Tag Archives: community

Breathe, hold on, and keep talking…

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Five years ago I began with a question.  “Why blog?”.  I saw writing as a way to think out loud.  A way to start a conversation, both within myself and with others.  Since that first conversation there have been days that words came easily, almost faster than I could record them.  Some days the words were slow to come, filled with rough edges and poor fits. Then there were dry spells.  Sometimes brief.  Sometimes lasting months.  It was after a prolonged word drought that I asked myself, “Why keep blogging?”.Cabin-Brothers

Starting the conversation is important.  I have experienced and observed the harm done when we are afraid to begin talking about hard, uncomfortable things.  The willingness to keep talking is critical.  It is in the ongoing conversation that we know ourselves better. The good, the bad, and the ugly.  Continuing the conversation creates connection and relationship.  When we keep talking, we weave the threads of connection into the fabric of community.

Conversation is about talking.  Conversation is also about being, breathing.  In the discomfort of the dry spell we”re at risk of believing the connection and the conversation are over.  But maybe it’s just winter.  A time to slow down, crawl inside ourselves. To breathe and reflect. To emerge again to listen to the words of others.  To speak the words of community.  So, I will take a breathe, listen, and continue the conversation.

More than a village

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It’s true. It takes a village to raise a child.  It is also true that not just any village will do.  Truly raising a child requires villagers willing to look past the rough, unfinished exterior. Paulann.1People willing to see both the core, and the possibility of becoming within each child. Children don’t need perfect villagers.  They need real ones.  People aware that although they may be more “finished” than the children in the community, they still have growing to do.

My Aunt Mary was one of those imperfectly wonderful villagers for me.  I spent countless days of summer and holidays in her home with my cousins, riding horses, playing marathon Monopoly, and eating the best ever chocolate cake with white icing. While at Aunt Mary’s house, I was one of her kids, nurtured and disciplined.

I think I understood from the beginning that my Aunt Mary was a wonderful, committed adult in my village.  But it was during a conversation with her after I was grown, with children of my own that I came to understand the depth of her commitment and her determination to brave her own growth.

Aunt MaryWe were standing at the sink, side by side.  Her washing, me rinsing.  I had stood in that kitchen, at that sink over the years with cousins, laughing, complaining, splashing.  Now it was me, a mother myself, having a grown up conversation with Aunt Mary.  I talked about my girls.  She talked about her grandchildren, one of whom was struggling with bedwetting.  You could feel the emotion in her voice as she worried about the potential stigma and hurt for her grandchild.  And then she stopped, turning to look at me.  Blinking back tears she said, “I hope I never made you feel bad, like there was something wrong with you.”  “I hope I never made you think I was angry with you.”

You see, I had been a bedwetter.  All the way through elementary school.  Her words instantly took me back.  I thought of that chapter of my life and the frustration she must have felt at the extra laundry alone created by my bedwetting.  Swimming through that sea of memories enabled me to look her in the eye and say without hesitation, “No.  Not ever.”  In that moment I knew she was the best kind of grown up for a child’s village.  She was a villager that cherished the heart of a child above all else.  She was a villager brave enough to be real and to keep growing.

Thank you, Aunt Mary.

Kindness plus one…

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I don’t know Ryan Garcia.  But, Ryan Garcia is my hero.  He’s not my hero because of his work.  He’s not my hero because he lives in Chicago, even though I love the windy city.  He is my hero because of what he chooses to do every day.  Ryan Garcia is a bright light in a world of anger, cruelty, and disregard.  In a world where the daily news is filled with caustic campaign rhetoric, sports figures getting a bonus for purposefully injuring an opponent, and soldiers are slitting the throats of 12 year olds, Ryan Garcia is a quiet, steady force of goodness moving through each day.

Ryan and his wife gave birth to a daughter in 2011.  As the new year approached, Ryan observed, “My daughter is 3 months old.  She is starting to become more and more aware of her surroundings.”  He thought about who he wanted to be as he lived out 2012,  in front of his little girl.  That’s when the idea came to him,…366 Random Acts of Kindness.  One act of kindness for every day of the upcoming leap year.  He began a blog to record his journey, writing, “I just hope that she can see this in the future and try and emulate it.”

For the last 75 days, Ryan Garcia hasn’t missed a day of choosing to do an act of kindness.  He has handed out free hugs on a Chicago street, written a letter to a soldier in Afghanistan, complimented 25 strangers, and cleared the snow off all the cars on his block after a snow storm.

He thought about suspending his plan on Day 61, when his father-in-law died unexpectedly.  Then he remembered the caring and compassionate man his father-in-law was, and knew that one of the best ways to honor him was to continue.  So he extended acts of kindness as he comforted his family, helped with household chores for his mother-in-law, and wrote his father-in-law’s obituary.

I hope it is now no mystery why I think Ryan Garcia is a hero.  He is giving the best gift a father can give to a daughter,…a sure and steady path to follow, and a clear picture of what a good man looks like.  And who knows how many of us will be changed by his giving.  Thank you, Ryan Garcia.

Gifts re-gifted, or paying it forward…

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I would like to thank Jen of step on a crack…or break your mother’s back…  for nominating GrowthLines for the 7 X 7 Link Award.  Thank you, Jen for setting a worthy standard that proves writing can contain both clarity and beauty.  That in a single sentence, writing can guide our steps and document our journey.  You remind us that we can write with both honesty and integrity.

I created the GrowthLines blog for many of the same reasons I became a therapist. I wanted to observe and understand the world.  To think about what it means to be a self, an individual.  And at the same time to acknowledge and celebrate our drive to connect to each other.  I wanted to explore the possibilities of being human when we push past all that threatens to hold us back.  I wanted to be curious and kind.  I wanted to show that we could talk about hard things, without doing it in a hard way.

I still want to do and be all those things, and more.  Thinking out loud can be risky business.  Managing words can be a little like herding cats.  They have a mind, and intent of their own.  They’re not above taking you in a direction you hadn’t planned on going.  Although it can be unsettling in the moment you’re losing control, this independent streak of words is actually one of the things I like about the process of giving our thoughts a voice, written or spoken.  If I take the risk of following the process, I usually appreciate where the words take me.  The GrowthLines blog has become a doorway to amazing people, greater self awareness, and the opportunity to be a part of something good.  Thank you for stopping by, joining the conversation, and paying it forward.

As a 7 X 7 participant, I am to:

  1. Share something about me that no one (in the blogging community) knows…
  2. Link up to 7 posts of mine that I feel worthy: 
  3. Nominate 7 bloggers for this award and inform them (with pleasure):

Something no one in the blogging community knows…

As a child, I was a dreamer.  In fact as late as college I still had a wide range of things I wanted to be “when I grew up”.  The varied options included being a professional barrel racer, an opera star, a youth worker.  In my defense, I grew up in the era of Dale Evans, singing cowgirl and advocate for children

My real reason for the uncharacteristic self disclosure?  To say thank you to the host of grown ups in my life  who encouraged me to dream big and listened to my oversized musings without throwing cold water on them.  I think they knew that the process of living would shrink my list over time, so they just listened and encouraged.  I took it for granted at the time, adults encouraging me to dream and dream big.

I sit with kids everyday.  Sometimes they tell me their dreams.  Some of them seem pretty outlandish. I try to remember to be listen carefully, without judgement, without cold water.  I hope I’m not the only adult hearing their stories.

Sometimes I sit with kids who have lost their dreams.  Too much life, too soon.  Too few listeners.  Too much cold water.  I try to listen in ways to revive the dreams.  It can be hard to breathe life into dreams when innocence is gone.  Hard, but maybe not impossible.  Be a dream listener pure and simple, to the kids in your life.  If we listen well, they may trust us to help edit the dream when the time comes.

Seven posts that I feel are worthy of revisiting…

Altered Again

Faces of Grief

I wish it was not yours to do

Just a piece of paper…

a motherless child

The language of loss

What’s in a name

One of the time intensive aspects of accepting the gracious gift of an award from a fellow blogger is discovering and deciding who to give a gift to.  These exploratory trips into to Blog Land have also become the gift that keeps on giving to me, as I find written treasures and new voices.  They speak honestly, with hope and humor, with encouragement and information.  Most of those recognized in this post are new to me.  I’m excited about having found them.  Their thoughts and experiences have touched me and made me glad I stepped into the blogging community.  I have linked to a specific post on each blog.  I hope you will explore their entire territory.

Seven bloggers I would like to nominate for the 7 X 7 award…

still counting stars

Teen Support in NYC

A Considered Life

Don’t call me Brenda

An Emigrant’s Way

Azphoenix’s Blog

Everyone Needs Therapy

Blogging for Mental Health, 2012

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I pledge my commitment to the Blog for Mental Health 2012 Project. I will blog about mental health topics not only for myself, but for others. By displaying this badge, I show my pride, dedication, and acceptance for mental health. I use this to promote mental health education in the struggle to erase stigma.

I am happy to express a “Thank You” from the bottom of my heart to Jen at Step On A Crack… for passing the Blogging for Mental Health Pledge on to GrowthLines.  Jen is an insightful soul writing powerful and poetic thoughts about life as the child of an alcoholic mother, about losing too many too soon, about growing through the hard places.  She talks candidly about the ripple impact of Wernicke-Korsakoff; alcoholics dementia, on the alcoholic and their spouse, children, extended family, friends, and community.  In Jen’s words,

“This is a cautionary tale.  I hope it will be of help to those who live with alcoholics, are active alcoholics and those who are in recovery.”

It is a tale well worth reading.  Jen was courageous enough to start the conversation.  I hope you will drop by Step on a Crack, and join in.  Thank you, Jen

My Mental Health Map, Chapter One
Good News, Bad News

Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. ~ Alfred Korzybski

Frankly I am struggling a bit with the idea of posting my “mental health” biography.  Not for reasons you might assume.  I’m not ashamed or incapacitated by my history, although I do have some regrets and scars due both to choices I made and things imposed on me by others.  No, my struggle has more to do with a) being a pretty introverted, private person, and b) the value I place on finding a balance between knowing I bring my “self” into the therapeutic relationship and knowing that “it’s not about me”.

I came out of childhood with an array of “good news, bad news”.  The bad news was attached to learning that life can hurt, disappoint, and change you.  I lost people close to me, discovered that grownups you trust aren’t always trustworthy, and had to face the outcome of foolish decisions.

The good news is that I experienced childhood surrounded by people who loved me.  I experienced the wisdom, love, nurture, and discipline from three generations of grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles. I had the luxury of celebrating childhood with cousins and close friends.  My childhood wasn’t idyllic.  It wasn’t awful.  It was a mixture, and I am still learning and being shaped by the whole of it.

My Mental Health Map, Chapter Two
Seeds, Earthquakes, and Rogue Waves 

I hope you will stop by later for “the rest of the story”.  The part I love to talk about.  I look forward to thinking out loud about the joy of being a part of the mental health community, of the ways my life has been enriched, of the continuing education I have received under the tutelage of clients and colleagues.  Another day, another conversation.

NOW, the fun part. I (we) get to ask five (5) other people to take the pledge for blogging for mental health.  Please join me in supporting and encouraging mental health by visiting these voices:

C PTSD – A Way Out

Our attitudes and daily effort will determine our misery or happiness going forward.  Healing is possible and likely if you do the work.  You have to believe you can heal and practice that belief daily.

Grief:  One Woman’s Perspective

Every person’s grief is unique. Every person – and their own “factors” –  are unique. Every factor plays a part in how a person grieves and how long it takes to integrate the loss into the fabric of life. Because we live in a society that is distanced from grief, it falls to the bereaved to teach others how to help. This is a daunting task, especially for a bereaved parent already dealing with so much.  This blog is written using selected journal entries I have written since March 2002. My only goal is to give some insight of what it’s like to be on this side of the fence. I hope in some measure it can be of some help.

The world needs better men. This blog is simply my journey to becoming a better man every day and the lessons I learn along the way.

understandingthepast
The beginning of my mother’s ending

Good Life

Like a compass needle slamming from South to North! My life was eventually turned from disaster and depression to hope and gratitude! I only look back in order to remember how difficult it is to find serenity and direction when first sober.


The rules of the pledge are:

1) Take the pledge by copy and pasting the following into a post featuring Blog for Mental Health 2012

I pledge my commitment to the Blog for Mental Health 2012 Project. I will blog about mental health topics not only for myself, but for others. By displaying this badge, I show my pride, dedication, and acceptance for mental health. I use this to promote mental health education in the struggle to erase stigma.

2.) Link back to the person who pledged you.

3.) Write a short biography of your mental health, and what this means to you.


Grief in hiding…

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We all grieve.  But each in our own way.  Grief as fact is universal.  Grief as experience is personal.  There are common themes, but even those are shaped by our personal touch.  Regardless of your way of grieving, it’s important to remember two things.  Loss may be an event.  Grief is a process.

What we know in theory, sometimes becomes blurry in reality.  We bring our own histories and personalities to this partnership with grief.  We are still at risk of assuming that others grieve like we grieve.  We forget that differences, like our age, or the number of times we have encountered grief, affect how we feel our grief.  Our experience in the dance of loss affects how we show our grief.

Our acquaintance with grief begins in childhood and continues through adolescence.  Friends move away.  We lose pets. Grandparents die.  Painful lessons about life and the passage of time, happening in an order we don’t like, but come to accept as life’s way.  Sometimes loss happens out of order, bringing painful lessons about time cut short.  Sometimes we are children facing the loss of a child, a peer.

I was in junior high school the first time I faced the death of a peer.  He was a year younger than me.  We didn’t go to the same school, or even live in the same town.  We weren’t best friends or extremely close. Perhaps it made a difference that we had become friends on our own.  Our parents didn’t know each other.  Our respective friends didn’t know each other.  I met him during the summer when I visited my grandparents.  We rode horses together, talking about incidentally important teenage topics.  At the end of the summer he stayed in the country, I went back to the city.  And then the news came that he had killed himself, with a shotgun, over a girl.  He left a note.  “She doesn’t love me anymore.”

I traveled the fifty miles, by myself on a Greyhound bus, to attend his funeral at the local high school. The gymnasium was filled with people from the rural community and beyond.  There were junior high and high school students.  Young people facing the loss of a peer, a death out of order.  I was there to pay my respects to a brief friendship, and perhaps to stand with other teenagers as we each found our voice of grief.

I lost and grieved other peers, all too young to die, as I finished adolescence and stepped into young adulthood.  In the years that followed I have sat with grieving children and teenagers as they found their own way through loss that came too soon, to those too young.  What should we take from young grief? Who should we be to the children and teenagers in our lives who are facing overwhelming and traumatic loss?

We’re used to learning from the wisdom of age and experience.  When children grieve we discover there are things to learn and lessons to be reminded of from the wisdom of innocence.  For the sake of the young let’s remember

  • they are not empty human-like containers who are here but devoid of feelings until they reach the magic age of majority at 18.  Our failure to recognize this means we may be insensitive to the ways their life has been disrupted.
  • not displaying emotion doesn’t mean a child isn’t feeling something.  Are we modeling a variety of ways to express feelings?  Are we respectful of their need to be with us, and to have time alone?  We may fail to acknowledge the hole left in their lives if we assume that silence means there is no hole.
  • they are not adults in smaller bodies.  They are not fully equipped to identify, feel, and express the complex range of emotions related to loss.  We may explain away their emotion by referring to their displays of grief as adolescent drama.  Defining their grief as overstated may allow us to hide our own discomfort with grief in understated ways.  Will we risk being uncomfortable to be with them in these raw moments?
  • they will accommodate us, at their own risk, if they believe we can’t handle shared grief.  If the things they need to say, the questions they need to ask “make” us cry or shut down, they will take care of us by keeping their thoughts and their questions to themselves.  We get to help them know it’s okay to cry, okay to be quiet, okay to step outside.  We get to show them how to grieve, even as grief continues to be our teacher.  It’s not our grieving that harms, but our determination to leave it the unnamed presence in our midst, and children to wrestle with it alone and in hiding.

“Sorrow makes us all children again – destroys all differences of intellect.  The wisest know nothing.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson                                    

Show and Tell

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Adults tell children.  Makes sense, doesn’t it?  It’s our job as parents, teachers, grownups in a community.  We’re supposed to teach them right from wrong, how to be responsible, how to make good decisions, how to succeed as they make their way in the world.  We know it is our job to tell them how to do what they’re supposed to do.

Adults show children.  That’s more complicated.  Most of us have had the chance to learn how much easier it can be to “say” what to do, than it is to “show” what to do.  If we are going to show what our children need to see, we must become good observers of our own behavior.  The less we know ourselves, the greater the risk that the subtle, and not so subtle messages in our actions may speak louder than what we’re telling a child is of value.  The task of telling and showing children how to be sometimes meshes well, and sometimes leaves us in a “do as I say, not as I do” moment.  Even in a moment of contradiction we have the opportunity to tell and show our children how to go back and make it right.  How to face ourselves and adjust our behavior.  How to grow toward congruence.

We tell and we show.  We’re the grownups.  They’re children.  They listen.  They watch.  They follow.  All true.  But what if there is more to the story?  What if our teaching relationship with children is part of a multi-lane highway system instead of a single lane, one way street?

It was cold and drizzling rain this morning as I began my day.  A day of being in and out of the wet, cold weather. Alone in the car I began to grumble about the unpleasant weather, planning ahead for how cold and miserable I would be as the day wore on.  And suddenly she was there in my head.  A little girl, holding an umbrella, running in the rain…, laughing.  You may remember her from And we begin…, running, laughing, umbrella in hand.  She was there in my head, reminding me how to celebrate a rainy day.

Then I began to think of all the children, my own two and beyond, who have been my teachers.  Children who showed me how to call it what it is, including the elephants in the living room.  Kids who showed me how to be honest when I’m afraid, to try something new when I’m uncertain, to laugh at myself, to push through a hard task. Kids of all ages who have shown me what generosity, tolerance, and empathy look like.  I spent a cold, wet, dreary day smiling with gratitude each time I thought of the kids who have taught me.  Glad that teaching and learning live on a two way street.  Determined to be an authentic teacher and a good student.

“Kids:  they dance before they learn there is anything that isn’t music.”
                                                                                             ~ William Stafford

Best laid plans…

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The GrowthLines blog is about growing up, becoming a complete person.  Growing up is the process of a lifetime, literally.  Our growth often depends on our willingness to make a change.  It seems only fitting that a blog inviting readers to grow, should be willing to change for growth too.  With that in mind, I hope you will consider joining me in thinking out loud about:

  • conversation by photograph – We’re probably all familiar with, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”  Some say the original quote actually referred to “ten thousand words”.  Either way, we know the power of images to speak.  Bloggers have recognized the benefits of purposeful silence in Silent Sundays, and of using photography in lieu of words in Wordless Wednesdays.  I haven’t chosen a standing title.  I may not hold to a single day.  I do plan to post a single photograph on a weekly basis, sometimes accompanied by a quote.  No explanation or commentary.  A photograph standing on its own.  That’s where you come in.  I hope readers will share their thoughts about the voices and stories in the image.  I’m eager to hear the growing conversation that begins in silence, observation, and thought.
  • a broader view – Since the first week of November, the focus has been on grief and loss.  In the days ahead, the GrowthLines blog will take an expanded look at life and growth by thinking about community, relationships, parenting, and self awareness, to name a few.  I hope you will…, join the conversation by sharing your thoughts on posted topics and by suggesting topics for us to talk about.  (Please keep in mind, it’s not personal if a suggested subject doesn’t become a post topic.)
  • layers of loss – because grief is an intricate part of our experience, we will continue to talk about both the pain of loss and the growth that is possible in our seasons of grief.  I appreciate the courageous fellow strugglers who have taken pain in hand and stepped into this important conversation to the benefit of us all.

Watch for picture, and start the conversation.

Versatile Blogger

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A heart felt “Thank You” to Jen at Step On a Crack…, for nominating the GrowthLines blog for The Versatile Blogger Award.  I began blogging as a way to think out loud with a larger community, outside the therapy room.  To think about the growth that comes from our experiences.  To recognize the incredible resilience of humans.  To highlight the hope to be found even in our darkest moments.

In the process of writing my thoughts, I have encountered an amazing fabric of fellow travelers who push me to listen more closely, think more clearly, and to see the raw beauty in each of us.  Fellow bloggers have expressed that beauty with humor and wit.  With warmth and encouragement.  With agony and longing.  With confusion and uncertainty.  With candor and honesty.

Thank you, Jen, for your continued presence in the blogging world.  Thank you for your willingness to give us a window into the complexity of your relationship with your mother, and your grief over her living, and her dying.  You invite and inspire all of us to engage in honest conversation about our own lives.

According to the requirements of the award I must:

• Nominate 15 other bloggers

• Inform my nominees

• Share 7 random facts about myself

• Thank those who nominated me

• Add a picture of the award to this post

Congratulations Versatile Bloggers!

I am honored to nominate the following blogs for the Versatile Blogger Award:

http://www.thursdaymorningmeditations.wordpress.com – Emerson J. Winchester invites me to think with her every Thursday morning through her writing.  Her meditations push us to think as a springboard to action, as in her recent post , Pop Music Failure (or, A Step in the Wrong Direction).

http://www.creatingyourbeyond.com – Check out this blog on “survivors creating a life beyond Loss and Trauma”.  I found Brenda’s post on self-forgiveness to be insightful.

http://www.findinglifeinadeath.wordpress.com – a rich and poetic blog about the simultaneous dance we do with life and death, loss and change.  The final post of 2011 was especially thought provoking.

http://www.thereinventedlass.wordpress.com – join a fellow blogger at a crossroads with the chance and challenge to reinvent her life.  One view of the crossroads can be found in the Weekly roundup post.

http://www.ptsdawayout.com – a wonderful “voice of experience” resource for people living with complex PTSD.  “Show up empty and experience everything joyfully.”

http://www.fewerforgreater.wordpress.com – Consider fewer possessions for a greater quality of life.  I was intrigued by the most recent post, Pick four people.

http://www.workthedream.wordpress.com – I was delighted to discover this blog about daring to dream your life, and then working the dream.  I was even more delighted to discover that the dream is being worked out in the shadow of one of my favorite places on this earth, The Spanish Twin Peaks near LaVeta, CO.  The indigenous tribes of the area called them Wahatoya, the “breasts of the world”.

http://www.grandfathersky.wordpress.com – Written by “a poet and a dreamer”, asking “Why Life?”  Beautiful photographs and thought provoking posts, such as Walking Between Worlds.

http://www.cocorum.wordpress.com – She’s a seventeen year old thinking beyond her years, and writing her thoughts.  Listen to her in “What’s the point of kindness?”

http://www.katiedodson.wordpress.com – following the musings at the People Always Leave blog, and read Hanging By A Moment

http://www.belleofthecarnival.com – Join the “head clown” at the Cameron family Carnival as she looks at being family yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  Hear her honor her own father’s spirit in A Skier’s Dream

http://www.nidhisays.wordpress.com – Thank you for poetry and prose.  Make sure you read “To a special man…”

http://www.ariannasrandomthoughts.com – Arianna invites us to join her in a discussion of resilience, motivation, and personal development.  She sometimes uses sports as a metaphor for our discoveries about life, as in Press On!  What Rowing Taught Me About Resilience

http://www.anissastein.wordpress.com – an interesting blog about “living the life less traveled”, which includes among other topics, “Mistakes introverts make”.

http://ashleycherie.wordpress.com – Another young, talented artist who is letting the blogging community join her as she “paints” her thoughts with words.  I appreciate her candid thinking in Recap: 2011.

Congratulations again to my Versatile Blogger nominees! 

Now for the seven random facts about me:
  1. I have lived long enough that after years of wearing glasses and contacts, I now have 20/20 vision to see anything within 18 inches of the end of my nose.  Since I love to read, write, and “google”, all of which fall within the 18 inch range, I’m ecstatic.  Anything past the magical 18 inches is a blur, including the glasses I took off in my moment of “clarity”.  On more than one occasion I’ve had to put in contacts in order to find where I left my glasses.
  2. I too am a “one-sneezer”, and sometimes pretty loud.  I am occasionally embarrassed when a sneeze refuses to be stifled.  On the heels of nearly every sneeze I have a memory moment of my grandad.  Our sneezing behaviors are identical, which means my sneezes are often followed by a smile.
  3. I grew up watching my Dad work on cars, literally a “shade tree mechanic”.  Later, with the luxury of a garage, he taught me how to maintain and repair my first car, a 66 Mustang.  I spent years worth of happy moments in that garage getting my hands dirty and my heart filled.  Some of my hardest moments were being there alone, packing up the remains of my shade tree mechanic dad, when dementia made it necessary for him to move to a nursing home.  Sometimes I go to my own garage and hold his socket wrench in my hand for old time’s sake.
  4. When I was old enough to know better, I left my grandad’s horse grazing in the yard while I went to get a drink of water.  In less than five minutes, Old Red had caught the saddle horn on the clothesline wire, and was racing around the yard in a panic dragging one of my grandmother’s new iron clothesline poles behind him.  The other pole was bent to the ground.  I had to wait for grandad to come home so I could look into his clear, blue eyes, and explain what had happened.  I had to live knowing I had destroyed something my grandma had waited for, for years.  Red and I both survived the experience, him with a small cut over one eye and me with a better understanding of responsibility, and that it takes less than five minutes for things to “go to hell in a handbasket”.  My grandparents kept on loving and investing in me in spite of my mistakes…, priceless.
  5. I like hiking with a camera and a sketch pad.
  6. I’ve been to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival every year since Hurricane Katrina.  If I could rewind my life, I would shake the limitations of a “no dancing” religious code, and learn to do the Zydeco.  The next best thing is to be at the Fais Do Do stage watching a mass of people dancing zydeco to live music.
  7. I love Vivian Higginbotham’s seafood gumbo, and am so glad she gave me her recipe and taught me how to make it before she died.