Month: October 2024

When I was a little girl taking piano lessons, we lived in an old house with a dark, scary basement where mice frequently gathered and hosted parties.

Sometimes, mice ventured upstairs and hid behind the piano. When I began practicing, they would shoot out due to the horrible off-key sounds piercing their teeny, tiny, perfect-pitch sensitive ears.

I would jump up on the piano bench and scream and cry. Forte. Super forte. With the biggest crescendos you ever heard in your life.

I blame mice for the fact that I failed to become a concert pianist. It has nothing at all to do with the fact I had no talent.

My in-laws lived in a farmhouse that was a hundred years old and had mice. My husband assured me the mice had been trained by a mouse-whisperer named D. Con to stay in the cellar and on the ground floor and never, ever went upstairs.

One evening, we went upstairs, turned back the bedding and discovered mice had already booked the room. The mice were gone but had left numerous calling cards and tons of teeny tiny red Solo cups in the bed. Clearly, it had been some party.

I did not respond well.

Where is the piano bench when you need it?

Every fall, our clan of 19 gets together for a weekend. This year, I reserved three rooms in an inn at a state park, as well as a cabin we can squeeze into for meals.

The cabin has two beds and a pull-out sofa, which can take overflow kids from the inn. I was on the park website double-checking numbers and beds, figuring out sleeping arrangements, when I noticed recent reviews mentioning mice.

One reviewer said two mice darted across the room while they were having dinner. Another reviewer said a mouse greeted them when they entered the cabin.

Sure. It’s in the woods and the mice were there first. I understand.

But the mice aren’t paying—we are.

The real worry is this: should any mice appear, our group is incapable of a united front. We are a family divided.

We have the Get Them Before They Get You wing, which I am hoping is a clear majority.

We also have the Preservationist wing. They will agree that any mice need to go, but will insist on dispersing them in a peaceful manner consisting of coaxing, cajoling and luring them with small treats consisting of our meals.

The group that has me awake at 3 a.m. is the Catch and Keep wing. There are at least three, possibly four or five, that will want to catch them, name them, feed them, build them little houses out of toilet tissue in a dresser drawer and carry them in their pockets when we go hiking.

Fingers crossed we get a cabin that is mouse-free.

I’m taking a piano bench just in case.

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*The answer to last week’s Jumble was “WRITE ON”

I’ve read that doing puzzles helps keep your brain sharp as you age.

I don’t like to brag, but I can often solve the Jumble puzzle at a glance. After years of making millions of typos at the keyboard, I’m accustomed to seeing words with letters in the worng odrer.

A granddaughter brought over a new game called “Mobi.” It’s like Scrabble but all the little tiles have numbers, plus, minus, multiply, divide and equal signs on them. The goal is to see how fast you can use all your tiles making math equations in a Scrabble-like configuration.

I’ve played it with her five times now and she’s won every game. I told her she doesn’t need to bring it over anymore.

The critical issue with my brain is storage. Most of my brain is taken up with random miscellany. I fear my brain is basically a large kitchen junk drawer—a few essential facts and figures nestled amid a whole lot of dead AA batteries, old keys and dried up ink pens.

Why is it that I can remember my phone number from when I was in kindergarten? It’s not like someday I will try to call my younger self. Our phone number started with Ingersoll 6. That tells you how long ago my childhood was.

I can’t always remember all the words to hymns we sing at church, but I can remember my high school fight song — and the motions with pom-poms that went with it. (Bonus points!) “Y-E-L-L-O-W  J-A-C-K-E-T-S! We yell it! We spell it! All through the game!”

To my credit, I’ve never broken out with the Yellow Jacket fight song midway through a hymn.

I sometimes can’t remember where I left my reading glasses, but I clearly remember the look on the face of my fourth-grade teacher Mrs. Grimsley, tears pooling in her eyes, when she told us President Kennedy had been shot.

I remember 90 percent of everything I learned in high school shorthand class. I was good— not as good as my friend Jo Ann, who entered shorthand contests and won awards, but I was going places with my shorthand skills. I went to a computer keyboard.

I’m not sure how Jo Ann fared. Last I heard she was teaching at Cornell, so I guess shorthand worked out well for her, too.

I can remember how long I was in labor with each of our three children. You don’t forget that. You can’t afford to forget that. It comes in handy even now.

I have three-ring notebooks filled with recipes, but I don’t have many of my mom’s recipes in writing. They’re in my brain, floating amid random paper clips, old ChapSticks and dried up tubes of Gorilla Glue. A dash of this, a dash of that, potato salad, baked beans and brisket. Everything a good cook needs to know.

It’s fun to rummage through the catchall drawer now and then. You often find forgotten treasures tucked in the corners.

 

There are two sounds that follow natural disasters. The first is an eerie, unnatural silence. No traffic, no car doors slamming, no children’s voices, dogs barking or birds chirping. Just a disquieting quiet.

The second sound is that of motors revving and gears whining, followed by the deafening buzz of chain saws slicing into downed trees.

My husband and I covered the aftermath of tornadoes, forest fires and the explosion of Mt. St. Helens in our younger days as newspaper photographers.

There are 59 “one another” verses in the Bible: directives to love one another, forbear with one another, be kind to one another, comfort one another and pray for one another. I believe I have witnessed all 59 of those “one anothers” kick into action on the heels of natural disasters.

This spring I was in eastern Indiana where tornadoes ripped through at 165 mph, ravaging several small towns and peaceful countryside, injuring more than 80 and killing four.

An old man with bloodshot eyes sat dazed in a chair on a neighbor’s porch staring at a giant oak now lying on the middle of his house across the street.

The orange shirts were there, the volunteers with Samaritan’s Purse. They come from every direction. They know how to work with heavy equipment—the really big stuff they roll in on tractor trailers. The volunteers are all ages: retired, middle-aged, thirtysomethings and college students.

A man in orange approached the gentleman on the porch and said, “Would you like us to get that tree off your house?”

The old man quietly said, “Yes. How much?”

“No charge. It’s what we do.”

The old man’s lower lip quivered. He stifled a full-body sob, but there was no stopping the tears.

This is a thank you for all the first responders who rush in to help while the rest of us watch the unthinkable unfold on screens and feel absolutely, positively, utterly useless.

This is for neighbors who help neighbors, churches that open their doors, chaplains on the front lines, organized volunteer efforts, corporations that send semitrucks with supplies, National Guard members, FEMA workers, people who loan personal helicopters and small planes for rescue efforts, and for regular ol’ people with 4-wheelers loaded with bottled water and courage, who simply get behind the wheel and go.

This is also for those who can’t physically be of help and have the brains to stay out of the way. That said, most of us have a little piece of plastic that can help.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Sometimes we are at our best when we are at our worst.

 

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” is a question heard frequently around here with this small herd of grandkids. Answers range from archaeologist to teacher, bluegrass musician, artist, builder and welder. A 9-year-old grand wants to be a NICU doctor because she’s always wanted to be a doctor and loves babies. Win, win!

Of course, all answers are subject to change within five seconds.

I wonder how many people became what they thought they wanted to be when they were children.

At age five, our youngest said she wanted to become a teacher when she grew up. She never wavered, except for a brief period when she said she wanted to be retired when she grew up.

Our son had an ever-changing list of what he wanted to be: Lego creator, taxidermist, park ranger, sculptor. He’s an architect.

My husband knew from the time he held a camera at age 7 that he would be a photojournalist. He was, is and forever will be.

When I was in sixth grade, I was certain I was going to be a gym teacher. Who wouldn’t love having recess all day, every day? The fact that I held the girls’ push-up record in elementary school for doing 45 “boys push-ups” in 54 seconds had a lot to do with that.

Yes, I do still have the medal. Thanks for asking.

I wound up in journalism school completing the writing and photojournalism sequences. I married a fellow photojournalism student from college. The old line is, “We met in the darkroom to see what would develop.”

Thanks for laughing. Not many under age 45 get that joke.

My mother said our wedding felt like a spot news event. Many of our J-School friends came with cameras.

A few years later I became a mom. Then I became a mom another two times. It’s hard to lug camera gear with three little ones hanging around your neck. I switched out the camera bag for a diaper bag and began working from home—writing.

Eventually, I approached the Indianapolis Star with some sample family life columns. Thirty-three years ago this month, two editors decided to take a chance on an unknown. They said yes. My column was picked up for national distribution a few months later.

I’m forever grateful to a man named Ted Daniels and a fireball named Ruth Holladay who opened the door for me. I’ve tried to practice that same policy of saying yes when I can.

I hope some people along the way say yes to our grandkids as they explore different opportunities and paths in the future.

If you landed in a good spot a time or two, it’s probably because someone along the way said yes.

Why not keep it going? Say yes.