lane to meet with that other one, and I dropped some cookies out the window for it, too.”

I grinned at my mountain man with a heart of hidden gold, and the whole drive back I couldn’t stop myself from thinking: What in the world are we going to name them?

Why I'm Thankful To Be Alive

2011-06-26T19:15:00.000-07:00

My fourteenth summer twin funnels descended from the mildewed sky and barreled across the field behind our house. We didn't know it until after we'd watched the news, but they were the same funnels that obliterated the home a quarter of a mile from ours, killing its sole occupant -- a woman in her forties, named Tina -- and spewing insulation and siding across a fifty mile radius. When I was walking over the fields a few weeks later, I discovered a laminated index card with a recipe for corn casserole. In curly script the top read, "From Tina's Kitchen," and I realized how easily those twin funnels could've turned in our direction rather than hers.

On Tuesday of this past week, my fear of tornadoes heightened until it reached the level of that summer afternoon ten years ago. My sister-in-law and I were in the back of our store's warehouse, looking up prices for items, when the warehouse's garage-style door started shuddering beneath the power of lightening strikes and straight-line winds.

I said, "Maybe we should check it out." My sister-in-law nodded, and we walked out into the store. Our cashier was holding onto the double doors with all her might, but they were still whipping back and forth.

Fearing that Susan would be swept out into the storm, my sister-in-law cried, "Susan, let go of those doors!"

Our cashier immediately released them, and the double doors flung wide. A monsoon of water streaked sideways, and the wind howled like it had lost something. The hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood. My sister-in-law and I just stared at each other with huge, horrified eyes, then she quietly said, "Let's wait it out in your bathroom."

I nodded, and we took off running past the aisles, up the steps and through the office. Slinging open the apartment door, I gasped. Joanne came up behind me and did the same.

One of the two 6 x 8 window panes in my husband and my 1,100 square foot apartment had exploded, and glass -- acting like pieces of shrapnel -- had gouged the wood in our kitchen floor and table. The row of variegated plants below this window had been decapitated by the glass shards or at least mortally wounded. Their chopped leaves had been blown as far as the glass shards (the latter were discovered beneath our office door), and the few seconds we stood there, surveying the damage, felt like we were standing in the eye of a hurricane. Rain lashed through the hole where glass used to be, fluttering the few blinds that had survived the blast, and the wind's power had forced up numerous tiles of the drop-down ceiling, exposing strands of pink insulation throughout the apartment.

As another gust of wind sprayed the floor with water and glass, I yelled at my sister-in-law, "We need to go to the store's bathroom!"

We charged out of that apartment like it was on fire. Joanne shouted out into the store, "Everybody needs to go up to the store's bathroom--now!"

Our dear cashier hoofed it up the ramp along with two moms and their passel of children. All eleven of us crammed into our public bathroom. One curly-headed little girl sat on the closed toilet seat and swung her chubby legs. The children weren't alarmed at all and neither were their mothers. But they hadn't seen our apartment, and I was secretly wondering if our store still had a roof.

I called my husband's cell phone. Making sure to keep my expression and tone neutral for the children's sake, I said, "Honey, where should we be during a tornado? Would the store's bathroom be a safe place?"

Those are certainly not the words you want to hear from your spouse, but Randy reassured me that I had chosen correctly. When I explained about the window, he asked if both 6 x 8 panes were broken or just one because he would need to get plywood to cover the area up. I told him I would check.

Mashing the phone against my ear, I exited the bathroom, sprinted through the store and up into the apartment. I picked my way over the carpet, which sparkled like it was embroidered with glass. I had just made it into the kitchen when a piece of glass toppled off of the broken window and splintered across the floor.

Up until this point I'd kept my head, but now I let out a blood-curdling scream...right into the cell phone.

My husband screamed in return, "Get out of that glass!" Then, more gently, "Did you cut yourself?"

"No, it just scared me."

Sighing, he said, "Don't try to clean anything up. I'll be there soon."

Being the obedient wife I am, ten minutes later I was scooping up glass shards with a shovel and dumping them into an industrial-sized trashcan. The mess was worse than I'd thought. Not only was the wood floor and carpet saturated with water, but dirt from the planters had splattered across the counter tops, walls, and founds its way into the cupboards, fridge, and even the microwave.

I invited our cashier up to survey the damage. "Well, Lawd!" she exclaimed, hands on her hips. "If you woulda been up here, you woulda been cut in two!"

Grimacing at that image, I just nodded. Once she left, I sat down on the couch where I sit everyday to type on my laptop and found that it was also speckled with glass.

My husband returned a few minutes later with plywood for the window. When he saw the damage, he didn't say anything, but while we were moving the couch to the side so we could vacuum behind it, he looked up at me and quietly said, "I'm just glad you weren't here."

"Me too," I whispered.

That evening, as we continued to mop up the water and vacuum up the glass and dirt, I recalled how I had stood in a field ten years ago while holding a dead woman's recipe in my hands, and I realized -- for the second time in my twenty-four years -- how very blessed I am to still be alive.

Wading Through Troubled Waters

2011-06-19T20:07:00.000-07:00

Winter 2006

The picture was taken during our trip out West. I was fifteen, and my best friend Misty eighteen. It was taken the same day we thought we were going to drown. Our backdrop is my family’s ancient, dust-crusted, black conversion van. Our arms are folded with my shoulder tucked beneath her own. Our faces are frozen in the moment between attempted sultriness and uncontainable mirth. Misty’s face is shadowed by the brim of her Cody, Wyoming cowboy hat she bought at the rodeo the night before. The pucker of her pout is the only thing truly perceived. I am wedged into Wranglers I have owned before I knew puberty was even a word--apparently, I do not care to breathe.

Our cowgirl gear makes us adventurous; our bravado like a rodeo clown’s dodging the horns of a thrashing bull. For the past five days, our eyes have been drawn to the crater-like mountains that arch over us with as much mystery as the dark side of the moon. The only thing that lies in the way of our Lewis and Clark exploration is a seething river that slices through the untamed terrain. With my parents and younger brother in town, we are deafened to all rationality by our clanging excitement. We pick our way down to the river and realize we’ve got company. A lone cowboy from a distant ranch with a name I cannot remember and a camel-like face I cannot forget, reassures us in a low twang, “If anything goes wrong with you girls, I’ll fish ya out for sure.”

With this, we are encouraged to begin. Clasping hands, we solemnly nod before wading into the depths of the Grey Bull River. After only three steps, the water sloshes against our thighs, wobbling our weight as our feet strive to find placement on the smooth stones. Misty moves in front, each step taken on slow shutter speed. My fear heightens as the water rises and pounds against my thundering heart. Each step I take, I am sure will be the one that sweeps me downstream as if I am nothing more than a leaf.

Without turning, I yell to the cowboy, “You can swim, right?”

His long pause causes me to angle my head to watch him out of my peripheral vision. He takes off his battered hat and scratches his scalp with dirty nails. “Well, I can’t say I can swim, but I can come getch ya if ya need it.”

Misty and I stand stock still. The water growls as it surges around us. Misty glances behind her and our eyes lock. Fear glows there as if she is watching her life flutter by, carried by a current.

“Let’s go back.”

Her words are whipped into whispers, but I understand.

Slowly, ever-so-slowly, I turn around. My new Timberlands slide and shiver over the rocks. My mind and body feel numb. The cowboy squats stupidly on the bolder-speckled shore, picking his teeth with a piece of straw. I glance behind me to watch Misty’s progress. She moves with as much trepidation as I do. I begin begging the Lord to let us live to a ripe old age. I pray that He’ll let us sit on white-washed rockers on our front porch, sipping tea while we fondly reminisce about these adventures instead of joining Him early because of them.

Unable to find my footing, I falter and clatter over the stones. Suddenly, Misty is there, her palm against my spine, buoying me up, giving me the strength to continue. She holds me up, yet I give her something to lean on. Together, we make it across the treacherous torrent and collapse onto the shore.

Spring 2006

Misty swerves across four lanes of Nashville traffic, her green Honda lurching over the hump in the concrete. She moves forward to park but shifts into reverse after reading the “For Patients Only” sign.

“I don’t want to park here...at least for today,” she quips.

I try to smile, but find it difficult. My hands are shaking as I unfasten my seatbelt and grab my purse. A shuttle for chemotherapy patients careens to a stop in front of the American Cancer Society entrance.

The driver is smoking.

Inside, a glass partition separates one department from another, hiding nothing of what is transpiring within. Rows of patients with shadow-rimmed eyes and gaunt cheeks sip carbonated beverages while poison seeps into their bloodstream. They flip through magazines and watch daytime soaps until the cresting waves of nausea overwhelm them with as much force as a tsunami.

It is then that I must turn away.

I stand close to Misty to feel her radiating warmth, to know she is still there. She asks the nurse, “May we look at the wigs, please?”

Like a hostess leading us to our table, the nurse smiles and chatters while maneuvering us through the corridor. The colors are mauve and cream, the lighting low. There are no pictures on the walls. Maybe the patients would become bitter if their time here appeared normal when it so obviously is not.

The nurse makes a sudden shift to the left, wedging her key into the lock. She twists the knob and thrusts it open with an ample hip. For but a moment her slice of smile falters as Misty and I file inside. She glances between the two of us, calculating who appears the healthiest. I feel like shouting, “If you knew her before you could tell!” I feel angry but I don’t know to whom I should direct my anger. My best friend’s twenty-three and has been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Those are things that happen to characters in Nicholas Sparks books and Lifetime movie heroines, not to your best friend who's more like your sister.

Misty can sense the nurse’s embarrassed stare. She raises a hand as if she knows the answer to the question the teacher does not want to ask. “I am the one with cancer.”

The nurse nods, her brown eyes melting in tears. “You’re so young,” she whispers. It is too much. I turn to my right and grip the back of the salon-style chair.

“It’s okay,” Misty soothes.

Patting the cushioned seat, the nurse says, “Come here, then.” Misty plops into it and spins around to face the mirror. The nurse runs her fingers through Misty’s thinning red hair.

“It is such an unusual color,” she states more to herself than anyone. “Such a shade may be hard to find.”

“It’s all right,” Misty chuckles. “I’ve always wanted to be a blond.”

I laugh with her, in nervousness more than anything, “We’d look like sisters for real, then.”

The nurse opens the white double doors to the cabinet and takes down three decapitated mannequins with hair in shades of strawberry blond not resting within God’s color spectrum. The nurse peels the monstrosity from the mannequin’s foam head and tenderly places it over Misty’s hair. The wig’s Doris Day cut and Lucille Ball color cause me to smile despite it all.

“Whatdaya think?” Misty asks, puckering her lips and raising a pale eyebrow.

“Beautiful,” I retort before we both bathe in the healing Balm of Gilead. Laughter.

Fall 2007

Today, I again sort through my pictures and spread them across the carpet. I smile as I watch these shards of my life falling into place, a mosaic of beauty. There is a new one amid the pile. It is right above the one of Misty and me with our backs to the camera as we sit on the wave-lapped shore of Lake Ontario. The sepia-toned print was taken during our trip to Land Between the Lakes the week before I returned to college for my junior year.

Loading my Jeep with camping supplies and jugs of water, we roll down the windows and prop open the sunroof, letting the wind tease our hair and our laughter. On the dashboard with her slender piano fingers, Misty thumps out the syncopated rhythm to the Last of the Mohicans soundtrack, number nine. We talk of our dream backpacking trip to Ireland, try to answer the question regarding who will be our husbands, imagine one day becoming neighbors who live on vast acres of land with waterfalls and who share sucanat instead of sugar.

But we do not talk of cancer.

We glide down deserted, pebble-layered roads. A nimble deer leaps in front of my car with the fluidity of a dancer. Yellow birds swoop and dive, making us feel as if we are in a tropical paradise rather than Western Kentucky. Once we arrive at Piney Campground, we unpack our things and lace up our hiking boots. Journeying deeper and deeper into the pulsing heart of the forest, sweat nestles against our spines and our feet begin to burn. A red-tailed hawk spreads its mottled wings and soars. It is enough to make you cry.

The trail curves and opens to reveal a sun-seared, shimmering lake. Crawling down a lip of earth, we toss our backpacks to the side. With our backs to the lake and the shifting sun, we pause a moment and Misty holds the camera. We angle our baseball caps so that my sweaty, freckled face can be pressed against her own. Misty wraps a strong arm around my back. She is there holding me up, and yet, I am offering her something to lean on. Once again we have traversed the treacherous torrent and made it to shore. With this knowledge, we smile with every fiber of our being -- threaded together as best friends, almost sisters -- the way it was meant to be.

She then snaps the picture.

This picture was taken three weeks ago during my trip to England, Scotland, and Ireland with my best friend, Misty Brianne Boyd, who's been cancer-free for over three years.

Folk Matter; They Really, Really Do

2011-06-12T21:41:00.000-07:00

At first it seemed my UK adventure had accomplished everything I had hoped it would: I no longer obsessively checked my email to see if my beta readers had contacted me with feedback on my novel; I didn't even care to check my Facebook or Twitter accounts, but just uploaded everything in the morning and let the tweets scroll on by. Whenever customers would corner me in the store to chat, I didn't offer them a fake smile and a, "Nice to see ya," while slowly slinking back into the office. For the first time in a long time, I truly wanted to visit with them, to see what vegetables had been planted and what grandchildren had been birthed in the two weeks since I'd been gone.

Then, slowly but surely, the post-adventure euphoria wore off, and Life crept back in. Laundry, tossed into the nest of a hamper, started multiplying like rabbits. Ants began marching across my kitchen floor with all the pomp of The Rose Bowl Parade. I started researching (and, okay, I couldn't help it) writing a new novel. My husband informed me that I needed to pick out cabinet knobs, light fixtures, backerboard trim (?), and tile for our house. Our store also needed some extra TLC since our main employee, my amazing sister-in-law, has been out of town.

So, I gritted my teeth and bore it. I jammed laundry in all shades of the rainbow into the washing machine (it's not your fault, Mom; you taught me better); I attacked the ants with Clorox wipes and an I'll-show-you! supply of elbow grease; I spent all day Saturday in a stifling warehouse, purchasing items for our store from a business that was closing down theirs.

Without realizing it, I had allowed myself to get drawn back into the rat race of the daily grind, and my love for people -- my patience for people -- was getting devoured in the process.

That is, until a visitor clomped up the stairs into my office and changed everything; a visitor unlike any I have ever known before.

Renea Winchester, author of the memoir, In the Garden with Billy, had her life changed when she had a visitor of her own. Actually, the person she met on that hot summer day in 2008 wasn't a visitor at all. Billy Albertson had been living in those Atlanta suburbs long before every property in the area was "three-stories, covered in three-side-brick, with a three hundred thousand dollar price tag."

But Renea was too busy to stop by the '60s-style rancher that sold different goods according to the season and meet its seventy-seven-year-old proprietor. Every weekend she was driving four hours to North Carolina to tend her mother "whose ovarian cancer had returned with a vengeance," and she did this in addition to being a Mission Leader during vacation Bible school and taxiing her daughter to and from various summer activities.

So when Renea's daughter, Jamie, begged to stop at the '60s-style rancher and look at the goats described in the "Goats 4 Sale" sign, Renea was exhausted but eventually gave in. Pulling into the yard and parking, Renea and Jamie walked beneath a carport and saw the vision of Billy Albertson:

"[He] wore pale blue overalls patched at the knee. Unbuttoned shirtsleeves flapped as he sped across the carport with a stooped-over gait that was a combination sygoggle shuffle and lope. A frayed hat shielded his face from the sun. Bent pieces of straw had unraveled from the brim and cast haphazard shadows across his cheeks."

If Billy Albertson reads just like a character, that's because he is one, and Renea -- who offered to help Billy in his garden several times a week -- discovered this very soon after their unique friendship began. If he wasn’t fixing his truck engine with a few wallops of a two-headed hammer, he was working circles around Renea who, with a nickname like “Zippy,” should’ve been able to keep up with a man thirty-five years her senior but this was not your typical seventy-seven-year-old man.

Not only did working alongside Billy teach Renea the benefits of a simpler, stress-free life, but he also taught her about the "honer system" (“I like to trust people, and I believe people like to be trusted”), and how true love has the power to withstand anything--even Alzheimer's, even death.

But the best lesson Renea ever learned from Billy was as simple as the man from which it came: “Folk matter."

When that visitor clomped up the steps into my office, “folk matter" was certainly not the first thought that came to mind. All I was aware of was that my visitor smelled; that his eyes were a painful, pinkish red, and whenever he made his unnatural noises, spittle sprayed from his contorted mouth.

The boy -- he could've only been eleven or twelve -- gestured toward the door that led from the office into our apartment.

I shook my head and said, "No, No," as firmly as I could, but this did not deter him. Giving me a defiant grin, he lurched toward the door and turned the knob. He walked into our apartment, as calmly as you please, and I found myself in a quandary: I did not want to follow an eleven or twelve-year-old boy into our apartment because I didn't think his parents would appreciate that, but neither did I want that boy to go into our kitchen and find the knives.

I yelled down at our cashier, "Susan! You know where this boy's mother is?"

She shook her head, but the mother must've overheard this, for she hollered, "Aar-ron! C'mon, now, son…getch yourself on over here."

Glancing around at the apartment, he said, "Wow” (it probably seemed like Narnia after coming up from a grocery store), then walked back into the office and took my hand.

I was startled at first, because of the gesture, but also because this child's hand was far larger than my own. Tugging on my hand, he led me down the steps into the store and walked me over to his mother as if for her inspection.

I waved and smiled to let her know that everything was all right, told Aaron goodbye and went back up into the office.

He followed two minutes later.

I was replying to some emails and he pointed to the computer screen, then pointed at me.

"Yes, yes," I said. "I'm typing."

He grunted and watched for a bit. Stumbling over, he put his hand over mine, pressed down hard, and scribbled the mouse all over the desk.

Dropping my hand, the boy came over and put his arms around my neck. I tried to remain calm, but he really did smell quite bad and the noises he was roaring into my ear were punctuated with spittle. I was just about to call for help when the boy's mother hollered (there's no other word for it) for him to "come down ’ere or else."

The boy squeezed me into an awkward hug, then gave my neck a sloppy kiss. He was plodding down the office steps when he suddenly stopped and turned around. I was bracing myself for who knew what, but the boy just held out his fisted knuckles.

I started to smile as it dawned on me what he wanted. Seeing this, the boy smiled, too. It transformed his whole face, and I saw that his eyes beneath the pinkish tinge were a dark, chocolatey brown.

Holding up my hand and making a fist, I brushed my knuckles against his. His grin widened, and he switched hands. I brushed my knuckles against his other set, then he waved, clunked down the steps and rejoined his mother.

I sat there -- it must've been five minutes, at least -- without answering an email or scheduling a tweet. All I could do was picture that child who was living the simplest of lives, yet a fulfilled, stress-free one; and I realized that I shouldn't feel sorry for him, for he was the one who had shown me with a hug, with a sloppy kiss, with a brushing of his knuckles against mine the same lesson that Billy Albertson had taught:

Folk matter; they really, really do.

To learn more about Renea Winchester, author of In the Garden With Billy: Lessons on Life, Love & Tomatoes, click here or here.

As always, thanks for reading!

Jolina

A Snapshot of My Trip to England, Scotland, and Ireland

2011-06-09T08:48:00.000-07:00

No Place Like Home

2011-06-05T16:35:00.000-07:00

Our plane, en route to JFK airport, lost its weather radar and had to make an emergency landing in Detroit. Though no oxygen masks were deployed from the ceiling and no cheery attendants herded us through the side exits like chattel, it was still unnerving. That night we stayed in a hotel, washed our unmentionables in the sink, ate whatever food our miserly vouchers could cover (which was pretty much toast and tap water), and the next afternoon boarded another flight to JFK, then our destination: London-Heathrow.

Upon landing in London, my two friends and I stumbled beneath the weight of our cumbersome backpacks and equally hefty jet-lag. Somehow we managed to travel from airport to train, then find the flat where we were to stay for the next four nights. My friend took a video of me weaving up the early morning -- and therefore deserted -- street. A plastic sack had wrapped itself around my right foot, but I was too tired to remove it. For a few yards I continued to shuffle along in my travel-weary clothes, greasy face and hair, and attached plastic sack. Watching that video now, it really is surprising that no one threw a few pounds at my feet out of sheer compassion, which would've come in handy considering the exchange rate.

After spending the night under a chair at an all-night prayer meeting (thank goodness for ear plugs), our one friend chose to stay at the flat to catch up on rest while my other friend and I ventured into the city. You must understand, I hadn't slept more than six hours in 48, and when those subway doors slammed in front of me -- separating me from my American friends in a country that felt more foreign with every "biscuit" for "cookie" utterance -- I plastered myself against the window and beat it with both hands.

I'm pretty sure I would've hurtled myself along with the subway if my friend (who'd lived in London for over a year and knew the ropes) hadn't hit the button that made the doors open, and I lurched inside with a face redder than a beet. A few stations later, when the conductor said, "Oil change," I asked my ex-patriot friend: "Why does an electric subway need an oil change?"

My friend just looked at me a moment, then -- after the conductor repeated this phrase -- realized my confusion. "He's not saying, 'Oil change.' He's saying, 'All change.' This is the train's last destination. We all must change to a new one."

Southern accents do not translate well overseas.

For the next three days, because my friends and I were trying to travel as cheaply as possible, we ate peanut butter or tuna sandwiches and whenever we came upon free food, gorged ourselves sick whether we had an appetite or not. I started to feel slightly like a camel, and since my hygiene had taken a hit due to all those 3.5 oz. liquid restrictions, I probably smelled as bad as one, too.

Eight days and our three bodies some 20 pounds lighter, we left London for the country. When I blew my nose and the white tissue was not stained black with soot, I almost clicked my heels like Billy Elliot. When our hosts presented us with a hot meal, a cheese course and tea, two desserts (I ate both), then tucked us in between 400 count cotton sheets, I almost sobbed into their down feather pillow.

The rest of the week was something from a Jane Austen novel. We toured glorious manor houses, took a punt (similar to a gondola) down the river bordering Cambridge, explored Shakespeare's home and exquisite garden, had cream tea and scones in the Cotswolds, packed on the weight we had lost in London, and took leisurely strolls around the lake at twilight.

During our eight hour bus trip from Milton Keynes to Edinburgh, Scotland, I sat next to an Australian who had red hair splotched with black like a confused cheetah. He was going to Edinburgh for a bike race and his nickname was Barbeque.

"Why Barbecue?" I asked.

He grinned, then said, "I was taking some shots of absinthe that we'd lit on fire. By the fourth, I drank it before the fire went out and burnt up my head. It's a good thing I'd just shaved off my hair."

Before we disembarked, Barbeque revealed that he'd been in and out of jail 15 times for "brawling" and had another nickname -- Chuck Norris -- which he'd been dubbed because of his red mustache and his powerful roundhouse kick to a place I would rather not repeat.

(It's probably a good thing I didn't learn this at the beginning of the journey, or I probably would've switched seat partners.)

Over the next two days, I buckdanced on the Royal Mile, explored a medieval castle complete with a musty dungeon, climbed Arthur's Seat--a Scottish "lowland" that was so wind-whipped, I had to zip up my jacket or risk getting swept over the craggy mountain and sailing to my death.

It seemed I was just getting accustomed to Scotland when it was time to leave for Ireland. Once our plane had touched tarmac, we walked down the streets of Belfast (apparently, this is a tourist "no-no"), then boarded a train bound for Dublin. A few hours later, we were picked up at the station by our hosts--or, to put it more precisely, by our hosts' son: a 30-something man who'd obviously been looking forward to our arrival for quite some time. We went back to their huge, rambling home that had been passed down from generation to generation, then had tea and biscuits while overlooking the flower garden.

Wanting to take advantage of the little time I had left, the following morning my friend and I packed a picnic lunch and hiked along the Irish Coast. Out of everything I had seen, this was truly the most beautiful. The gravel path eventually gave way to a dirt trail hemmed in by a stone wall embroidered with ivy. Cobalt water lapped against the black shoals below. At one point, when we stopped for a breather, I spotted the smooth, dark head of a seal. Five miles later, the trail cracked open to a coastal village. My friend and I explored it a little, then stopped for some gelato cones, which we licked on our journey back.

Because this glorious day was my last, I didn't want to leave. We cooked a meal for our hosts, then sat and sipped herbal tea while (once again) overlooking the flower garden. I then went upstairs to repack and shower. While I was in the bathroom, our hosts' gray cat started scratching at the window while glaring at me with glittering green eyes. My hostess had informed me that this window was how the cat "got in and out," and that it should never, ever be closed. Well, it was obviously closed now, so I let the cat in, then shut the window because of the fearsome cold. A few minutes later I went downstairs to ask my friend a question and was met by the short, seventy-year-old host with an irate disposition.

"Did you let the cat in the window?" he asked, his brogue as thick as his girth.

I nodded.

"Well, don't you let it in again! I'm sorry, but don't you let it in again! Mary doesn't like cats."

I just nodded, asked my friend the question, then tiptoed back upstairs.

All of a sudden, I was ready to go home.

The next morning I awoke at 4:45 a.m., boarded a bus for Dublin, then my flight to London. Eleven hours later, my plane touched down in Atlanta, and I rushed to customs. For some reason, the visitor line was far longer than the permanent resident one. My flight was boarding by the time I made it through. Wearing my 25 pound backpack, I zigzagged in and out of the crowd and dashed toward the gates. Sweat was trickling down my back when I'd reached the proper one, but there was no need to hurry.

My flight had been delayed an hour.

One hour later, the flight had been delayed another hour. This pattern continued until the flight was canceled completely. A woman who had been on the flight with me from London asked if we should rent a car and drive to Nashville. I didn't think that would be wise considering the fact we hadn't slept in over 24 hours, and this woman looked like she was on the brink of a nervous breakdown already.

The tiny woman behind the booth announced that we were all being rebooked on the 10:50 flight. This didn't make sense since there were over 70 of us, and this flight was almost full. The woman directed us to a booth that would print out our boarding passes. The woman who wanted to rent a car with me waved her boarding pass in my face and said, "This isn't a boarding pass! It's a hotel and meal vouch-er! They're gonna make us spend the night!"

A dark-skinned woman came up to me and quietly said, "If you'll just go over there and print out your boarding pass, you won't have to stand in this line."

I think she was an angel.

Once I did as she'd suggested, I was shocked to see that my flight voucher was set for 9:00 that evening, not 10:50 like the rest. I had 10 minutes to make it to the other terminal. I'm telling you, adrenaline's a pretty amazing thing. I wove in and out of crowds, up and down escalators on no sleep, three cups of coffee, and a year's worth of carbonhydrates. When I finally arrived at the gate, they scanned my boarding pass voucher and waved me through.

It was that simple, and I was the last person to fill a seat.

At 10:30 my plane touched down in Nashville. For two whole weeks I'd been rehearsing my husband and my reunion. I would be wearing a flowing red gown. I'd have on some flashy red lipstick and stilettos to match. Perhaps some beaded jewelry I'd picked up while "abroad." I'd carry with me a worldly air that those that have traveled seem to assume as soon as their passport's been stamped with something other than Canada.

None of these things happened. I was currently wearing American Eagle jeans and a Cambridge sweatshirt that -- when purchasing -- had made me feel very intelligent, but was now wrinkled and stained with greasy airline food and 27 hours' worth of sweat. My hair was an oil slick, as was my face. My teeth were filmy, my legs as unshaved as my Mennonite ancestors'.

Then, matters got even worse. My husband couldn't come in the gates to sweep me off my feet and swing me around while smattering my greasy face with kisses. He would have been able to do that three hours ago, but he'd moved out of temporary parking when he knew my flight was delayed.

"Honey," he asked after calling my cell phone, "you mind if I pick you up at the curb?"

Well, wasn't that romantic! I guess I should feel grateful that he was going to put on the brake and not make me jump in through the window like a circus performer!

"Sure. That'll be fine," I tersely replied.

So, I lumbered out of the airport and plopped my bulk on a concrete bench. Ten minutes passed. My husband's white Jeep was nowhere to be found.

"Where are you?" I called and asked, like he'd just jetted off to Aruba on a red-eye.

"I think you're on the wrong level. Just come up the escalator. I'll be outside."

Nuh-huh! This was far too much! Here was the girl who was so optimistic during the airport delays that she was almost mutinized by her fellow passengers, about to burst into tears because she had to use an escalator!

"I am done with this traveling stuff!" I roared into the receiver. "Done, I tell you!"

Being the wise man that he is, my husband didn't say anything but just waited for me to get up the escalator and make my way out to the curb.

And there he was.

With the visage of him, every airport delay and rerouting, every peanut butter or tuna sandwich I'd consumed, every piece of jet-lag I'd toted around for two weeks along with my enormous backpack, every cultural confusion and traveling frustration disappeared.

Stepping into my husband's waiting arms, I forgot all about Buckingham Palace, the Cotswolds, the Royal Mile, and the Irish Coast.

All I wanted was to be home, for there was no other place in the world I would rather be.

Hey, That's MY Car!

2011-05-29T11:18:00.000-07:00

When I was a senior in college, my parents bequeathed to me their 1998 black Jeep Cherokee, which was replete with leather interior, a CD player (gasp!), tinted windows, and a sunroof.

Although the Jeep was a decade old and the transmission so shot it gave me whiplash within the first 30 miles, you would’ve thought I’d just bagged the Powerball lottery. My previous ride -- a $500 Beretta with $600 rims and tinted windows so black, they were practically illegal -- had no CD player or radio because the previous owner had probably pawned it for drugs, then was incarcerated before he could do the same to the rims.

A few hundred miles after my parents’ Jeep became mine, I realized the faulty transmission wasn’t its only problem. Whenever I went to turn on the vehicle, it often wouldn’t start because the battery was dead. My poor friends became so used to my request for a jump that they often wouldn’t return my call but would just pull their car up to my Jeep and pop the hood.

Six months and four battery replacements later, I finally broken down and took my Jeep to the mechanic's. Within five minutes, the problem was found: My Jeep had an electrical leak that could be fixed for $300, or I could simply unhook the battery every time I went somewhere.

Because of the faulty transmission that now had me going 35 mph on the interstate (all those hand gestures from passing cars really hurt my and Betsy’s feelings), I didn’t think it wise to fix one part when another was surely going to fall off five miles or a speed bump later.

Well, I was wrong. It’s now three years later, and the black Jeep’s still ticking. Sometimes I wish I could just euthanize the thing, but then Betsy and I’ve been through quite a lot together, and each time I go to drive her over a cliff (when I’m not behind the wheel, of course), I remember how she'd so doggedly plodded down to see my fiancé time and time again; how she had commuted from Cookeville to Nashville while my best friend was in the hospital; how she'd never left me set--only threatened to until I threatened to have her taken to the junkyard and crushed to the size of a toaster oven.

Although my Jeep and I have an understanding, my friends and family don’t understand my decision to drive Betsy until her wheels rot off (which actually shouldn’t be too long from now). If we’re going somewhere and I offer to drive, there’s always fear in their eyes as they whisper, “The white Jeep or the black Jeep?” You see, just like that white dog and black dog represent good and evil, the same can be said for my husband’s white Jeep and my black one.

A few months ago I attended an author gathering in Nashville where I realized just how “evil” both the white Jeep and the black Jeep have become. Once the evening had ended, I retrieved my white Jeep parked in a garage beneath a swanky hotel, then pulled up to the exit to pay the man at the booth. Since my husband and I’ve been building a house for the past decade (okay, the past year), the Jeep’s been used like a work truck and dirt poured out of the vehicle and poofed around my heels as I stepped out of it, passed the man some cash and said, “Sorry. The window doesn’t work.”

The older man leaned over the booth and looked out at the white Jeep through his smiling dark eyes.

“No need to feel sarry," he said. "That’s your car.” He pointed to the jalopy, then pointed at me. “That’s your car....No need to feel sarry.”

I nodded and smiled, then got back into the Jeep. In my rearview mirror I watched the man collect money from another driver and thought to myself, If he wants to see a car to feel sorry about, he should see my other one.

Chasing My Father's Dreams

2011-05-22T17:30:00.000-07:00

When I was three, my family moved from Lancaster, Pennsylvania to Nashville, Tennessee, so my parents could be missionaries and so my father could find a home for the country gospel he’d jot down on scrap lumber with his carpenter’s pencil. Not only were we leaving behind all of our extended family, but we were also leaving behind the security of my father’s four older brothers who had all “made it” financially and were trying to ensure that our family did as well.

Three years after our pilgrimage to Tennessee and three years after no country gospel songs were cut, my family moved onto a Christian camp set on a 365 acre Civil War-era farm. While my father built a house out of T1-11 siding that overlooked the creek and pond, we lived in a 500 square foot old slave quarters that was rife with brown recluse spiders and creatures that would scurry inside the ceiling while my brother and I tried to sleep. My father’s brothers cautioned him against investing his inheritance in a house that would then be donated to the camp, but he still felt compelled. When Utopia came crumbling down four years later and my family was asked to leave while leaving our assets behind, we didn’t. For four more years we remained on the camp, and for four more years I watched my father struggle to build and sell storage barns that would sustain us financially, maintain the camp, build a new house for us on another property my parents had purchased on credit, and be a husband and father.

It was a trying time for all of us, but especially for him. I remember how he would come home around nine each night and collapse into a chair at the kitchen table. There would be sawdust draping his shoulders; his blazing hazel eyes would be closed and black hair threaded with more silver than the day before. He would mulch his food on autopilot, then stumble off to bed, but night after night he could not sleep.

Soon after the camp gates clinked shut behind us and our family moved into the new home my father had built, his dream to ride a horse from New England to Tennessee while dressed as Paul Revere took hold. As self-absorbed as a sponge and now in high school, this dream terrified me more than any my father had ever had. What would my friends say? What would they think…of my father, yes, but also of me?

Years passed and to my relief I thought my father’s dream would remain only that. It didn’t. In the summer of 2008, he rode a horse from New York to Tennessee while dressed as Paul Revere.

I remember how my family and I had met him at the halfway point in Ohio. Because the horse had tried tossing my father in front of a few semis, most of the journey had been walked, not ridden, and the shoes he wore, which coordinated with the Paul Revere getup, were calf-high leather boots that baked onto my father’s feet. My mother cried when my father finally sat down in the cabin we had rented and began peeling off the leather boots. The soles of each were worn as smooth and thin as wax paper, and one had even begun grinding away at the thick rubber heel. Taking my father’s bruised feet in her hands, my mother soaked them in a tub of Epson salts, then slathered them with lotion and rubbed and rubbed as if her touch could take the soreness away.

Standing in the corner, watching my haggard Father through tear-filled eyes, not only was I confused about his reasons for making the trip, but I was embarrassed by the trip itself. I mean, I knew he wanted to speak in churches, and I knew that he had felt called to retrace the trail that revivalist Charles Finney had blazed, but why the Paul Revere getup? Why the horse?

Just last week, my father asked me to type up a query letter and lyrics for him. One of the songs he had written with a friend over a decade ago was recently a runner-up in a national songwriting contest, and he wanted to pitch it to a country gospel quartet. Sitting down in front of the computer with my father by my side, he read off the lyrics to me, but I already knew them by heart. My fingers flew over the keys, and the song began to take shape. As it did, I began recalling all those times during childhood when my father would continue to sit at the kitchen table long after the supper dishes had been cleared and scratch on his yellow notepad with a carpenter’s pencil. Often, he would be scheduling clients or writing down his list of supplies, but sometimes he would be transcribing the lyrics he had written that day on scrap 2’ x 4’s onto a yellow notepad similar to the one he used for his storage barn business.

Having finished typing up the song, I asked, “Is this good, Dad?”

My father hunched toward the computer screen and put on his glasses. “Yep, that’s good.”

Printing out the query letter and lyrics, I said, “Ya know…I got two rejection letters last week.”

“For your book?”

“No, for a short story I wrote.”

“You’re gonna keep submitting, though?”

“Yeah.”

He nodded. “Good.”

As he took the query letter and lyrics from me, I looked at his hands. The ones that have been knotted with calluses and the consistency of sandpaper long before I was born. He wouldn’t have had to work so hard all these years. His eldest brother had offered him a promotion in his company if he promised to remain in Pennsylvania and leave his dream of moving to Tennessee behind.

When the Christian camp crumbled, taking our home along with it, we could’ve just walked away; my father wouldn’t have had to remain and work for four more years to see if the fractured relationships could be rebuilt.

Three years ago my father didn’t have to made that arduous journey from New York to Tennessee on horseback and on foot. No one was forcing him to, but he felt compelled, so he did.

There are so many things my father’s done that no one has understood--sometimes, even myself. But this past week, as I stared down at my father’s huge, work hardened hands, I realized that sometimes the easiest journey is not always the one you should choose.

For it isn't the attainment of your dreams that matters; it’s your pursuit of them, even when you’re making the long, arduous journey alone.

Photo by Margaret Poe

If you're interested in my father's journey, you can read an article about it here.

The Truth Behind My Fiction (Or, Why I Should've Been a Podiatrist)

2011-05-15T18:26:00.000-07:00

My novel is off to readers. I’m telling you, that is one terrifying sentence to type. It's right up there with, “I’m now going to experience Chinese water torture, then have a gasless tooth extraction.”

It’s the immense vulnerability that makes me wish I would’ve chosen to be a podiatrist specializing in corn removal rather than a writer. What if my readers hate it? What if they sit down with that stack of pages, read through the first chapter and whimper that there are nineteen more to go? What if they find the dust bunnies on their baseboards more entertaining than my manuscript? What if the characters are too flat--or, far more likely where I am concerned, blown out of believable proportions?

The instant I knew my novel had reached its first reader, I felt like I was back at my first day of kindergarten when I never actually made it to kindergarten because I barfed all over my jean jumper as soon as I saw the school. Although I didn’t lose my breakfast after an email confirmed my novel’s arrival (I hadn’t eaten anything anyway; I was too busy chewing my fingernails), I did scramble back to my laptop and speed-read through the pages.

Boys and girls, it was as if editing blinders had fallen from my eyes, for I saw those once pristine pages were now soiled with mistakes. The irony is, I had actually warned my readers that the manuscript would still have errors; but when I wrote that, I was riding such a literary high I felt like the love child of J.D. Salinger and Harper Lee. I thought, Shoot dog, if this novel don’t win that fandangled Pulpitzer Prize, I don’t know what will!

Then the blinders fell off and the truth was seen: my novel had ways to go. Not only that, my very intellectual peers were soon going to discover that I didn’t know POV from a KOA. That when one of them had worn a t-shirt to English class that said, “Have Grammar?” to poke fun at the “Got Milk?” advertisement, I hadn’t gotten the joke. That I could place someone into a coma easier than I could place a comma, and that my poor readers were probably going to end up in a coma by the time all my superfluous commas were sought out and destroyed.

Why oh why didn’t I just enter the medical field instead? I would’ve been a great podiatrist. I just loooove feet--or, I guess, shoes….But doesn’t that count for something? If I was in the medical field, I would get consistent pay (okay, pay at all would be swell); I could wear clothes with bunnies or teddy bears on them and no one would bat an eye like they do now; I would have friends that would talk back to me and something to leave to my children besides rickety social media platforms.

Oh yeah, I kinda remember why I never scampered across that medical field: I’m not so good at math…or chemistry, or--or anything, really, to do with science. The closest I have ever come to surgery was when my brother shot bullfrogs in the pig pond, and I waded into the sludgy water and dragged them back to shore by their tiny little arms. I then searched and searched their slimy green skin for symptoms of injury, and when the BB was spotted, I’d squish it out with my fingers and the tiny copper ball would roll into my hand like smuggled treasure.

See? Would a fancy-pants podiatrist ever compare a BB squished from frog skin to smuggled treasure? I think not. Those kind of writing skills have to be worth something.

I hope….

When the Honeymoon's Over

2011-05-08T17:00:00.000-07:00

This week someone cut the locks to our gate and pilfered items from our land. Although the thievery could have been far worse, it still feels violating. A few days before that, my husband and I drove out to the property with our stomachs in knots, anxious to see if the deluge of rain had flooded our future home. Because we (i.e. Randy) haven't put in a lane yet, our Jeep sloshed back through the field until it was impossible to differentiate between the water being sprayed up from the grass and the water simply falling down as rain. When we arrived at our home, my husband and I leapt from stone and board and clomps of mud into the house. I could hear dripping coming from the basement.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Randy said when I mentioned it to him. “It’s happened before.”

Well, isn’t that comforting.

Randy had recently dug a trench for the pipes to the well, and this acted like a culvert that directed water right toward our house. The water line rose until it was flush with the siding, but because lightening was splitting the sky, Randy couldn’t use a metal skid loader to move the trench. So, he took a rake and tried to drag the mud into a ditch that would divert the water’s path. While he did this, I walked through the house to see how the paint color samples looked in the storm’s muted lighting (priorities, ya know), and I had just noticed the sky’s greenish tinge altering the color swath of the den when my husband hollered, “Look outside, Honey! A tornado!”

The instant Randy said this, the whole house seemed to creak like the Titanic after striking the iceberg. I took off running toward the window and peered out. The field below was positively churning with wind. The sky was streaked with gray and green clouds, and lightening kept zigzagging across them as if hoping to steal attention away.

Thankfully, the “tornado” had dispersed before I was able to view it and emit a scream that would’ve shattered every window pane in the house along with my husband’s eardrums. About fifteen minutes later, once the storm’s raging had ceased, my husband climbed into the skid loader and dug a path that immediately drained the pooled water around the house.

Although the flooding crisis had been diverted (literally) and the thieves had only stolen a few tools, our forty acre piece of Utopia had suddenly lost its allure. In short, I had grown weary of the house. It felt like a cedar-sided black hole created to suck up our time, money, and energy. For date night this Friday, where I usually bedeck myself in a skirt, heels, and chandelier earrings, I instead brushed my teeth, swiped on some deodorant, traded my sneakers for clogs and called it good.

During the drive, I leaned back against the carseat with my eyes slitted open, trying to fight off sleep. Randy clutched the steering wheel with both hands and stared at the barren road with his job throbbing. Both of us had no patience for waiters and complicated menus that evening, so we went to the grocery store to grab a few items and purchase a plant my mother had hinted she would love for Mother’s Day.

While we were in the garden area, my husband noticed the sushi bar beside it and asked if I wanted anything. I was famished, so we purchased a twelve piece avocado and cream cheese concoction and took it out to the car. Using the console as a table, I passed Randy a set of chopsticks and peeled the wrappings off of mine. I squirted soy sauce on the sushi, a dab of wasabi, and a peel of ginger. As the flavors burst in my mouth, I looked over at Randy and garbled, “’Member the ’irst time ew had sushi?”

Randy nodded around a mouthful, swallowed and said, “Yep. Our honeymoon.”

Ahhh, our honeymoon.

I was suddenly whisked out of the dirty Jeep and back to the garden island of Kauai. I remembered waking up and walking down to the private beach where we snorkeled and pointed out the fluorescent colors of the fish (of course, I had a hard time with just pointing and almost drowned myself after trying to talk). Having feasted our eyes on the delicate beauty of these fish, we would then walk up to a restaurant and feast on their brother and sister’s culinary scrumptiousness as we ate them in a sushi roll.

Jerking me away from paradise, Randy asked, “You wanna go to Lowe’s?”

Did I want to go to Lowe’s? Ummm, no.

What I wanted was to go bake under the sun for about two months, until my freckles all clotted together and I looked like the tawniest shade of brown. I wanted to cornrow my hair, get a henna tattoo, learn how to surf and do that Hawaiian hand gesture for “Hang Loose.” What I wanted was to forget that bumblebees had decided to use our house as their personal burrowing ground. I wanted to forget that orange-bellied swallows had confused the eaves of our house for a barn and had built nests that will be destroyed once everything is enclosed. I wanted to forget that the basement’s drywall needed replacing, and that thieves were just waiting for us to close the gates so they could come along and cut through them. What I wanted….

Randy turned the car key and shifted into Drive.

“Are you heading to Lowe’s?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Fine, I wanted to check out their toilets anyway. We should get one that has powerful suction so I don’t have to clean it all the time.”

“Sound good, Honey,” he said, reaching for my hand.

As our fingers interlaced, I recalled how we had strolled hand and hand down that Kauai beach less than three years ago. Though going toilet shopping sure wasn’t as romantic as that, when you’re with the person you love, somehow all that humdrum stuff life throws at you ain’t so bad.

A Window of Borrowed Time

2011-05-01T15:37:00.000-07:00

During the wedding reception, I stand in a corner of the room in my cinnamon-colored bridesmaid dress, remembering how everything used to be, trying to comprehend how much everything has changed.

I had met the bride, Madison, my freshman year in college. A group of us had decided to use the old train bridge near our campus as the place to celebrate our mutual friend’s twentieth birthday, and right before we began to sing to her, Madison arrived in a flurry of wrapping paper, cupcakes and citrus perfume. She was the most beautiful person I’d ever witnessed beyond the silver screen, and I was suddenly aware of how sweaty and disheveled I must look, squatting on the creosote boards composing the bridge while still in my practice clothes.

Despite the creosote boards and her pressed kakis, after we’d finished singing, “Happy Birthday,” Madison plopped down beside me and introduced herself. Within five minutes I’d forgotten that she actually had been on the silver screen and only returned to Kentucky after health complications revealed her need for a heart transplant; and once I realized that Madison was just like me (only far more graceful), I was able to be myself. We then talked and laughed while licking chocolate icing off of our fingers and staring up at the stars arching like a canopy over the bridge. As simple as that night was, from then on Madison and my friendship was established.

Taking a bite of an hors d'oeuvre, I shake away my nostalgic thoughts and watch Madison and Brent stand in front of the wedding cake table with their arms intertwined. Smiling, they take the ceremonial sip from the goblets while their eyes convey messages too private for anyone else to decode.

The rest of the reception is monopolized by Madison and Brent thanking leaving guests and discussing their future plans with those who will not leave. I am chatting with a fellow bridesmaid when Madison comes up and hugs me from behind, enveloping me in her citrus scent and satin. Although I turn to embrace her, I do not understand the poignancy of the moment; I do not realize that she has come to say goodbye.

I am swing dancing when somebody calls out that the bride and groom are about to depart. Abandoning my eight-year-old dance partner, I race barefoot for the door. In front of the clubhouse, Brent is helping Madison get her wedding dress into his Jeep. They are both laughing with their dark heads thrown back and teeth gleaming like pearls. The members of the camera crew swarm in for final shots, and they are not the only ones. Each of us are hoping for another parting glance or word.

Brent nestles more material around Madison’s feet and carefully closes the door. I am watching her elated expression when our eyes suddenly lock. I muster up as much of a smile as I can and blow her a kiss. She pauses a moment and just watches me. Bringing a hand to her mouth, she presses a kiss into it and blows it out the window as Brent whisks her away.

This was the last time I ever saw Madison alive.

My friend once put a name to the sadness that sweeps over me from time to time, for she experiences it herself: Stealth Grief. In July it’ll be five years since Madison’s death, and I haven’t found another title that suits it more. Sometimes I can go for weeks or even months without the slightest overshadowing of grief, but then I’ll watch a movie -- Steel Magnolias, for instance -- and the pain will overwhelm me as if the loss of her happened yesterday:

I wait until the surge of humanity leaves the church before venturing down the aisle. My feet feel leaden; it seems my body no longer remembers how to breathe. Beside where the coffin used to rest is the wedding portrait of Madison in the princess-style gown she wore only thirteen days before her sudden death from a heart attack at age twenty-one. In it, she smiles with her rose-bud lips closed, her almond shaped, amber-colored eyes penetrating the camera, her molasses waves cascading over the sequined bodice. Cradled in her arms is a tangle of blossoms. She is so alive, so full of happiness and hope. My throat begins to close, and my eyes are on fire. Half blinded with tears, I stalk down the aisle. Familiar faces -- friends of Madison and me -- swirl in and out of focus as I blink tears away. My friends attempt to abate my distress with comfort. I do not want comfort. I do not want anything but to have her back, to hug her tighter, to understand that this is truly goodbye.

Once Stealth Grief has gained its foothold, it is hard to shake free. Simple things like sorting through my CDs and coming across one her hand had titled will make me want to weep. I’ll check the mail, and there will be a letter saying I need to get my license renewed along with a flyer about organ donation; something that Madison -- a recipient of a heart transplant that gave her years of extra life -- was a huge advocate for. I’ll be in the park or at the mall, and I will see a girl (a woman, really) with Madison’s same long dark hair and elegant stride. Although it is impossible, I find myself imaging that it is her. And when I see her and realize that she is not Madison -- of course she is not Madison -- I still have to turn away to hide the disappointment in my eyes.

Every now and then, in the midst of this Stealth Grief, a ray of sunshine will beam down from the past into the window of my present. It only happens a few times a year, and it does not often coordinate with the times when I am missing Madison, but last night it did. I dreamt of her. Anyone who has ever lost a loved one knows that dreams of the deceased are such an inseparable amalgam of sorrow and joy; for when you awake, it is as if you’ve lost them all over again. Now, after four years and nine months, even my subconscious has become aware that she is truly gone, and in my dreams I will sometimes discuss this with Madison, which allows for an easier transition whenever I wake up.

But last night, in my dream, we didn't talk about death. We simply walked from the Bennett Building where we’d taken our English major courses down toward the train bridge where we’d first met. The passage of time had not tainted her, as it never will; Madison's smile was just as captivating, her hair and eyes just as molasses-brown. She put her arm around my shoulders, and I swear I could almost feel its warmth and weight. I wish I could’ve written down everything that we said, for the evanescence of the dream causes it to escape me now. But what I do remember is how happy we were in that window of borrowed time, and when I awoke -- although I knew Madison was still gone -- I couldn’t help smiling at that merciful remembrance of her.

In loving memory of J. Madison Wright-Morris: July 29, 1984 to July 21, 2006

For information about how you can sign up as an organ and tissue donor and help someone like Madison, you can visit this link. Thank you.

Love,
Jolina

Flying By the Seat of My Pants

2011-04-24T19:54:00.000-07:00

The summer I was fourteen, I crossed into Central America using a fake ID. It wasn’t the birth date on the ID that was fake (in Mexico, if somebody wanted to get their lips on a non-virgin pina colada, they could've if they were still sucking a pacifier); no, what was fake was the ID itself.

Roughly six hours before we flew out of the Nashville airport with the rest of my missions team, I was standing inside Kinko’s Copies, waiting for my 9th grade yearbook picture to scan. As they say, desperate times call for desperate measures, and I was one desperate desperado. A day before I was to leave, my mother drove me down to the county clerk’s office where the notary glanced at my cutesy birth certificate (you know, the one with the stamped feet?) and said, “That there’s not your birth certificate.”

My mouth fell open, as did my mother’s; this whole time we’d assumed that that was the original. But, no…the original had been lost somewhere between Pennsylvania and Tennessee, and we had no idea how to find it. I forget what criminally-minded friend suggested a fake ID as compensation for my lack of an authentic birth certificate. What’s even more surprising is that my parents -- who are covered head-to-toe with worry warts -- let me do it. I mean, we did talk about it. My dad said something like, “If you get into trouble, I’ll come down there and fetchya.”

So, I simply got a pimply-faced employee at Kinko’s Copies to make my fake ID, then spent the next sixteen hours in a state of panic so profound, finding an airport bathroom became as much of a priority as getting through customs (which I miraculously did).

The day we flew out of Greece.

My trip to Greece four years later was just as taxing. My college girlfriends and I had such a horrific sense of doom, we called our close relatives and friends and told them each a tearful goodbye. It was awful. I didn’t want to get on that plane for the life of me, for I feared if I did I would most certainly lose it. Being on the Georgia tarmac did nothing to calm our fears, for our plane was not moving! For four hours we just sat there, chomping on peanuts and sipping apple juice (even ominous premonitions cannot quench college students’ appetites), then this Mr. Incredible voice came over the intercom and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Brown speaking. I’m sorry for the delay, but while we were taking off some baggage, we discovered a mechanical error. We couldn’t’ve flown without it.”

When we arrived in Piraeus, Greece -- absolutely exhausted and waterlogged (due to all those salty peanuts) -- we stood in front of the baggage claim like zombies until someone on our team looked around, saw we were the last ones there, and said, “Umm…guys? I don’t think they’ve got our luggage.”

He was right. Our luggage "just so happened" to be the ones Captain Brown’s crew deemed suspicious and decided to take off (I guess it was the uniformity of our bags). If they hadn’t taken them off and rerouted them, they would have never discovered that mechanical error and our plane would have never made it across the seas.

Talk about serendipity.

This picture was taken right after I made it on the plane.

Exactly one year later, my friend and I flew from her family’s home in Germany back to New York. Because she wasn’t from the States, at U.S. Customs she had to stand in the international line while I slipped through the permanent resident one like I was buttered. Small delays along the journey had made the timing of everything very nip and tuck, and there was no way we would make our next flight if my friend didn’t get through within the next five minutes. Five minutes passed, and there were dozens of people still in front of her.

“Just go on!” she yelled. “I’ll take another flight!”

I nodded, then gulped. Although I had traveled a lot since I crossed into Central America using a Kinko's Copies ID, I had never flown alone. But there was no time to waste, for I now only had seconds to spare. Tossing my bag over my shoulder, I waved farewell to my friend and started charging down the airport terminal like William Wallace after screaming, “Freeeeedom!” I have to admit, I kinda enjoyed the rush: my scarf was flopping behind me; my leather boots were grinding into my heels; the bottle of vitamins I had in my purse opened and the contents were spilling all over the place (amazing that security didn’t think I was a drug runner).

When I finally arrived at the proper gate, everyone had already boarded the plane, and they were just about to seal it up. Once they saw how frantic I was, the stewardesses must’ve felt compassion, for they let me through. Seated on the plane, I unspooled the scarf and shed my jacket. It took about ten minutes to calm down enough so that I could breathe without the barf bag, but the entire flight before I stopped sweating.

My husband in Bogota; this was five years before we said "I do."

Two weeks after my high school graduation, I went to Bogota, Colombia with the Petersheim family. We hadn’t even left the Atlanta airport when I lost my passport. I dug and dug through my bags and cargo pockets, trying to remember where I’d stuffed it. My body was launching into Panic Mode when the tall, dark-headed son of this family walked up with a mischievous grin and passed me my missing item. Apparently, I had dropped my passport while waiting to check in my luggage, and he simply stepped on top of it--thinking he’d hide it for a while, then procure it like magic. Although I didn’t think it was funny at all, I was so relieved to be holding my passport that I couldn’t hold it against the fellow (plus, he was pretty cute).

I will be flying to the United Kingdom three weeks from now. As of this afternoon, my girlfriends and I have solidified one week of our two week stay. This is a little nerve-wracking, to say the least. After I’d spoken with our future host in England and jotted down some notes, I called my tall, dark-headed husband over and proudly said, “Look, honey! I’ve even got the train station we’re going to use to get from London to Greenwich!” I glanced down at the library receipt I had written everything on. I turned it first one way, then the other--hoping the different angles would help decode my Rosetta Stone scribbles.

“Yessss?” he said. “What’s the name of the train station you’ll be using again?”

“Uh…uh….”

My husband then gave me that same mischievous grin he’d used when he handed back my passport years ago and said, “Well, honey…sure doesn’t look like you’re gonna get very far.”

If you have time, you can also visit my guest post over at author Rebecca Rasmussen's blog: http://tinyurl.com/3rb43xq

Hugs,
Jolina

And Bichon Makes Three!

2011-04-17T18:10:00.000-07:00

The night Tiffany was delivered, my husband and I crouched over her bed, lovingly watching as she nestled down in the covers and made soft whining sounds.

“Despite having fangs and no opposable thumbs, isn’t she just perfect?” I breathed.

My husband nodded, then looked over at me and smiled. Somehow we both knew our lives were never going to be the same.

The next morning I was awakened with kisses--not my husband’s, mind you, but Tiffany’s. From my rapturous response, you would’ve thought I preferred the latter.

“Yes, darlin’! C’mere! C’mere and give momma sugar!” She did as she was told, then I scooped her up, carried her into the kitchen and was about to prepare her food when my husband came in from the office and said, “Already fed her. She’s already gone to the bathroom, too.”

“Which one?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“Number One or Number Two?”

“Number One.”

“Why didn’t you wake me? I would’ve helped you.”

“Yeah right, honey, you were out cold. She’d still be fussing if I hadn’t taken her to the bathroom.”

I dumped a few pellets in Tiffany’s bowl and set it before her. Putting one hand on my hip, I said, “Dear, I do not like your tone.”

“What tone?” my husband asked. “I’m not giving you a tone.”

“See, dear…there it is again.” I pointedly looked at Tiffany, then back at him. “I want our home to be a sanctuary of love. A place where no harsh word is ever spoken, and no hand ever raised out of anger.”

Rolling his eyes at my tone, my husband just topped off his coffee mug and went back into the office.

Not even midmorning and I already knew it was going to be one of those days.

My premonition was right. By noon, I had crashed my husband’s computer (oh, no big deal; just the one with all our business/tax information). While my husband ran the hard drive up to a computer repair center, I hooked my laptop up to the printer and tried printing out the revised version of my manuscript.

It did not go so well.

Every other page out of 296 decided to jam, and I spent the better part of the afternoon with my arm stuck up the printer’s entrails while hoping this wasn’t going to turn into a fiasco requiring either amputation or the Jaws of Life.

Not only was it slightly disconcerting having my extremities used as a machine's chew toys, but the whole time Tiffany kept sticking her black nose under the office door to sniff and whine.

An hour and six pages passed before I decided that dear Tiffy must really need to use the loo even though she’d just gone over lunch. Hooking a leash onto her collar, I took her outside in the pouring rain. I’m telling you, that Bichon -- who before would’ve marked a hydrant if it was being used to extinguish a Chicago fire -- now decided she was bladder shy. Turning around and peering up at me with big brown eyes, she seemed to be asking, “Can I have a little privacy, here?”

Rainwater was dripping from my eyebrows by the time Tiffany finally finished doing her business. We ran back into the apartment, and she shook herself dry. Feeling frisky, she lowered her forepaws to the floor and wagged her plumed tail.

“Now don’t you bark,” I warned, shaking my finger at her. In most situations, having a dog bark is really not that big of a deal. But my husband and I live in an apartment adjacent to our grocery store, and this is the very reason we’ve never had a pet or even watched my mother-in-law’s like we’d chosen to do this weekend.

Of course, right when I commanded Tiffany not to bark, right then she did, and I got down and made a grab for her. Then she really thought we were playing and started in with a high-pitched volley that resonated the whole way back to the warehouse where my husband was working.

Clomping up the steps, Randy threw open the door to our apartment and looked to see his wife on all fours, doing circles around a dog.

“Fluff For Brains,” he said, “shut up!” I turned and was relieved to see he was talking to Tiffany.

“I hope you won’t talk to our kids like this,” I said.

Although long weary of my pet/child comparison, Randy just sighed and said, “Don’t worry, honey…I won’t.”

The next day, a Saturday, I decided to take Tiffany along on my errand runs since she did such a good job riding along during date night the evening before. (Yes, I took her along on date night; Randy said that he understood.)

At 2:00 I had an appointment with a couple who'd used the same cabinet maker as my husband and I, and I had given myself plenty of time to get there.

Or, so I thought.

Little did I know that two hours would be needed to make the two mile journey, for the neighboring town had decided to put together a wagon train (Yes! A wagon train!) from their town into ours.

In the beginning, I thought it was kinda cute. I even waved at the little Grapes of Wrath extras who were all wrapped up in blankets to block the frightful wind and cold. But then their escorting police officer stopped me and said, “Ma’am, I’m mighty sorry, ma’am, but we got 45 wagons coming through here today.”

“Here? On this road?” I looked at the strip of blacktop that was barely wide enough for a kid’s Tonka truck.

He nodded gravely, then tipped his hat and drove off with his caution lights flashing.

Needless to say, I was not a happy camper. As the Laura Ingalls gals ambled by on their wooden wagons, I didn’t even nod. I just glowered at their braided pigtails and booted feet and wished I could borrow those boots and kick those wagons and drivers right back into Yoknapatawpha County.

For a while the O Pioneers! kept up their friendly charade, but then they must’ve seen the steam of my wrath rolling out through the window (Tiffany needed to breathe), for they stopped their waving and just faced straight ahead with their hands clasped in their laps.

The guy who came by 15 minutes later mustn’t have seen my steam signal, for he held up his little spotted dog for Tiffany to see, and she went absolutely berserk. Scrambling across the console, she knocked over my last can of Reed’s ginger ale, barked and yipped at the window.

I had had enough!

Popping Tiffany soundly on the butt, I hissed in her ear, “If you don’t stop barking right this minute, I swear I’m gonna turn your hide into pillow stuffing!”

Tiffany yelped and looked back at me with hurt in her big brown eyes.

At that moment, the words I’d told Randy echoed in my ears: “I want our home to be a sanctuary of love. A place where no harsh word is ever spoken, and no hand ever raised out of anger.”

Filled with remorse, I grabbed Tiffany and clutched her against my chest. “Oh, I’m so sorry! Mommy’s so sorry, precious! She’d never ever turn you into pillow stuffing!”

Tiffany proceeded to shake all over with sheer happiness, swat her tail against the steering wheel, and bathe my face with her rough pink tongue.

All I can say is, I hope my kids are just as forgiving.

Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong

2011-04-10T15:51:00.000-07:00

It almost felt like we were Peeping Toms as my husband and I clustered around the computer screen, avidly watching the most intimate details of this young family’s life for the twentieth time in less than ten days. We laughed when the couple picked on each other, fretted when their offspring didn’t seem to be thriving the way we thought they should, wondered if all of them would be able to stand the harsh elements pervading their setting, and secretly questioned the parents’ abilities to keep their three offspring alive.

No, we weren’t watching the latest “reality” TV show churned out by Hollywood, but a family of bald eagles my husband had discovered through an online live cam. I had caught him watching them last Sunday, and although at first I couldn’t understand the draw, I soon became as addicted to their interactions as he. The mother and father shared the responsibility of their brood: the one sat on the hatchlings while the other flew over the dense Iowan woods--scouring it for rabbits, ravens, and even a fish whose scales reflected like tiny mirrors angled toward the sun. It actually took my breath as the mother/father (I still cannot tell them apart) ripped hunks of meat from their partner’s latest catch and carefully depositing it into their offspring's uplifted, chirping mouths.

Last evening, before I went for a walk in the graveyard, I watched one of the hatchlings teeter toward the edge of the nest on unsteady claws and flapping, downy wings. Less than five minutes later, when I was tying my tennis shoes, my husband called from the office, “Honey! C’mere! Quick!”

When I came into the office and looked at the screen, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Both of the parents were in the six foot, one and a half ton nest, and they were balancing a tree branch between their yellow beaks. One of them then took it from the other and put it at the edge of the nest where the hatchling had just been.

“They’re doing that to keep the babies from falling out,” my husband explained. I told him to call if they did anything else exciting, and I’d come tearing back.

Sometimes when I walk to the graveyard beside our apartment, I completely forget why it is there. Encamped by rolling hills, swaying saplings covered with pink cotton ball blossoms, and soaring mountains, it seems no more a place for the dead as Mars is for the living. But last evening, it was different. I guess it was because I was tired, and that bald eagle family had gotten me thinking about family life in general. I guess part of it had to do with the past month and a half, and though I don't want to go into much detail to protect those it is more greatly affecting, I will say that it has been one of the toughest experiences of my life.

So, instead of trucking up and down that paved pathway, I walked onto the grass and swatted down before the gravestones. I looked at the cameoed photograph of a woman who’d died when she was years younger than I, yet born a decade before the birth of my own mother. I traced my fingers over the dates of the departed, and my heart ached for the couple who’d been severed by death because the other half of their whole had kept on living. In their photo, although neither of them were really smiling, I could see the love they’d shared in the way she put an arm around his shoulders, and the way he gently clasped it with one of his callused hands.

The sun was setting behind the distant hills, so I decided to head back toward our apartment. After spending a day wearing long sleeves in eighty degree weather, I’d also decided it was time to switch out my winter and summer clothes. This is a task I despise more than any other; I would rather alphabetize the contents of my refrigerator than sort and refold all of my clothing. Despite this, I lugged all of my summer totes into our bedroom, started shucking sweaters from hangers, then paused and walked into the living room. I needed some music to get me going. Feeling slightly sentimental, I scrolled down through the playlists on my laptop until I found the one I sought: Wedding Mix.

Singing off-key to Frank Sinatra, Billy Joel, Air Supply, and Dan Folgelberg, I suddenly got a second wind and soon had two totes completely emptied into drawers and refilled with sweaters. Then a new song began to play: “Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong.” Because of what has transpired over the past month and a half, the lyrics resonated with me in a way they never have before. It spoke of living in a world where few hearts survive, how long the road is, how there are mountains in our way, but that love would lift us up to a place where -- and here I even got goose bumps -- eagles cry on a mountain high.

Needless to say, I was knocked into an emotional abyss before the second verse. Recalling that husband and wife gravestone when she’s not even dead, I began getting teary-eyed. Then I recalled how it said at the very bottom, “To know him was to love him,” and those tears, they started rolling.

Darting into the office, I stretched my arms out toward my husband and blubbered, “To know you is to love you!”

My husband, still watching the bald eagle family in between listing eBay items, looked back at me standing there with tears streaming down my face and said, “What? What happened?”

I pointed toward our bedroom and half-laughed/half-sobbed, “That song! Regardless of what we face, love will lift us up to a mountain high!” I then pointed to the computer screen where the father/mother eagle was tenderly feeding his/her young. “Just like them! Just like that bald eagle family!”

My husband pushed his rolling chair out from beneath the desk and stood. “Oh my, honey,” he said, “you’re really tore up.”

Wiping my face on my long shirtsleeve, I laughed, “I know! I don’t even know what happened!”

He walked with me back to our bedroom, which was strewn with chunky knit sweaters and sleeveless tanks. Reaching out his finger, he tapped down the volume on my laptop.

“Don’t!” I hollered. “I like it loud!”

“I know, but the song’s making you cry,” he said.

I wrapped my arms around him and looked up, “Yes, but these are happy tears, Randy. Happy tears. I’m just so, so blessed.”

Now, as I write this out on our land, my husband is strengthening our future home -- our love nest, if you will -- and I am sitting in the sun after having helped him pick up pieces of siding and fascia. And I know, regardless of how long our journey together is, how many mountains present themselves as we travel it, that love will continually lift us up to a place where we belong...just like those eagles.

(Live cam for bald eagles can be found here.)

Pray It Forward

2011-04-03T19:28:00.000-07:00

I’d passed her before. In the fiercest of elements, I had driven right passed the elderly woman carrying a sack of groceries bigger than she was. I’d always wanted to stop, but somehow an excuse always presented itself: the Jeep (which my husband treats like a work truck) was too dirty; the passenger’s side was chock-full of groceries; I didn’t have enough time; perhaps I would scare her and make her have a heart attack; perhaps she enjoyed the exercise; I didn’t want to make her feel as old or feeble as she looked.

As I drove passed the elderly woman for the umpteenth time, I suddenly knew this day was different, although the convenience level certainly was not. I was on my way to Nashville to meet my best friend for her birthday, and -- as always -- I hadn’t given myself much time to spare. Still, I felt compelled. Part of it was the thick pink blazer the elderly woman wore that made me sweat just out of compassion. Part of it was the worn old shoes that made her shuffle along. Part of it was the curvature of her spine that caused the woman’s hoary head to jut from her shoulders like a bird’s. All of these things made me crank the wheel and turn back, but another reason was the challenge I’d felt while reading a book called, Praying for Strangers.

River Jordan, author of this spiritual memoir, is one of the busiest, most productive people I have ever known. Despite this, on New Year’s Eve 2009, as her sons prepared to march off to war, she decided to make a resolution that focused on others rather than herself: she would pray for a stranger every single day of the following year. Not only was this adding another “to-do” to her already lengthy list, it was also stepping out of her comfort zone. River is a self-proclaimed introvert (although she is so warm, I do not believe her), and the “strangers” that stood out to her the most were usually those that required the crossing of some physical or social boundary: waitresses, nurses, maids, soldiers, teenagers, misfits, mechanics….

Over the course of 365 days, River shared her resolution with these people and told them that she would say a prayer for them that evening. That was all. She didn’t lay hands on them in the middle of a grocery store; she didn’t offer money, fame or even a bookmark. But these people were so deeply touched that a stranger had scaled some propriety chasm to reach them that they often threw their arms around her or just murmured, “Thank you,” while tears glimmered in their eyes.

After reading one especially inspiring encounter between River and her stranger of the day, I thought, Why can’t I do this? I’m about an introverted as a golden retriever. I could tell somebody I’d be praying for them. Right?

When I picked up the elderly woman carrying her sack of groceries, I found out just how “easy” this whole praying for a stranger business was. First off, my old fears presented themselves. What if I offended her? What if this woman thought she was getting mugged and had a heart attack right there on the sidewalk?

So, I swerved into a hair salon parking lot and about lost my teeth to the steering wheel after sailing over a speed bump (I was too busy eyeballing my “stranger” to notice it was there). Shifting into Park, I got out and walked down the embankment, so the woman could take one look at me and know I wasn’t dangerous (I think it has something to do with the whole “introverted as a golden retriever” bit).

Shielding my eyes from the sun, I called, “Can I take you somewhere?”

The woman shrugged and said, “If’n you wont to.”

I said I did and tromped down the embankment in high heels to help her. But she didn’t need any help. Beneath her tattered pink blazer and worn old shoes was a woman soldered out of steel. I could see that in the proud set of her jaw alone. Once she’d situated herself in the Jeep and I apologized for all the dust, I did a U-turn and we headed down the road.

“There’s a dime on the floor,” she said, pointing between her shoes.

I said, “Oh, that’s okay,” but inside I was thinking, “Bless her heart. She probably doesn’t have two to rub together.”

She certainly didn’t look like she did. Her rail-thin legs were sheathed in knee highs that had more holes than nylon. Her purse was literally falling apart at the seams, and the fingers clutching it were knotted with arthritis.

“Where do you live?” I asked.

“With my sister,” the woman said. “Up near the hospital.”

As we passed the charred carcass of a house that had burnt a few weeks ago, she pointed and said, “That was my house.”

“That was yours?” I exclaimed. “Oh, I’m so sorry! Were you able to salvage anything?”

“There was a washer and dryer on the front porch, but somebody musta stole them, ’cause they ain’t there no more.”

Indeed, they weren’t, but I couldn’t imagine they would have survived the fire anyway.

“What’s your name?” I asked as we drove passed the hospital.

The woman straightened up in the passenger’s seat and proudly said, “Avis. Avis Montgomery.”

“Avis,” I repeated. “You don’t hear that name too often. I like it.”

Smiling a little, Avis asked what mine was. I told her and she just looked confused.

I dryly said, “Yeah, guess you don’t hear ‘Jolina’ too often, either.”

Pulling up outside her sister’s house that was smaller than most lean-tos, I tried to think how I could give this proud woman money without offending her, then I tried to think how I could tell her I’d be keeping her in my prayers.

Before I got the chance to, she started witnessing to me.

“You saved?” Avis asked through narrowed rheumy eyes. “You go to church? You need to come to my church. The Church a God and Prophecy over in Hilham.”

I just nodded and nodded again. Once she’d gotten out of the Jeep with her sack of flour and shabby purse, I was so taken aback by this tiny spitfire of a woman that I just bid her good day and drove down the hill.

I was at the hospital when I turned around. Parking in front of the lean-to house again, I got some money out of my wallet, walked up to the door and knocked.

The overweight woman chain smoking in the car parked in front of mine hollered, “Ya need to knock on the door! Not the storm door, honey!”

I thought about asking this woman if she was Avis’s relation and if so, how come she wasn’t taking her to the grocery store two miles down the road, but I refrained and just waved my thanks.

Avis answered the door on the first “real” knock. The house smelled like Thanksgiving. Wiping her hands on a dishcloth, Avis smiled and said, “Well, come on in!”

I said, “No…no thank you, Avis. I just wanted to drop this off.” I passed her the bill. “I know it’s not much, but with your house burning down and all, I thought every little bit might help.”

“Why, you don’t hafta do that!” Avis exclaimed. “I’m gonna get some insurance money.”

“I know you will, but this’ll help tide you over until then.”

Avis’s eyes didn’t exactly fill with tears and she didn’t throw her arms around me, but she did keep saying, “God bless you! God bless you!” like it was a litany.

As she closed the door and I walked down the crumbling sidewalk back toward my vehicle, I realized that I’d been her stranger of the day more than she’d been mine and whispered, “Avis Montgomery, He already has.”

Information about River Jordan's Praying For Strangers Nashville book launch can be found here.

Purchasing information for PTS can be found here.

That big, beautiful dog she's holding is a Great Pyrenees. They can be found here.

Thanks for reading!

Best,
Jolina

Living Up To My Hair Color

2011-03-27T19:23:00.000-07:00

Considering I coined the phrase, “I’m not the sharpest Crayon in the box,” my blunder at Union Bank shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anybody, especially me. But early Thursday morning, when my husband said that Douglas McCallister’s deposit was missing, you could’ve knocked me over with a check.

The check I was supposed to have deposited the night before.

My banking blunder began innocently enough. I was over at my friend Laura’s house sipping Thai tea after our Thai meal when her father came hurtling through the door. Where Douglas McCallister’s concerned, hurtling is the only word for it. He is a rip-snorting, boot-wearing, whiskery mountain man, and if I am to be honest, sometimes his machomismo scares the tar out of me.

After breaking up Laura and my heart-to-heart with talk of flesh-eating, parasitic diseases and the proper disposal of deceased animals in suburbia, Doug asked me a favor, “Do you mind swinging by Union Bank on your way home and dropping this in the deposit box?”

Putting on my glasses, I peered at the item he was waving. Something white? A surrendering flag? Ah-ha! An envelope!

Well, that sure seemed innocuous enough. It wasn’t like animal body parts or anything; I could handle that.

“Sure,” I said, taking a sip of tea.

“Now, the deposit box will be right near the drive-up window,” Douglas McCallister explained. “Okay? Just drop it in there.”

I nodded, but inside I was thinking, Buddy, I don’t need a diagram.

Saying goodbye to Laura, I drove 20 minutes back home, but first I pulled over at Union Bank like a good little girl.

Douglas McCallister’s parting words rang in my ears as I circled the Jeep around the gray-brick building: “Be sure you drop it off at Union Bank, not First National or anything.”

How sweet of him to worry! I thought. He must not know how responsible I am! Why, I was the vice-president of my senior class! Okay, so there was like 18 of us. But that still shows my maturity…right?

The cocky grin slowly melted off my face as my eyes continually strained for the outdoor deposit box and saw nothing.

Where in the world am I supposed to put this envelope? Is the deposit box in special ops camo or something? Seriously. Do I look like Laura Croft?

Incensed, I illegally drove up the one-way street (everything was very deserted, Mom) and pulled back into the bank’s parking lot. As I started poking and prodding various orifices of the bank building, I began to fear two things:

Fear Number One: That I would set off some silent alarm, and the police -- or “the law” as it is known ’round here -- would come with sirens wailing and barricade my vehicle. Since the chief of police and I aren’t exactly “buddy-buddy,” this could be a problem. (Hey, I did not care that the road below us was flooded. I did not want the LPD blocking it and inhibiting customers from coming to our store. If said customers then went on to drive their vehicles into that lake, I figured it was their own short-sighted fault.)

Fear Number Two: That I would be mugged. Since I have a highly overactive imagination and penchant for scanning local offender lists like they’re winning lottery numbers, I could just imagine all kinds of creepy men (and women--equal opportunity, here) coming out of the woodwork, just waiting to steal Douglas’ business check for McCallister Construction.

Giving up on finding the stupid deposit box, I called my husband.

“Do you know where the deposit box is outside Union Bank?” I asked.

“No.” He paused, then said, “Did you try the ATM?”

I pulled up to the ATM. Slamming the Jeep into Park, I cracked open the door and poked my fingers into the ATM’s various and sundry openings.

“See anything?” Randy asked.

“Hmmm, no….Hey, wait! This right here says…it says de-deposit!” I shakily got the envelope out of my coat pocket and jammed it into the deposit slit. No cigar. Mary Poppins couldn’t have made it work.

I searched the ATM while still on the phone with my husband. “Okay!” I hollered. “I see something that says envelopes. And--and it’s got an opening!” Crunching the phone between my ear and shoulder, I pulled open the envelope flap. I saw there were some white envelopes already in there, but I couldn’t fit the one in my hand among them unless I pried open the plastic flap and shoved some things around.

“I'm gonna hafta letch ya go,” I told Randy.

“You sure you got it?”

“Hmmmhhmmm,” I said.

I lied.

The call came at 7:45 a.m. I do not like talking on the phone before noon, and only if the person’s appendage is missing. And they think it’s in my backyard.

Assuming it was our cashier trying to get into the store, I called Randy and asked if Jana had made it.

“Yeah, why?” he asked.

“I got a call from a 931 number. I thought it might be her.”

“Oh,” Randy said, “that was probably Doug. He tried calling me, too.”

A shiver raced up my spine. “What-what did he want?” I asked.

“Oh, I didn’t talk to him. I was unloading this truck. Gotta go. I’ve gotta count some pallets.”

Padding into the kitchen, I poured myself some cereal. Each bite tasted like sand. When Randy came banging through the apartment door, I took one look at his face and my spoon plopped into the bowl.

He said, “The bank never got Doug's deposit.”

“What?!” I screeched.

“The bank nev--”

“--I know that! I mean, what happened?”

He shrugged. “You’re the one who dropped it off. Where’d you put it?”

“In the ATM like you said!” I wailed.

“But where in the ATM?”

“In with the envelopes--near where it said ‘Deposit’!”

My husband’s face paled. Dragging a hand back through his hair, he whispered, “I’ve gotta run to the bank.”

“I’m going with you!” I cried. “Lemme get my shoes!”

One minute later, my husband and I were out the door, in the Jeep, and roaring down the road.

Lurching into Union Bank’s parking lot, Randy circled the building and said, “Okay, in the ATM, right?”

I bit my lip and nodded.

He pulled up to the ATM just as I had the night before.

“See how it says ‘Deposit’?” I whispered. “Wouldn’t you think that’s a deposit box?”

“But that’s not where you put it, right?”

“Right.”

“You put it over where it says ‘Envelopes,’ right?”

“Right.”

“Honey, that’s where you get envelopes--not where you put them!”

“Then how come it was so hard to put it in there! I figured they did that so people wouldn’t get it out!”

Randy didn’t say anything, just opened his door and flipped open the envelope flap.

“It wasn’t that easy last night,” I murmured.

Once again, Randy didn’t say anything. Scooping out the stack of three envelopes, he set them on his lap. “Well, Doug’s check’s gone,” he said.

“No it’s not!” I wailed. “Just check!”

Randy sifted through the stack. One, two....Number three of the three envelopes was the one marked with Douglas McCallister’s spidery script.

I began to sob in relief.

Randy said, “I’ve gotta call Doug.”

“No! Just wait ’til it’s in the bank!” I blubbered. “Maybe he’ll think it was there the whole night!”

My husband just looked at me with one eyebrow raised, then something caught my watery eyes. A woman was running out of the bank. Running right toward the ATM. Since she was wearing a suit and not a ski mask, I figured she wasn’t a robber.

“I think she might be looking for this,” I said, holding up the envelope and smiling weakly.

Randy nodded and got out of the Jeep. I was too busy writhing with mortification to watch their exchange, but when Randy got back in, he explained that she was indeed on a desperate search for that AWOL McCallister Construction deposit.

“Don’t call Doug,” I begged, hands clasped in supplication. “Please, honey…puleese don’t call him. He’s ’bout as compassionate as a porcupine. ”

Right then the phone rang. Douglas McCallister.

My husband winked at me, then flipped open his phone. Wiping my tears on a Union Bank envelope, I listened to him explain in his special “Women, what can we do with them?” voice.

In return I gave Randy my “Scary Wife” eyes, but the snot dripping off my nose seemed to dampen the effect.

Clapping his phone shut, Randy started to laugh. I punched his arm.

“How can you laugh at a time like this?” I railed. “I almost cost that man his business!”

“Well, Doug was laughing.”

“He was?” My voice came out like a squeak.

Randy nodded. “Oh yes, he was. He was laughing so hard, I thought he was going to hurt himself. I'm pretty sure you just made his day.”

Honking my nose in another Union Bank envelope, I decided the next time I saw that rip-snorting, boot-wearing, whiskery mountain man, I’d wrap my arms around his machomismo self and give him a big bear hug.

Well, I might if he doesn’t spread this story to his friends.

And the Biological Clock Starts Ticking...

2011-03-20T15:18:00.000-07:00

As the sun-starved trees burst into bloom and the woodland creatures start kicking up their heels, batting their twitterpated eyes and getting frisky, in the background one can hear the unmistakable tickings of a biological clock.

But it isn't mine. Oh, no siree…it is my mother’s.

You’d think by now I’d have built up immunity to her “I don’t wanna be an old grandma” advances. My future husband and I hadn’t even set the date for our wedding when my mother began stockpiling Goodwill “treasures” for her long-limbed, curly-headed grandbabies.

(For that’s how she imagines them, but she said she wouldn’t mind if some came out with short legs and stick-straight hair like mine--gee thanks, Mom--or if they’d even be bald-headed, she’d love them all just the same.)

I was christened Mrs. Petersheim for three months when my mother bestowed upon me a ring box that held not jewelry as I’d eagerly anticipated, but a pink pacifier tied with curly string.

For our second married Christmas it was a silver baby spoon. This Christmas I’m pretty sure it is going to be a weekend at Gatlinburg where our cabin will be replete with mood lighting, Barry White in surround sound, and a heart-shaped tub.

Very subtle.

Three days ago everything crowned to a head when my mother and 13-year-old brother came to see the progress Father’s been making on their Dawdi Haus at the end of our lane. (By the way, “Dawdi Haus” means “grandparents' house” in Pennsylvania Dutch--oh, how apt!)

With its high peaks, port-hole windows, and jutted nooks, their cottage is absolutely adorable in an overgrown-dollhouse kind of way, which is exactly what my mother had in mind. You see, just like that big white house was built for what’s-her-name in The Notebook, this house is being constructed for grandbabies. Oodles and oodles of them. You’d think I had a pedigree right up there with Lassie or something.

My poor father had to move every window in the house up so the grandbabies wouldn’t push through the screens and plunge to an untimely Humpty Dumpty. One of the jutted nooks is being designed with a mini table and chairs so the grandbabies can clamber up and swing their chubby legs while hand-over-fisting G’maw’s breakfast. (Breakfast! What in the world, they’re going to be my children, too!)

In the vaulted den a ginormous chest will be masked as a window seat so all the wee ones' toys can be stored and so Grandmutter can lure them down to her Dawdi Haus with not only promises of fried foods and processed sugars, but also a “new” Goodwill treasure buried in the toy chest! A set of dropdown stairs is also going to descend from the attic so the grandbabies (once they’re old enough, of course) can scale up them, peek out the port-hole window, and play like they’re captains of a ship, all the Dawdi Haus their stage, an adoring grandmutter their audience.

Seriously. How am I ever to compete with that?

My 13-year-old brother seems to be asking himself the same thing.

While our parents sorted out more window safety issues, he and I went for a walk. I made some joke about how our mother can’t wait to get her hands on a grandbaby.

My brother didn’t laugh.

I paused, glanced over. “Are you going to like being an uncle?”

“Why should I?” he grumbled.

“’Cause they’d be your nieces and nephews?”

Shrugging, he kicked at a pile of stones with his barefeet.

“Well, it’s gonna be a while anyway,” I soothed. “You’ll probably be in college or something by then.”

My brother pierced me with blue eyes and said, “Yeah, right.”

I gulped, wondering if he -- like that one kind of dog -- could sense something I couldn’t.

When we came back to the property, my mother-in-law, sister-in-laws, and six-month-old nephew had come to check out my parents’ place, too. My brother and I mounted the upside down bucket serving as a step and went inside. The six-month-old, who’d been fighting a severe respiratory infection throughout his week-long visit, was getting fussier by the second.

“Lemme see him,” my mother said, going over and scooping the baby out of his carseat. I don’t know how she did it -- for I’ve tried since and something about my anatomy won’t let me master the hold -- but she pressed that wee one so close to her chest that he just nestled down as if he’d grown there. His little legs stopped pedaling and curled up beneath him; my mother patted his diapered bottom and whispered nonsense into his hair.

“Uh-oh…somebody needs a gran-babe-y,” my mother-in-law crooned.

My mother nodded; her smile bookended with dimples. “Yes, ma’am! That’s what I’ve been saying for a lonnnng time now!”

Then my mother and mother-in-law looked at me and cocked their heads. I looked over at my younger brother for help, but he just folded his arms and grinned.

At that moment I considered getting my mother a Cabbage Patch Kid like she’d done when my older brother kept begging for a sister.

But the thing is, that Cabbage Patch Kid idea obviously didn’t work...well, 'cause here I am.

(Image can be found here.)

For Better or Worse

2011-03-13T21:40:00.000-07:00

If my husband knew the date he was going to die, he’d probably slink off into the woods like my childhood cat Bootsie and would never be seen or heard from again. Me? I’d want Rose Bowl Parade floats and a full percussion band.

When I awoke on Saturday to my stomach roiling and head pounding like a kettledrum, this personality difference couldn't've been more evident.

Flinging back the covers, I dragged myself off the bed and rolled back and forth on the carpet, resignedly moaning, “I’m gonna die….I’m gonna die.”

My husband sat up with his hair flying every which way and stared at me for a bit (gauging the seriousness of this proclamation, I suppose). Finally, he said, “You want Tums or something?”

“No!” I wailed, as if he'd offered hemlock, then writhed and groaned for another five minutes.

Despite my tendency towards drama, it really was quite awful and made even worse by the fact I’m proud of my immune system and none too shy about it. I’m always the one to eat something right off the floor (10 second rule loosely applied), and if a grocery item comes in our store with a sticker screaming, “KEEP REFRIDGERATED!” I have no qualms about swigging it straight from the carton, room temp and all. I’ll cut right through a room of people sneezing all over themselves and won’t even hold my breath or run to the nearest loo and lather myself up to my elbows like a surgeon.

But on Saturday morning my immune system let me down. Not only that, it dropped me like a hot potato, and I morphed from a semi-responsible adult into a sniveling, whiney mess.

God love ’im, this was not the first time I expected my husband to whisk into action like some bearded Florence Nightingale. A few months after we started dating, we went out for a late supper. No sooner had I eaten my broccoli and red pepper pilaf when my stomach started spitting and sputtering its protests.

Randy stopped for Sprite at a gas station, and the whole drive home I took sips from the green bottle then stuck my head out the window, lapping up the summer breeze like a dog. Thus distracted, I made it to my parents’ driveway without incident; but when I was walking up the path to the house, a wave of nausea knocked me flat, and I lost my lovely rice pilaf right there in the bushes. Instead of keeping my hair off my face or rubbing my back in a gentle circular motion like my mother’d always done, my boyfriend was nowhere to be found.

Miraculously revived, I marched into the house and up the steps into the den. There my knight in shining armor sat--hands in his lap, staring at me.

“Why’d you leave?” I snapped.

Shrugging, Randy said, “Thought you’d wanna be left alone….”

“Well, you were wrrrong!”

Although a few years old, this exchange must be fresh in my husband's mind, for on Saturday -- once he’d fully awakened -- he leapt into action. Popping open a can of ginger ale, he set it on the bureau and helped me get off the floor and into bed. This movement made me stumble for the bathroom and dry-heave into the toilet, and once I returned, I took a dainty sip of ginger ale and Randy piled me with blankets.

Sitting at the edge of the bed, my husband asked, “Is there anything I can do?”

I paused a moment, then worked my feet out from beneath the ton of covers and wiggled my toes. “Yes…” I whispered, “can you rub my feet?”

“Do they hurt?” Randy asked, his face awash with skepticism.

Making my voice as weak as possible, I took a shuttering breath and closed my eyes, “Oh, yes…terribly achy.”

My husband didn’t say if he believed me or not, but I still felt him take my feet between his hands and begin to massage. At that moment I was so grateful our marriage vows said, “through sickness or health,” but I’m pretty sure as my husband oh-so-kindly rubbed my feet, he was thinking more along the lines of “for better or worse.”

Life Is Beautiful

2011-03-06T19:11:00.000-08:00

Apocalypse! War! Rations! Raids! These words affect me like the ringing of Pavlov’s bell; and although I do not drool or crouch in a corner at the utterance of them, sometimes I come mighty close.

I don’t know why I am this way. Perhaps it is my predilection for order. I like going to the grocery store for milk or filling my car with gas and knowing I am going to pay the same per gallon as I had the week before. I like checking the headlines and seeing nothing’s changed except the price of bail for Lindsay Lohan. I like laying my head on the pillow at night knowing my house is clean and the world’s ducks are in a row.

But the world doesn’t even have any ducks to place.

Everything is in chaos. Egypt, now Libya. You don’t even have to watch the news to know. In our store I’ve overheard the nervous twittering of the blue-haired ladies discussing food shortages and watched the shifty-eyed “survivalists” lugging sacks of rice and flour out through the double doors. These changes are happening continents away, and yet they are affecting our borders, too.

The soaring gas and food prices are cutting the legs out from under businesses and crippling personal bank accounts. Small talk seems to have flown the coop along with that elusive row of ducks. Instead of asking, “How’s the weather?” the new saying is, “Found a job?”

As the Middle East’s political upheaval takes over headlines and gas prices skyrocket, my nervousness mounts. How am I ever to bring children into this crazily shifting world? And if my husband and I are blessed with them, am I to do as my Cold War-era parents did? Map out escape plans in case of invasion; tell my children about the room hidden behind a friends’ bookcase where we’re all going to live until some unseen war ends?

But then I think of the Italian film, Life Is Beautiful, which features a Jewish family carted off to a concentration camp. The mother is separated from the father and four-year-old son. Instead of telling his son their plight, the father turns it into a game. The whole time they are staring into the face of starvation and death, the young boy thinks he's only racking up points so he can win an army tank trophy. At the end of the war, this child doesn’t even know he is among the handful who survived, he only knows that he is the winner and runs up to his mother with his tiny hands raised and yells, “We won! We won!”

So, even if gas and food prices continue to soar and jobs continue to be lost, I'll keep the lesson of this film in mind: life’s harshest realities can be made beautiful if we will only change our perceptions of them.