THE SHOE COBBLER’S CHILDREN GO BAREFOOT

Did you hear that when you were a kid? Did you know what it meant?

I must’ve been a teenager before I caught on (had other things on my mind)—and it all came to me when I realized: I’d never lived in a finished house that my dad built. So my take on the old adage runs like this: The Carpenter’s Children Never Live in a Finished House.

Now, right there, I have to admit, that’s a lie—only a little one, though; we lived in the house where I was born, built by my dad, and completely finished, until I was three. From then on, we lived in one (sometimes dilapidated) dwelling after another while the “new house” was being built. My dad had a regular job to provide income, so building our new house always happened when he got home from other work. He couldn’t quit his day job because that income provided the means of purchasing lumber, wiring, cement, windows and doors, and the good old etc. that were needed to complete the new project. And when it was done? Why, sell it, of course! Use the new money to start another house!

I remember a lot of those “other” houses—not because they were especially memorable, but because we moved so often and I had different sleeping arrangements. My preference was, naturally, the new house, when it was finally habitable—it was clean, smelled like new pine boards, and looked nice.

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I tell you the above tale to lead into something I’ve thought about over the years—the way we pass along our life lessons; our take on life as it happened to us and may be useful to our children; or simply, how I lived during my young years when my children didn’t know me at all.

Recently, I read a meditation written by Father Adam Trambley for Forward Day by Day. Paraphrased, the one for August 21st runs like this:

During this time of COVID, many persons are in hospitals and isolated from their loved ones. “Even after a death, families are unable to hold the usual public viewings or church services where lives are remembered and stories shared. The absence of these normal activities of grieving makes the pain of a loved one’s death even more difficult.”

He continues: Words of wisdom and meaning of life “might occur in a final letter to loved ones, be recounted in a eulogy or at a wake, or be implied in an obituary or other remembrance. Each life has something to pass on to us. Part of honoring the dying is ensuring they have an opportunity to share that gift.” (emphasis mine)

Each life has something to pass on to us.

That sentence jumped off the page and landed in my heart and mind. Now I’d like to share some of what has been passed along to me. Can’t promise I’ll remember who authored each “something” but I’ll try.

Here are a couple that will ring some chimes—home-grown advice on how to live:

“Always wear clean underwear in case you’re in an accident and have to go to the hospital.” (If you never heard this one, you probably weren’t born at the right time or in the right place.)

“Sing before breakfast, cry before supper.” (I realized, much later, this was my mother’s roundabout way of telling me to shut up so early in the morning. I still like to sing before breakfast, and haven’t noticed any untoward crying before supper in consequence.) 

Then there’s the preoccupation with lack of money and good luck:

“Money on my cup!” – said when bubbles cover the top of the just-poured coffee. (I suspect this one was coined during the Great Depression, when money was extremely tight or even non-existent and everyone was always looking for money. Seeing “money” on the coffee cup was a positive reminder that it could happen.)

“See a pin, pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck.” Luck, like money, was an important consideration during hard times. Personally, I’ve never noticed any increase in good luck due to my picking up a dropped pin. The only good luck would be that I didn’t step on the pin while barefoot.

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Other old family sayings were much more helpful. Such as:

“Anything worth doing, is worth doing well.” (Common sentiment during my youth. I heard it often from my parents. However, striving to do something well often ended up in frustration because what I did was far from perfect. I’m not a fan of perfectionism. I prefer the learn-from-your-mistakes approach.)

“Don’t judge; walk in the other person’s shoes a while.” (My mom said, “Put yourself in their place.” That piece of advice really stuck with me. As the current saying goes, it’s part of my DNA. With maturity came a better understanding of how far I could go with putting myself in another person’s situation. Sometimes it wasn’t a good idea.) 

And when I got older, I learned that “beauty isn’t only the outward appearance of a person—true beauty reflects the person’s inner being—their heart.” (This one will always be true for me. And the older I get, the more beauty I see in other people. What a blessing!)

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The take-away from this essay was going to be wisdom/advice/etc. I had passed on to my children. But as I worked through the family sayings, it became clear: Passing the torch isn’t about teaching, it’s about doing. The old expression—“caught, not taught”—comes to mind. 

If you’re not up for writing a memoir of your childhood experiences, have a think about what your young relatives know or do or ask about. They may have caught something already!

 

 

 PATIENCE!

[This essay was written a year ago, during a 'year that never was,' and a time of nearly unendurable change in the way we lived, or even want to live. I won't say COVID and 2020 taught me Patience--that would be boasting; but I will say that I'm learning, slowly, how to cut myself some slack so my days are easier to bear. After all, having lived so long, I might as well go on living. And assuredly, Patience is going to be required some time or other.]

Practically everyone has heard the ironic prayer: "Lord, give me patience, and right now!"

The importance of patience in our lives isn't easily defined--isn't easily obtained--and certainly isn't going to appear by a genie floating out of a bottle with a cloud of Patience to wrap us in.

Patience--like many other good and desirable characteristics--begins at home.

My daughter shared her thoughts on Patience: There's an element we call letting go--of preconceived ideas about what should happen, of timelines that suit us.

Most of all--we need to avoid the trap of thinking lack of success is somehow our own fault. It may be, that's true. But it may not. 

It all boils down to trust--things will happen when they happen. Many factors are out of our control. What seems simple to us may involve countless people between us and success. . . unknown hoops to jump through . . . procedures no one told us about.

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So! Perhaps Patience is not only hard-won but serves a purpose beyond the immediate attainment of a goal--Patience is a lesson to be learned. And if we accept Helen Keller's belief, the only way to learn Patience is through non-joyful events and circumstances.

I can't say I'm thrilled to suffer, even in a minor way, in order to learn Patience. But if I can accept that premise, then I know I'm in good company, for everyone is learning along with me.

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Hal Borland wrote many essays and books about nature. He lived among trees and mountains and gardens. He observed life through the lens of nature. And he shared his insights into human life by exploring and explaining life in the natural world.

People who live close to the land, like farmers, or who find joy in gardening and landscaping, know that Patience is a standard requirement if the end result, the harvest, is going to happen. 

Patience, along with persistence, is what accompanies the carpenter who builds a house, the sewist who embarks on a year-long project to make a quilt, the student who works year by year toward graduation; or the artist who brings a scene to life, the writer who tells the story of real people or fictional characters, the musician who practices for hours (perhaps for years) for one performance.

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My own understanding of Patience has come with age and aging. In my youth I was eager to get on, go higher and farther, not spend too much time in any one place or time. Keep going! More often than not, I got in my own way. 

Having children was a full-on lesson in Patience--every day, practically every hour, Patience was required. (Sadly, I wasn't very good at that lesson. Took a long time to cultivate a sense of letting go of unrealistic expectations.)

In an odd way, our current pandemic has increased my sense of Letting Go and biding my time. I can't make a difference in the curing of the virus. But I can look for ways to be safe and keep other people safe. Yes, I mourn the loss of freedoms we had--such as going to church, worshiping in person, receiving communion. But my life has slowed down and not only do I smell the roses, I see sunsets and meteor showers and planets that don't often come our way. 

Have a blessed week! And may Patience be yours.

HOT AUGUST NIGHTS...

Neil Diamond wrote a rousing song, about hot August nights, called "Brother Love's Travellin' Salvation Show."

In my experience--or rather, memory over the last 60 years when I actually thought about weather--August nights in the Midwest were usually much cooler than July nights. In fact, it was delicious to sleep on August nights with a light blanket wrapped around my shoulders. Daytime could be hell-hot, but nighttime--um, lovely.

What has that to do with today's post? Well, not much, really. But August seems to have been one of the more history-crammed months--or maybe it just seems so to me. Here's a sampling:

August 4th, 1944 - Anne Frank captured, after her family and several others were hidden in an Amsterdam warehouse for 25 months; she and her sister, Margot, were eventually sent to Bergen-Belsen and died of typhus. The famous diary has been published in more than 70 countries; a revision in 1990 contains material omitted in earlier editions.

August 5th, 1962 - Marilyn Monroe, about 36 years of age, found dead in her Los Angeles apartment; official cause of death was suicide from an overdose of prescription meds she took for depression.

August 6th, 1945 - Hiroshima bombed by U.S. using atomic bomb

August 7th, 1782 - George Washing creates the Badge of Military Merit, forerunner of today's Purple Heart citation

August 8th, 1974 - President Richard Nixon resigns.

August 9th, 1945 - U.S. bombs Nagasaki

August 12th, 1990 - Nearly complete skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex discovered in South Dakota; nicknamed Sue (for its discoverer, Susan Hendrickson). Sue resides in Chicago's Field Museum.

August 15th, 1969 - Woodstock Festival; Bob Dylan, Jefferson Airplane, The Who, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Creedence Clearwater, et al.

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And that's only about half of the month. As might be expected, what makes history is often the most notorious or the most spectacular. I was pleased to find some "good stuff," or at least, "not-so-bad stuff"; and even the sadness of the end of Anne Frank's life is mitigated, for me, at least, by the survival of her diary; that one little book has been a blessing to many thousands, probably millions, of people to this day.

I can't find a not-bad place for the bombings; at this time in my life, they are just history to me. To many others, especially to the Japanese, they are atrocities. I have to accept them and move on . . . not condoning, just allowing them their place in history and how it has unfolded since World War II.

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My source was a website called Today in History. Worth a look.

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Until next time, blessings from

Thursday's Child

 MEMORIES, AND SHARING THEM

[My local library reopened in 2020 after a fire and major reconstruction. To celebrate the anniversary of the library's return to our community, I'm repeating a post about library books because I (1) love books, (2) love libraries, and (3) believe we ought to share our passions with each other. AND, as a bonus, you'll find something to fill in your own unscheduled hours.]

Biography Section is a convenient umbrella that includes autobiography and memoir. I love memoir. Memoir is a way of living part of another person’s life and understanding not only what happened, but one view of why it happened, and how it has impacted the writer’s life.

Looking at my home-grown library, collected over the past fifty-plus years, I find a large number of non-fiction books that are based on memories and recollected stories: All of May Sarton’s journals; the James Herriott animal stories from his veterinary practice in Yorkshire; Russell Baker’s Growing Up, about his youth in the 1930s; C. S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy. . . .

The list goes on and on. There’s even a category on Amazon.com called “100 Biographies and Memoirs to Read in a Lifetime.” Here are a few you might recognize:

A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson

A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway

Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt

Anne Frank’s Diary

Seabiscuit and Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand

The Story of My Life, Helen Keller

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou

Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen

Night, Elie Weisel

As you can tell by the variety in the above list, there’s no one way to write a memoir. Bill Bryson’s is a humorous tale of outdoor life. Hemingway writes of the explosive political times in the 1920s and 1930s. Frank McCourt tells of an Irish childhood lived in poverty. Anne Frank’s diary recounts her family’s hiding from the Nazis in World War II. Helen Keller writes about her life as a multi-handicapped child.

Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit brought the 1930s horse scene to life; her Unbroken, a World War II survivorship story, was painful to read, but remains one of my favorite books about the resilience of the human spirit and the power of forgiveness.

The late Maya Angelou was a poet, but her memoir helped her rise above an abusive childhood as an African-American girl.

Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa became a lovely movie, based on the Danish woman's various writings—her stories, letters, and articles.

Elie Weisel’s Night is book one of a trilogy in which he ponders serious questions that arise for a survivor of the Holocaust.

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There you have a starter list of books to look for, if you want to experience someone else’s life, culture, and time frame.

Now for the big question—Have you ever thought about writing a memoir of your own?

(Don’t make ugly faces; you haven’t heard the rest of the idea.)

If you’ve managed to live through childhood, marriage/career, children (your own or someone else’s), you have a built-in audience. For example: Do your children know where you grew up? What it was like to live on a farm, in a big city, on a river, in the mountains, in another country? Do your children know their grandparents, aunts/uncles/cousins? Did your great-grandfather fight in the War Between the States? (Mine did.)

There’s more to Life than kids’ll learn in a museum. Why not tell them your story? Write about the time you won a blue ribbon for your prize animal/plant/project at the 4-H Fair. Never won one? Write about not winning. Who did win? How did that feel? Did it makes you try harder? Or give up?

What did you do for fun before technology came along and gave us hand-held games, computers, and videos? What was a treat in your family? How did you celebrate birthdays (if you did)?

My family never travelled much for vacations. In fact, vacation times were when we "got caught up on things around the place.” (Maybe that’s why I was never a fan of summer vacation once I went to school.) If you were one of the families that went to Grand Canyon, Grand Ol’ Opry, Epcot Center, camping in the wilds of Montana . . . wherever . . . write about it! Make it come alive.

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Okay, you don’t like the idea of writing about yourself. Just remember—no Memoir Police are going to come along with a red pencil and mark your comma splices or circle a misspelled word. This is not for publication, except for whoever you share it with.

What about--speaking your stories into a little hand-held tape recorder? Anyone who wants to read a paper copy can transcribe them.

OR--I like this one a lot--gather the little guys around (everybody has little guys in the family) and tell them stories of what life was like when you were their ages. (BTW, "guys" includes girls, too. I loved hearing stories about when my mom and dad were kids, and also my grandparents, whenever I could get them to talk about the old days.)

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So--here’s another take on the subject of Memoir.

Do you know folks who live in nursing homes, retirement communities, assisted living, or other such types of housing, who may have stories to tell?

I used to walk at the Y with a man twenty years older than I, who hadn’t grown up in our town, but had moved here as a young man and become acquainted with—to hear him tell it—practically everybody over the age of ten. Wow, did he have stories to tell! And his memory was prodigious. He collected stories the way I collect books. I wanted him to go to the genealogy center here in town to record some of his stories (I knew he’d never write them down), but he hasn’t done it yet. He now resides in assisted living locally and continues to get out and about if someone drive him.

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There are many, many books in print, along with helpful websites, that tell how to write a memoir. But you don’t need to read those yet. Just get a spiral notebook, a good pen, and put on your smile. Sit down in a comfortable place, and let the memories roll.

If you're writing someone else's story, let that person decide if the story is to be shared.

if you’re writing your own story, don’t share it till you’re ready. And if you’re never ready? Hey, that’s okay, too.

Keep in mind that you may not have been old enough to remember some world-wide things going on in your or your subject's early life—such as The Great Depression, World War II, or the Korean Conflict, or the Beatles’ invasion of the U.S. So, do some research. That’s what Google is for! You’ll be glad for the details to make these remembrances live for the reader. And details provide a context for what you or someone else can remember about family, work, or school.

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Kodak has us already in the mindset of “making” memories.

How about putting a few of them on paper? Or tape? Or telling them to young folks?