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I’m in this book…

September 3, 2019 Leave a Comment

Angels All Around

We lived half of my childhood with my grandparents in a very large house on a beautiful lot with giant fruit trees where I spent hours outdoors exploring. While my dad went to college and he and my mom saved to buy a house of their own, I walked to school; made lots of friends and knew my grandparents as two of the four people who looked out for us everyday.

Climbing the steps to their apartment upstairs was a daily routine for my brothers and me, especially when the smell of apple pies or chocolate chip cookies interrupted what we were doing. My grandmother taught me how to prepare most things using only a large mixing bowl and a long, wooden spoon. She also taught me the name of every tree and flower in our yard and how to root a rose bush in a coffee can. From my grandparents’ front window we watched birds and squirrels and laughed as my grandfather mimicked the sounds they made.

After we moved into our new house, we usually only saw my grandparents on Sundays. I missed them terribly and , for the first time, realized how much older they were than my parents. Because our house is a multi generational household, too, I appreciate even more what those years must have been like for my grandparents and am writing down the adventures we had to share with my own granddaughter.

One of those, an unplanned journey across town that I took on the back of my grandfather’s car, will appear in the newest Chicken Soup for the Soul book#CSSAngelsAllAround
It will be in book stores and online Tuesday. You can also pre- order a copy of it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
My story “Cardinal Red”, is one of 101 stories of regular people who find themselves in extraordinary and inexplicable
situations. I hope you will read it and I hope you, too, are taking notes on the memories you’re making today.

A father is a man who believes in the future: Three Stories

June 16, 2019 1 Comment

I. The Forecast

My father shared the news of my arrival with his parents in a bold, handwritten note inside my dainty, pink birth announcement:
“Well, she is finally here,” he wrote, “and she is HUGE. I guess she’s going to be a fatty.”

By the time I found this letter among my grandmother’s things, I’d lived decades with him and chuckled at his tendency to predict the future outcomes of his children. When I was a senior, I overheard my mother ask him what he was wearing to my high school graduation. His answer was that he was not going.

“Everyone in town will be sitting in those hot bleachers,” he told her, “She won’t notice whether I’m there or not.”

I smiled when I heard him say that because I knew his shyness made him uncomfortable in crowds of any size. Someone noticing him was what he was really afraid of.

My earliest memories of the man I called Dad are him holding my hand so I could walk on the beach, though it would have been easier to carry me. And lifting me up when we were out shopping, so I could see the same things he saw.

He read to us every night when we were kids, sometimes from his college textbooks. I loved the intimacy of his undivided attention and the hilarity of him making duck or pig sounds. I loved hearing him say “Once upon a time” instead of “I won’t ask you again to put that down”.

He taught me how to whistle, bait a hook and sit still enough to know when a fish was on my line. He built us stilts one summer when we were bored, taught me how to drive and everything I remember about geometry. (His prediction about that was right- I do use it in real life.)

After my graduation ceremony, amid throngs of people milling about the stadium, his was the first face I recognized. He was wearing pressed slacks and a sports coat and tears filled my eyes as I watched him make his way through the sea of gowns I was standing in.

‘I saw you!” he said when he reached me. “You looked beautiful and I’m so proud of you.” We hugged, as dozens of classmates brushed past us. When my mother and brothers arrived, he took my cap and diploma while I finished giving hugs. Then I left to be with my friends.

As I walked away, I could feel Dad watching me and I began to feel sad for leaving. I turned to wave, expecting the disappointment on his face. Instead it was a giant smile.

II. Everything that could go wrong

In the years I was a single mom, I searched for many things. A father figure for my children was not one. They had fathers and grandfathers and godfathers and uncles. They were loved by many and wanted for nothing. But when Mike and I started dating, it was obvious we weren’t a short-term thing. There was a familiarity between us from the beginning. Sooner or later he would have to meet my children. And I dreaded it– for him.

My kids were young, but they weren’t babies. They had big personalities, loud voices, extensive vocabularies and opinions on just about everything. The day I introduced them to him, they stood behind me and hid, One of them asked me why his hair was red and one of them asked him why there was so much hair on his face.

As they ran off to their room, I heard them call him a giant and it struck me that they might be babies after all.

The first time we were invited to his house, they asked if his fireplace was real and how many bathrooms he had. He got to know them through the hundred embarrassing questions they asked and he laughed at everything they said. It was the best start I could have hoped for.

He was brave and had a big heart, but there was no way he could have prepared for what it would be like marrying us. Our first Christmas together Michael asked Santa for the battery operated Kenner Star Wars AT-AT from “The Empire Strikes Back”. It came in more than 100 assembly-required pieces and Mike stayed up the entire night before Christmas putting it together. Both kids were awake before five a.m.

He did teacher conferences when I was out of town; took them both to the doctor when they found poison oak at daycare and was dumbfounded the first time our daughter forged his signature on a progress report.

He was a scout leader for years and worked concession duty when they were in band. In spite of his shyness and how unprepared he was to be a father, he showed up every day believing he had something to contribute to their lives.

I held my daughter’s hand and watched as our granddaughter was born. Beyond the curtain that separated us from the rest of the room, I could see Mike wearing the same look of uncertainty he had the first time he met her.

There was no guaranty that everything would be okay and with every scream there was a ‘What if..?’. And when the nurse took the baby to his side of the curtain, I saw him fall in love.

Six years later, I watched him teach her to ride a bike. Up and down the sidewalk he ran, holding her up and letting her go until she got the hang of pedaling.

On the last run, she soared away from him so fast I expected her to tip over. Mike stood there, bent over with his hands on his knees. He looked like he was out of breath. As he walked towards me I could see the hurt in his face.

“She’s not coming back this time,” he said. And I nodded my head because I felt it,too. Once again, his part was over and the days were coming when she wouldn’t need him at all.

At the end of the street, she turned her bike around and headed back with no help. As she came towards us, she pulled one hand away quickly and waved. Mike beamed. It was the same smile my dad wore when I waved goodbye to him at my graduation.

III. I told you so

When you become a father, you’re prepared every day. You never know what will happen next, you just know that it will.

A freakish storm came through Tuesday afternoon. Within minutes the entire house got dark and wind whistled through the windows and doors. I found Mike on the patio, just as a loud gust of wind swept the birdhouse and all four baby wrens were tossed from their nest.

While rain soaked the porch, he retrieved each baby and placed it in a safer place. One frightened fledgling attempted to fly. It landed in the gutter, just as the rain turned to hail. Mike ran to the other side of the house to see if the baby had been carried to the spout. As soon as he left, the wren parents returned and frantically worked to return their young to safety.

Being a father is more than creating life. It is protecting it, nurturing and sustaining it. Speak well of fathers today and thank them for seeing your future, even when you cannot.

Love Wins: My favorite Best Picture nominees

February 24, 2019 Leave a Comment

“Love is the strongest force the world possesses and yet it is the humblest imaginable.” Mahatma Gandhi

Well I ate a lot of popcorn to get here, but it was totally worth it. Of the eight films nominated for Best Picture, I have seen all but “A Star is Born” and hope to remedy that today. The emcee-less Oscars will air live on Sunday at 8 PM Eastern time on ABC in more than 225 countries and territories worldwide. If the sun isn’t out where you are, or you just want to catch up, all eight Best Picture nods are available on DVD or for streaming.

The nominees are as torrential and diverse as our planet and as emotive as those who inhabit her. “The Favourite” (two duchesses vie to control the will of sickly Queen Anne during Britain’s war with France) and “Roma” ( Alfonso Cuaron’s visual chockablock of Mexico City in the early 1970s) lead with 10 Oscar nominations each. “A Star is Born” (Bradley Cooper remakes the remake) and “Vice” (Christian Bale plays Dick Cheney as arguably the most powerful Vice President in US history) both gained eight. The other four nominees for Best Picture are “Blackklansman”, “Black Panther”, “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Green Book”.

As a romantic, my favorite of the nominees show love as the strongest super power imaginable. Not Valentine’s Day love, but the kind of love that transforms us. You see it in a mother whose child is being bullied and experience it at the death of someone close to you. Every day, whether we notice it or not, our lives are changed by decisions of the heart.

Here are my three favorite three examples, in no particular order:

BLACK PANTHER

This Marvel blockbuster has made more than 1.3 billion dollars to date and follows the character T’Challa (post “Captain America 3”) as he returns to his African homeland of Wakanda to assume his father’s throne. But when an old enemy reappears, T’Challa’s ego (and Black Panther super powers) are pitted against his leadership capabilities. The conflict risks the fate of his beloved home and the rest of the world.

I have never seen a Marvel movie, nor am I a fan of this genre. However, in 134 minutes of visual artistry and futuristic weaponry, I was won over by the character T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) and his quest to learn the true meaning of leadership. As a bonus, for “This is Us” fans, it is Sterling K. Brown (Randall Pearson) who narrates the movie’s first few minutes as his character (N’ Jobu) tells the story of his homeland to his son.

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY

Love or hate the band, this is a great movie that follows a young Parsi art student who dreams of becoming a famous singer. To the disappointment of his father, he joins the band that will become Queen and adopts the surname Mercury to become a music superstar. The movie begins with the creation of the band that electrified audiences in the 1970s and 1980s and ends with their epic performance at the Live Aid concert in Wembley Stadium and Freddie’s heartfelt reunion with his father. Rami Malek is brilliant as Freddie Mercury.

Queen will perform with Adam Lambert on Oscar Night.

GREEN BOOK

This film features Viggo Mortensen (“Hidalgo”, “Captain Fantastic”) as “Tony Lip” Vallelonga, a bouncer from the Bronx, who is hired as a chauffeur and security guard for a world-class black pianist, on a concert tour from Manhattan to the Deep South.

Based on a true friendship between Lip and pianist Don Shirley (played by Oscar winner Mahershala Ali), the screenplay comes from a book written by Lip’s son and the movie title comes from “The Green Book”, a 1960s travel guide to establishments that were safe for African-Americans in the south. The movie chronicles the two on the journey of a lifetime, through racism, danger and an unexpected amount of humanity and humor.

You can see the movie trailers for each of the nominated films here and follow along with your own voting sheet on Oscar Night.

What movies did you love this year?

New is good. Improved is better.

January 31, 2019 1 Comment

In 1965 the world was full of change. Miniskirts were introduced in London and Gus Grissom orbited the earth in the first crewed Gemini mission. In rhe same year, President Lyndon B Johnson launched a domestic program to eliminate poverty and racial injustice, then ended the marriage deferment for the draft and sent 60,000 more troops to Vietnam.

Meanwhile, the Beatles- described by the Los Angeles Times as “appallingly unmusical” and “destined to fade away” – toured the United States a second time.

But here’s the news I remember most:

We got a new car!

A Chevrolet Bel Air with dark red interior, manufactured the same year we bought it. No one, I mean no one, had owned it before. And because my dad could fix anything, this was groundbreaking.

Washers and refrigerators were no match against him. He repaired cabinet doors and bicycles and could make zippers last forever. So it was a shock when we came home from school and a shiny white car was parked in our driveway.

This car had features we’d never had before, like seat belts, air conditioning and an automatic transmission. The exterior was flawless and the interior smelled brand new. That car was my dad’s pride and joy and, like anything new, came with rules and responsibilities for all of us.

We behaved differently.

The red seats were so comfy, we sat up straighter. The patterned cloth was soft against our skin and we kept our feet off the seats, even when we couldn’t see out the window. The “Buckle up for safety” jingle played in our heads with every click of the seat belts.

Sticks and toys stayed out of the front yard and bicycles were parked a safe distance from the car. We cleaned the Bel Air weekly, inside and out. We detailed the tires and rolled the Kirby down the driveway to vacuum the floors and seats. If there was ever any trash in that car, it wasn’t there long.

We made memories.

In August we took a family vacation to Florida in that big, new car. My brothers and I spent days gathering things to occupy us on the 24-hour drive. Thanks to the air conditioning, windows wouldn’t be open. Pages of books and game pieces stayed in place and we could hear each other talk, regardless of how fast the car was going.

On the morning of our departure, my little brothers were up before Dad. When I got to the car, they were asleep in the back seat, their things tucked all around them. Barely 12 inches in the middle were left for me to sit. Yet at our first stop, we traded places and they both gave me tips on where to place my things.

We learned.

The older we got, the more things Dad taught us about the car. My brothers helped with oil changes and I learned to change a tire. The summer I took driver’s ed, Dad picked me up from class one day and handed me the keys. I couldn’t imagine a more uncomfortable situation, but I had nothing to fear. Dad was patient and soft-spoken and, because he knew every aspect of his car, he didn’t just instruct me to turn start the car. He described how it should feel and what was happening as the ignition turned over. He gave me the names of every street, long before he expected me to turn there. He insisted that I always know what direction I was headed, calling out roads and turns by east and south, not left or right. He calmly and quietly gave me so much information I heard his instructions in my sleep.

Just before my driving test, my family planned a fishing trip to Surfside Beach. No amount of whining could get me out of it. I dragged myself to the car with a radio and enough magazines to make it through the day. My mom was in the back seat and my heart sunk when I saw Dad on the passenger’s side up front.

I got behind the wheel and adjusted the rear view mirror. The panicked faces of my mom and brothers in the back seat brought no comfort. No one said a word, as I backed out of the driveway and onto streets I drove every day. As we approached the bypass to Highway 35, Dad instructed me to go west until we reached Highway 523. Then he picked up one of my magazines and started reading.

Because he drove this route to work every day, he knew these roads without looking. Long before I approached each turn, he described what to look for and when to slow down. Once we were on FM 2004, we were the only car on the road. Occasionally, Dad would look up from the magazine and ask me to go faster.

When we turned onto Hwy 332, we reconnected with traffic. Dad sat up straight and surveyed the situation. The giant bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway loomed ahead and I waited for my dad to instruct me to pull over. He didn’t.

Instead, he told me to stay in my lane and keep pace with the other cars. In the mirror, I could see my mom sitting on her hands- something she did when she was trying to keep her mouth shut.

My heart beat loudly, as I watched the road and waited for Dad’s voice. He never wavered. Somehow he anticipated my every fear and spoke to me as though I had been driving for years.

“You’re doing great,” he said, “Don’t worry about what’s on the other side of the bridge.”
“Just focus on the car ahead of you.”

As we neared the top of the bridge, it got so quiet I was sure I had stopped breathing. Then, just as the bumper of the car in front of me headed downward, I looked up from the road and saw the gulf.

I will never forget how empowered I felt.

It was no surprise that I was the first person to put a dent in that big car. Also no surprise that after wrapping the back end of it around a pole at Dairy Land, I got my first job to pay for the damage.

I wasn’t around when my parents got rid of the Bel Air, but I still handle bridges and crashes, the way I did then. I hope for the best, then push myself to do better. And when I’m overwhelmed, I close my eyes and listen for my dad’s instructions.

Get It Right Before Christmas

December 24, 2018 6 Comments

It was days before Christmas and if you came to my house,

you would see nothing festive–according to my spouse.

The tree, the lights and each tchotchke he remembered,

were trapped in the attic with a bad memory from September.

At a Christmas gathering (way over my head)

I’d crafted a garland that filled me with dread.

I tied and wired hopes and ornaments to it.

And when that didn’t work, I just hot glued it.

What was I thinking when I went to that party?

No part of me was crafty or arty.

While my friends held up their projects for all to see,

I looked down at my garland thinking this cannot be.

Two hours I’d been there, two burns and a cut.

A piece to be proud of? I had anything but.

That ugly garland was a bad start to the season.

But my Christmas sadness had other

reasons.

Every light and song seemed to just make it worse.

I was starting to think this funk was a curse.

I was sad for loved ones who (this Christmas) would be missing.

And for those around me who were fighting, not kissing.

Comparing my sorrow to other Christmases I’d recall,

there was simply no reason to be joyful at all.

So I went for a walk and when I returned,

in the middle of the floor lay that garland I’d spurned!

“Every ornament you love, you put on this thing,”

said my husband in a voice that would make angels sing.

“It seems like a waste not to hang it somewhere.”

Then he picked up one end and nodded ‘over there’.

He carefully unfolded each bough with a twist.

And as it came out of the box, I saw places I’d missed.

There were gaps between snowmen you could fill with a house.

And in Mickey and Minnie’s sleigh, there was only one mouse.

He moved toward the mantle, while I stood there dumbfounded.

The closer he got, the louder my heart pounded.

He nodded to the box with more garland inside.

“Just pick up that end”, he said, “and I’ll guide.”

I told him I was clueless, that I didn’t understand.

He was doing so well, why should I lend a hand?

Tell me exactly what you want, so I don’t make mistakes.

Cause this garland will only get uglier when it breaks.

And with a sigh of a man who’d had all he could take,

“PICK!”

“IT!”

“UP!”

came out of his mouth like a quake.

I laughed so hard I could barely stand it.

I’d loved every second of being reprimanded.

Once the garland was up and Mike straightened and tweaked it,

he gathered broken ornaments and became Mr. Fix It.

The greenery, the memories and the twinkling of lights,

was a beautiful tribute to past Christmas nights.

When I added the candles and cards we’d received, I felt a little joyful and Mike seemed relieved.

I went to my office; started working on my list.

Writing cards, addressing packages and other tasks I had missed.

I gathered my things and left with a smile,

to a place where I knew I’d be standing a while.

I drove quietly to the post office, no music or songs. Were there many people when I got there?

Oh yes, there were throngs.

I parked in a spot just a half mile away and kept telling myself

‘You don’t have to stay.’

The line in the building wrapped around itself twice and I didn’t expect to see anything nice.

All sorts of people stood with me that day.

We didn’t have a choice. There was no other way.

There were suits and yoga pants and some wearing heels. There were people with phones and

strollers on wheels.

But in the two hours we stood there that day, nobody opened their own door- either way.

Spots were left (without being told)

for those who came in and went out into the cold.

Kindness came so easily, we applauded ourselves.

And twice we sang carols like happy little elves.

If I’d not seen it myself, I would never have believed it.

But I’d just witnessed joy come right where it was needed.

As I walked through the parking lot, I heard someone shout:

“Can I help you with that?”

so I turned about.

As one woman unloaded things from her car,

another insisted the walk was too far.

“Oh, I can make two trips,” she shouted right back.

“Don’t be silly, it’s Christmas.”

And that ended that.

When I drove past my house, the outside lights were in place.

And instantly I felt a smile on my face.

In front of the window stood our tree in its glory.

I should have known that Mike would finish this story.

The rest of the evening we spent soaking it in, how something so beautiful came from a caring within.

And I thought to myself, as he turned out the lights:

“Every Christmas is Merry, when we look at it right.”