Column

The husband found a piece of paper titled “Things I want to do before I’m 100 years old” in the family room.

He asked if it was mine. It was on a little table with little chairs where little grandkids sit when they come to visit. I’m short, but not that short.

I said it was not mine, but thanks for asking.

Several of the grands celebrated their hundredth day in school recently. Clearly, one of them had left some schoolwork here. I got to thinking maybe someone brought the worksheet hoping to use us as research.

For the record, neither of us are close to 100. Furthermore, if genetics plays a large part in such things, only one of us will ever get close and it won’t be me.

In response to previous questions about age that we have had to answer, we would like to reiterate that:

No, neither of us ever rode in a covered wagon.

No, life was not black and white when we were kids.

No, we were not alive when Abe Lincoln was alive.

No, neither of us were first to discover fire or invent the wheel.

Two of the girls celebrated Hundredth Day by dressing up like old women, pulling their long hair back into buns, donning cardigans and small print dresses, dangling reading glasses from ribbons around their necks, penciling in lines on their faces.

One of their mothers texted us pictures of these hunched over, forlorn looking creatures. I immediately texted back: “What? No hearing aids?” I also tried to start an #oldpeoplerock hashtag, but it didn’t catch fire. It didn’t even spark.

One of the girls completed the worksheet writing: “Some things I would like to accomplish before I’m one hundred are getting married, having kids, having grandkids, mastering piano and getting braces. But those are just a few things I’d like to do before I’m dead.”

The kindergartener celebrated Hundredth Day counting by 1s to 100, by 5s to 100 and by 10s to 100. Counting by 10s gets you to 100 with amazing speed, which is probably a realistic representation of how fast time passes once you hit 50.

After thinking on the matter, I concluded that things I’d like to do before I turn 100 aren’t that different from things I hope to do by the end of the week – listen more than I talk (doubtful), love others better (needs improvement), summon courage in the face of adversity (fingers crossed), beat the livin’ daylights out of every 24 hours, keep learning, keep doing, keep trying (a work in progress).

In the meantime, I’m just glad none of them who dressed like they were 100 tried to raid my closet.

 

A moment of silence, please, as we mark the passing of one of the great joys of childhood — snow days.

Snow days are a pony ride, birthday party and Christmas all rolled into one.

No two words are sweeter to a child’s ears than “snow day.”

A snow day is a holiday you didn’t see coming, an unexpected reprieve from yet one more day of the same ol’, same ol’.

Before the days of Twitter and email notifications, our kids would sit glued to the TV screen as school closings scrolled by in alphabetical order, waiting to see their school listed. If it wasn’t, they’d sit through the whole loop again hoping it would appear on the list the next time around,

Snow days meant the monolithic school was temporarily powerless over you—you had been rendered untouchable by a thick blanket of snow. Teachers might be at home tallying grades and creating more labyrinths of homework assignments on a snow day, but you?

You would be outside sledding, building forts, snowmen and snow women, making snow angels, having snowball fights, maybe even shoveling snow for the neighbors. When your cheeks turned scarlet, your lips cracked and bled and your lower limbs suffered early stages of frostbite, you trekked back inside, dumped your wet clothes on a heating vent where they would soon smell like wet dog, and went to find some hot chocolate.

Here in the Midwest, we recently spent days tracking pink and blue swaths on weather maps, anticipating a winter storm. Grocery shelves were stripped bare of bread, milk and eggs, shoppers evidently preparing for a French toast bonanza. The snow fell as predicted. Schools closed. Big yellow buses sat idle. Motorists stayed off the roads until the plows had a chance to do their thing.

For kids, the wonderful, marvelous snow day had finally arrived. But it wasn’t a wonderful, marvelous snow day for everyone. For many it was an e-learning day.

Just like that, someone waves a magic wand, and a much-anticipated snow day becomes a virtual learning day. (Insert collective groan here.) Of course, such decisions are couched in loftier terms such as “hybrid learning” or “repurposing.”

Should snow days all be repurposed into virtual learning days and fade into the passing of time, it will be most regrettable—a simple childhood joy sacrificed on the altar of technology.

Only time will tell if snow days remain snow days, or become a day when children once again sit transfixed before computer screens for hours on end.

Snow days won’t disappear like Frosty, dancing their way out of town singing about returning one day. They’ll forever melt into history on the broadband.

The rental car we picked up on a recent trip was bright red, had push-button start and a smart key. A smart key looks more like an oversized thumb drive for a computer than a key with teeth.

We drive old cars with keys with teeth – the kind you put in the ignition and have to turn with your hand. (Oh, the exhaustion.)

Settled at our destination, I met with a book editor at a coffee shop. After a delightful chat, we went our separate ways. I rummaged through my bag and my pockets and couldn’t find the car key anywhere. I glanced in the car and saw it on the passenger seat.

I had locked the smart key in the car. Not smart.

I called my husband to break the news. The place where we were staying was only a mile from the coffee shop; I began walking. Briskly. He was on hold with the rental agency when I returned, so I began Googling what to do when you lock a smart key in a keyless-entry car.

Turns out, it is nearly impossible to lock a smart key in a car because the car senses the key is in the car and won’t lock the doors. Smart. Very smart.

Now the husband and I were both walking (very briskly) back to the coffee shop where our rented car sat in a busy parking lot, unlocked, with the smart key in full view. Not smart.

I might as well have taped a big sign reading “TAKE ME, I’M YOURS” on the windshield.

The car was still there, unlocked, smart key in plain view. So we went into the coffee shop and bought pastries to celebrate.

To document the fun, you know who said he wanted to take my picture in front of the coffee shop. I agreed to a picture and threw my coat and purse into the car.

He snapped a few. I returned to the car to retrieve my purse from the back seat and shrieked, “My purse and coat are gone!”

“Impossible,” he said.

“Well, they are!”

Unless.

Unless I threw them in the red car parked next to our red car. I casually walked over and saw my purse and coat in someone else’s back seat. I opened their car door, retrieved my things and scurried back to our car.

Then we looked over and saw the driver’s door open on the red car next to our red car. I had opened two doors looking for my coat and purse. The husband nonchalantly walked over, closed the car door and returned to our car.

“Do you think anyone saw all that?” was not fully out of my mouth when a man strode up to the red car next to us looking our way. We both popped out and asked if he saw what happened. He said his girlfriend said, “Someone’s getting in your car.”

We explained I was discombobulated by “locking” a smart key in a rental, walking away, then discovering the “locked” car was not locked at all and wanted to take a picture, blah, blah, blah.

Either the man was sincerely congenial, or just wanted to get away from two out-of-town nut jobs and wished us well on the remainder of our trip.

If there is ever a test to see if we are smart enough to use a smart key, our qualifications could be in jeopardy.

The next time we have a family game night I’m going to phone in sick. They’re simply too exhausting. Everyone wants to play me. Grandkids jump up and down and yell, “I want to play Grandma! I’m next to play Grandma!”

They all want to play me because they can beat me. It’s the sort of popularity nobody craves.

On the upside, I have the gift of making everyone else in the room look good.

Take the game Connect Four. (Please, I beg you.) The name says it all, you connect four chips vertically, horizontally or on a diagonal. I’m guessing the box says for ages 3 and up, but I’m too humiliated to look. To my credit, I did win one round a few months ago. My opponent was age 6 and distracted by a commotion in the kitchen.

Someone commented that it’s not good sportsmanship to pump your fist in the air when you crush a 6-year-old. I’ll try to be more gracious the next time I win. Assuming there is a next time.

Monopoly? Hands down the most painful board game in the world. I don’t care about accumulating houses. I can barely take care of the one we live in now. Put me in the jail and take all my money.

Mancala is a game of strategy where you move little colored polished glass pieces around a board trying to fill your till with as many pieces possible, while also capturing your opponent’s pieces. Initially, some of the best strategists among us turned out to be the younger ones. Both a 7- and 9-year-old coached me for awhile, then decided it would be more fun to beat me.

And yet I keep playing, each time thinking, “This will be the time I win.” Hope blooms eternal. Or at least for two or three games.

We had dinner with some of the grands the other night and they mentioned they have a new game. I nearly went face down on the table at the mere suggestion.

“We think you’ll like it, Grandma.”

I offered to clear the table while they played. They said no.

I offered to do the dishes. They said no again.

The game is called The How I Survived Game. A “judge” reads a dilemma from a card: “You woke up to find your mattress floating on a body of water.” “Your arms suddenly turned into spaghetti.”

Players have one minute to choose three picture cards from an assortment spread on the table. You then use three picture cards to tell the story of how you will survive. The judge awards coins to the best stories.

It is basically a game of imagination, exaggeration and hot air. Coin after coin came my way.

Finally. A board game at which a writer can excel.

Packing up the game, I noticed the subtitle, “Where Weird and Wacky Wins.” I finally found my niche in the game market.

 

There were three options for finding our destination in Chicago—two smart phones or the seven-year-old granddaughter in the backseat. The husband was leaning toward a smartphone, but I was leaning toward the kid.

Ordinarily, I might not be comfortable letting a child guide us through the nation’s third largest city, but she’s grown up here. She knows the bus lines, the train lines and six different ways to get to the zoo.

Plus, the day before, an aunt and uncle had told the girl that they had eaten at a restaurant across the street from where she takes music lessons. She named the restaurant and said, “On Lincoln Avenue?”

“Why, yes, that’s the one,” they answered, visibly impressed.

“That’s not where I always take lessons,” she said. “Sometimes I take lessons at a branch on Armitage.”

Meanwhile, the kid is jumping in her seat yelling, “Let me give directions. I know how to get us there!”

The husband reluctantly relents.

“Go two blocks and then turn right, Grandpa. Right is that way (she points), Grandma’s side of the car.”

It never hurts to be specific. We have a general idea of where we are going but are vague on details. We also have a general idea of right and left.

“Keep going until I say turn left,” she says. “Left will be—“

“Got it,” Grandpa says.

“Look! That’s where my daddy goes to the dentist.”

“She’s good,” I say.

“OK, not this light and not the next light but that light, waaaay up there, you’re going to turn left.”

The kid is doing great.

“Now we need Fullerton, Grandpa.”

We drive and drive and he says, “I think we missed Fullerton.”

“Nope, we didn’t miss Fullerton,” she says.

She is correct. Two more lights and we hit Fullerton.

“See that restaurant on the corner? It used to have a black awning, but then they replaced it with that red and gold. It’s pretty, don’t you think?”

I shoot him a look that says, “How could you ever doubt her?”

She tells him to take another left with short notice. We change lanes and zip through on a yellow.

“That was a tricky turn, wasn’t it, Grandpa?”

“I think we need to head right soon,” he says. “Shouldn’t we map it?”

“I know where we are, Grandpa. Oh, and see that over there? That’s the interstate you need to go home, only you’ll need to get on the other side.”

She’s right, that’s the way we’ll go home.

“I know we’re close,” Grandpa says.

I look back and see her scanning the side streets with a twinkle in her eye. And then she yells, “YA MISSED IT, GRANDPA!” She laughs wildly like she doesn’t know how we get around on our own.

After our event she says, “Why don’t you get out your smartphone?”

“Why do we need a smartphone when we have you?” I ask.

“So you can look up the nearest pizza place.”

Later, as in after pizza, we humbly consult our smartphones to get us to the interstate, feeling not so very smart.

 

It is nearly an act of bravery to scan the headlines these days. Violent crime is up, each new senseless murder triggers another wave of sorrow and the politicization of almost everything rips at the fabric of our being.

The official response to these events is usually hand wringing. Someone steps before a microphone and demands an end to the bad behavior, as though the perps are glued to the nightly news, hanging on every word.

The building blocks that hold us together are crumbling. Many of those building blocks are beyond our spheres of influence. But one is within reach. The family.

As Pope John Paul II famously said, “As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.”

Why is the family key? Because families are the parts that compose the whole. Families are microcosms of the pillars that sustain cultures, communities and nations.

Every family is a microcosm of government. A family is where children learn about accountability, rights and responsibilities, checks and balances. A family is where children learn how to resolve differences and to respect the rights to property and privacy.

It is in the family where basic economic principles are taught: the link between earning and spending; how to plan and budget; the consequences of not planning and budgeting; and the importance of giving, whether you have a lot or a little.

Every family serves as every child’s first school. Every parent is a child’s first teacher. It is parents who bear the ultimate responsibility for education. Parents are the first to nurture curiosity and an appreciation for books and music, and create spaces where children can create and explore. Above all, a family is where children learn how to think and reason and separate fact from fiction.

The family mirrors a place of worship as well. The family is where children learn first lessons of faith, ideas about who God is, the meaning and purpose of life, and that every human being is our brother or our sister, for we are all of one blood, created in the image of God.

The family even serves as a microcosm of health care. It is in the family where children learn personal health habits, how to care for someone who is ill and, sometimes, even how to care for the dying. Tenderness and compassion usually take root in the home.

All that said, you can be intentional about family and still have family members who make awful choices for a variety of reasons. There are no guarantees with family; even so, you don’t throw in the towel at the starting gate or give up short of the finish line. None of us can afford to give up on family. Family is the most important investment you can ever make.

So, who is my family? Phrased another way, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

Yes, a thousand times yes. You don’t have to “be” family to act like family. We can all lend a hand—when we see a small everyday need, someone needs a word of encouragement, or someone is facing a crisis and needs others to stand alongside them.

The health of families is key to returning the nation to good health, because the whole is only as strong as the parts.

If you’re wondering what exciting things you can look forward to in the new year, you’ve come to the right place.

February 22, 2022 (2/22/22) will fall on a Tuesday, thereby making it 2’s day, or Two’s Day.

The husband sent a text to the entire family alerting them to this spectacular event, adding that he was so excited he could hardly contain himself.

The response was underwhelming.

Eventually his Two’s Day text was acknowledged with a thumbs up, then a heart, then late in the evening came an offer to make him a pie.

I think the pie was a comfort food offer to ease the pain of others not sharing his excitement. Naturally, one would hope the pie would have two crusts filled with two very large sliced apples, baked at 200 degrees times 2.

Or perhaps the one who offered pie was thinking of Pi Day (March 14 or 3.14), which he also celebrates, as do I for obvious reasons. (Pie.)

The man can’t help himself. He is a numbers guy, a detail guy, a record-keeping guy and a history guy. When that is who you are, life doesn’t get much better than 2/22/22.

Well, that is unless you were married on 5/6/78. Yep. That was pretty good, too. For some people, life changes on a dime; for us it changed on a 5678.

He says the only thing better would have been if we were pronounced husband and wife at 12:34. On 5/6/7/8.

Please don’t make me spell it out. Or count it out.

As it turns out, a smattering of groups have designated February 22  as “their day” and hopefully will tailor celebrations with a nod to Two’s Day: World Spay Day (sign pets up in 2’s), World Thinking Day (distribute “Two Heads are Better Than One” buttons), National Cook a Sweet Potato Day (two at a time, please) and National Margarita Day (make it a double?).

The only people more excited than my better half are those who were born on Feb. 2, 2000 and will celebrate their 22^nd birthday in 2022.

And you were thinking it was going to be a cold and dreary, long, gray winter.

I’m anticipating a lot of “Two for One” sales and “Two for One” meals. Taco Two’s Day has a nice ring.

On the flip side, there’s always the danger of the Dollar Store becoming the Two Dollar Store for the day.

Still, the possibilities for celebration are endless.

Fireworks at 2:22 a.m. and p.m. Say everything twice. Eat twice as much. Send every text twice and when you answer the phone say hello twice.

Have Tea for Two while reading a Tale of Two Cities.

Better yet, do what we do when we routinely leave home. Lock the house, get in the car then run back inside for your glasses. Lock up again, get in the car again, then run back inside a second time to make sure the gas burners on the stove are off.

For us, every day is Two’s Day.

 

I keep coming across stories promoting exercises for your face. They claim you can tone your face, firm your double chin, sculpt your cheeks and reduce wrinkles on your neck with a few simple exercises.

I’m here to say I quit. I know, I know. I haven’t even started, but I quit.

I come from people who wrinkle. Both sides of my family crease like cotton sheets left in the dryer too long.

Both my grandmothers wrinkled, my mother wrinkled and I’m in the process of wrinkling. It’s in the genes. “Genes” that are perma-wrinkle.

I’ve watched a few tutorials on cheek sculpting exercises and, frankly, some of them border on dangerous.

An exercise known as The Owl says to place an index finger above and parallel to each eyebrow and your thumbs below your eyes on your cheeks. Then make big eyes while the fingers create resistance to the stretching muscles. It looks like you’re pretending to wear imaginary glasses. Personally, I doubt the exercise reduces wrinkles, but it may make you look like you’re losing your mind.

The most practical facial exercise I’ve come across is the one where you turn your neck from side to side. Theoretically, this will lift your sagging double chin and tighten the folds in your neck. I’ve been jerking my neck from side to side for years, changing lanes and merge onto the interstate, but it hasn’t done a thing.

Another exercise advises placing your index fingers at the outermost edges of your eyebrows and trying to lift your brows against the pressure of your fingers. It looks like the onset of a migraine.

Then there’s the exercise where you tilt your head way back and place your fingers near your collarbones while pulling your chin up. It might tighten some muscles, but you can also look like you’re choking. Do that one only if you’re willing to risk someone charging up to you and performing the Heimlich maneuver.

The fact is, I’ve always looked a lot like my mother. As she aged, she used to try and scare me by cupping her wrinkled face in her hands and saying, “Behold, your future.”

I would scare her back by cupping my face in my hands and saying, “Behold, your future caretaker.”

She often screamed.

She claimed her doctor told her to never sleep on her stomach, as the pull of gravity encouraged wrinkles. She was glad for the warning, but said it came about 20 years too late.

Save yourself!

I’m a side sleeper, but I don’t think my right side is any more wrinkled than my left side. At least my wrinkles are symmetrical. There’s always something to be grateful for.

A friend has long said she dislikes movers and shakers because they constantly move and shake everybody else.

It does seem that way. Movers and shakers at the top determine what we pay in taxes, how fast we can drive on the interstate and choose our friends and enemies for us around the world.

Particularly aggressive movers and shakers even attempt to dictate which words we can use and the thoughts we can think.

We can take solace knowing that for every tier of movers and shakers today, there eventually will be another tier of movers and shakers above them and another above them ad infinitum.

Deep within those layers are the movers and shakers that were part of the first Christmas as it unfolded millennia ago. Powerful people thought they were calling the shots, but they were small players in a story of incomprehensible grandeur.

Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus issued an order for a census. And so it was that a young expectant couple made their way to Bethlehem. When King Herod learned a star had risen signaling a king was about to be born, he commanded the Magi to report back to him when they found this baby. The Magi gave him the slip.

Like every period in history, there were the powerful and the powerless at the time of Christ’s birth. The powerful, who were few, lived lavish lives while the vast majority scraped by under the shadows of coercion and brutality. Most people lived somewhere on a continuum between weariness and despair.

It wasn’t just a dark night when Christ was born; it was a dark time.

The young couple featured prominently in the narrative were downwardly mobile peasants. Neither were influencers like those today with hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. Although, ironically, like many big stars of today, the mother of Jesus is instantly known by one name.

Mary.

Far from all things familiar, in a strange town and a very strange place for giving birth, Mary labored and delivered on a humble bed of straw. Who would have thought such an obscure beginning would forever mark history?

Shortly after the birth is when the real movin’ and shakin’ began. Celestial beings lit up the skies over fields where ragged shepherds tended their sheep. It was a heavenly announcement delivered first to commoners, those with no position, power or social capital.

Why start with the lowly? Because God often works from the bottom up. Because God Himself took on humility coming as a baby in a manger. Because the ways of God are not the ways of man. Man sees on the outside; God sees the heart.

The invitation to come to the manger truly was, and remains today, a come one and come all, wherever you are, in whatever condition you are. Christmas is for the joyful and the grieving, the broken and the whole, for those filled with hope and for those who anguish in the night.

More than 2,000 years later, around the world, the heart of Christmas remains unchanged. It is an invitation to one and all to draw near. “You will find him wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”

Come and see. Behold the wonder.

Question: In the history of the world, has it ever been effective for one person to tell another person who is wound up to “calm down”?

Asking for a friend.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that I was wound up about something and a certain someone I have been married to for four decades tells me to “calm down.” Instead of having a calming effect, this has a polar-opposite effect. I am wound one notch tighter because I have been instructed to “calm down.”

It’s not that I mind being told to take it down a notch, it’s that the phrase “calm down” instinctively triggers adrenaline.

Perhaps other responses might be more helpful, things along the lines of “breathe” or “count to 10” or “put down the knife, now is not a good time to chop vegetables.”

I do chop fast when I’m wound tight. I’ve been known to prepare an entire veggie stir fry in under 60 seconds. In the interest of safety, I never watch the nightly news while doing meal prep.

My better half means well, just like I mean well when I tell him to calm down. Loved ones often say a lot of well-meaning things to one another that can seem, well, not so loving. Meaning well and communicating well are not the same things.

Telling me to “calm down” is on a par with telling me to relax. That one makes me want to whip out a calendar and instruct the one telling me that to block out a few days.

A son-in-law sometimes tells his wife, “Keep your powder dry.” That might be more effective because it’s a visual. It essentially says, “Don’t fire yet because things could get a lot worse.”

I am of the belief that the happiest people are often optimistic pessimists. They are the ones quietly confident that a situation can always be worse, so they are never completely taken by surprise and thereby lapse into panic.

In preparation for World War II, the Brits printed “Keep Calm and Carry On” posters intended to raise morale, fortify those stiff upper lips and encourage self-discipline. The posters were rarely displayed in public and only became widely known after someone brought several original copies to Antiques Roadshow (a program that cannot only calm but put some fast asleep).

Many variations of “Keep Calm and Carry On” have been minted since then, some of which are extremely practical and helpful: Keep Calm and . . . Have Some Dip . . . Eat Chocolate . . . Pretend You’re at the Beach . . . Call Mom . . . Get New Glasses . . . Read A Book . . . Have Recess . . . Call Your Lawyer . . . Be A Unicorn . . .  Pray . . . Plant Trees . . . Wait for Santa.

“Keep Calm and Carry On” may have worked for the British, but unfortunately, I am not a Brit.

Fortunately, I do keep a small stash of dark chocolate.