FoxCraft

"And This One Is From the Time I . . . "

One of the side effects of growing older is that you have more and more scars, but fewer and fewer people who know about all of them.

Balanced against other weighty concerns, this may not be very important. It does matter, though. Our scars are evidence, not just of physical wounds, but of events we have lived through and maybe even learned from. The answer to the question, "How did you get that scar?" is a piece of our personal history.

In the following stories, the scars don't all belong to the same person, but all of them are real. The identities of their owners are being withheld in order to protect the unlucky, the careless, and the clumsy.

There's the white line on your chin that's a memento of the time you were helping a friend move and you fell out of the back of the Suburban and landed face-first on the concrete driveway. You remember grazing your cheek on the corner of the trailer as you fell, and you realize how lucky you were not to break your cheekbone, shatter your jaw, or lose a bunch of teeth.

The shallow divot on your wrist comes from the family bike ride when your daughter had a wreck in front of you and you fell over her. You landed on your face—getting an impressive shiner in spite of your helmet—scraped your wrist, and tore a ligament in your elbow. Until then, you thought seeing stars happened only in the comics.

The triangle on your knee is a souvenir of the time a steering cable broke on the boat and it veered abruptly to starboard—or was it port? Everything and everyone in it slid sideways. The cut on your leg was minor; what you remember most is that one of the kids almost went over the side.

The gouge in your knuckle came from nearly cutting off your finger during your college summer job. It was a good incentive to finish your education and learn how to find oil instead of drilling for it.

The mark across your thigh is a reminder that it's a good idea to stop the chain saw after it goes through the log and before it reaches your leg.

The line on your ankle marks the place where the orthopedic surgeon put in a screw—probably the most expensive hardware item you'll ever buy. That was the time you learned that it isn't a good idea to jump on the trampoline with your sandals on.

Scars are more than just marks on our bodies. They can be mementos of poor decisions, bad luck, or narrow escapes. They can serve as receipts, showing the tuition we've paid for educational experiences. They are part of our personal history and sometimes our family history as well. They may even remind us we were lucky to survive to talk about them.

We're lucky, too, if we have plenty of people around who know and care about our stories, including our scars. After all, some of our most interesting scars are in places we can't show to just anybody.

"Grandma! She's Being Bossy Again!"

It's a challenge to write something clever and entertaining about a family reunion when you know your words are likely to be read by most of the people who were there. Trust me, it gives a whole new dimension to the idea of writer's block.

This reunion—the fourth or fifth annual one now—was a three-day stay at a campground that included my parents, all four of their children, all their spouses except one who was out of the country (no, he didn't schedule the trip just to get out of spending time with the family—honest), all the grandkids, plus spouses and fiancés, except for two who live at a distance, and, of course, all four of the great-grandchildren. And let's not forget the six aunts and uncles and the handful of cousins.

Some people went fishing (and treated the whole group to a fish fry on Saturday night). Some people went swimming. Some people went for walks. Some people went for ice cream. Some people spent most of their time sitting in the shade and visiting. Everyone ate—fairly often, actually. And, apparently, everyone had a good time.

Several people remarked on the responses they get when they mention spending a three-day weekend with the extended family. These range from, "You really do that—and you enjoy it?" to, "I could never spend that much time with my family!" and, "How many fights were there?"

Sorry, no fights. Maybe that's because most of us have a sense of humor. It probably also helps that, despite some beer to go with the fish, this isn't a family where anyone gets falling-into-the-campfire drunk. (True, there is one uncle who occasionally passes out, but that's a heart problem, not an alcohol problem. Thank goodness the extended family includes a couple of veterinarians.)

But we do get together fairly often, and we do enjoy it. Is that because we're somehow closer or nicer than other families? Probably not. We come complete with the disagreements, personality conflicts, and leftover childhood stuff that all families have. But somehow, the idea of family is more important than any of that minor stuff.

At any rate, we keep showing up—for the summer camping trip, the Christmas party, and the various events in between like house-painting, moving, birthday parties, and weddings.

And maybe that's what makes the difference. The more often you show up, the better you get to know the people who share your blood and your history, and the more fully you understand how important they are to you. Maybe that makes it easier to accept their quirks and oddities in the same way you hope they accept your unique and endearing personality traits. Maybe showing up is simply what it means to be family.

Getting Around to the Presidents

I came across a new and unfamiliar President the other day. He was sitting on the street corner, gazing off into the distance in a pondering and Presidential way. I didn't recognize him. He was stout enough that I thought for a moment he could have been William Howard Taft, until I remembered that Taft was several blocks away, winding up to throw out the first pitch of the World Series.

Even though I didn't recognize this man, I knew he was a United States President, simply because he was on a street corner in downtown Rapid City. Over the past few years, statues of Presidents have been erected throughout downtown, a few each year. We don't have all of them yet, but we're getting close. By now there are enough that, except for the obvious ones like Washington and Eisenhower and the Roosevelts, I'm no longer sure who all of them are.

One of the things I've been meaning to do for the past year or so is take a walk through downtown and check out all the statues. Driving past the newest statue this week reminded me that I haven't gotten around to taking that Presidential stroll.

It even occurred to me that this might be a "bucket list" item. (For anyone not familiar with the 2007 movie, "The Bucket List," the title refers to a list of things you want to do before you kick the bucket.) Walking around to look at a few statues, I decided, hardly seemed big enough to qualify for a "bucket list," unless perhaps the statues in question happen to be in Rome or Egypt.

What I need, I realized, is a list for smaller things. Stuff that's not important enough so I would care if I kicked the bucket before I got it done, but still stuff that I would like to do. Small, enjoyable things that aren't life-changing but are still worth doing. Like walking around looking at the Presidents. Or playing the piano more than I currently do. Or planting some rose bushes.

Things on this small of a scale don't really merit a bucket, but they're still important enough to pay attention to. I've decided it's time to start a list for these little wishes that I haven't gotten around to yet. I'll begin it just as soon as I get my desk cleaned off so I can find a fresh piece of paper. I'm going to make a "teacup list."

(One of the things I haven't gotten around to yet is seeing "The Bucket List." Maybe I need to put it on my list.)

Empty Nest Syndrome

A few weeks ago, we noticed a pair of robins exploring home sites along the beam that supports our deck. Mrs. Robin would perch on the beam, then sit, then turn around several times and sit again, as if trying the place on for size. She did this repeatedly, while Mr. Robin sat nearby, waiting for her to make up her mind.

The next day, they began building. Actually, though we assumed this was a joint project, we only saw her at work. She would flutter up to the beam with a beak full of sticks or grass, poke them into the pile of stuff already there, then press down with her breast, circling around and around to create the inner bowl of the nest. It took at least one full day, and countless trips, to accumulate enough material to build the nest about three inches high and shape it to her specifications.

Over the next few days, any trip down the basement steps automatically included a stop to look out the patio door and check on the robin. During one of her brief times away from the nest—presumably for a quick trip to the earthworm aisle of the nearest grocery store—we peeked with a mirror and saw one small blue egg. A couple of weeks later we saw what looked like two little heads above the rim of the nest.

It's been a rainy spring, and from time to time we wondered how Mrs. Robin was coping with all the wet weather. True, the nest was underneath the deck, but plenty of water must have been coming through the half-inch gaps between the floor boards. One afternoon, during a cold, heavy downpour, it occurred to me that I could have given her a little more shelter by simply moving a big flower pot so it covered the nest.

It may have been a good idea, but it came a little late. The next day we saw Mrs. Robin on the power line that comes into the house. She had half a worm in her beak, but she wasn't eating it. She was simply sitting. We decided she must have been taking a break from the kids, enjoying a few minutes of solitude. This made us wonder how many kids she had and how big they were by now, so we took our mirror downstairs for a quick look.

The nest was empty.

We were sure the baby robins weren't old enough to have left home. Besides, we hadn't seen any fledglings out on the grass. We looked beneath the nest for little bodies, but all we found was the broken shell of one tiny blue egg.

What happened to the baby robins? The rainstorm? The cold? A neighborhood cat? Or did they even hatch? Who knows?

Had this particular pair of robins found a different site for their nest, we would never have noticed or cared when the babies came or when they disappeared. But, because we had a window into their lives, we did notice. We came to think of them as our robins—not our property, exactly, but as neighbors whose comings and goings we cared about.

We still see Mr. and Mrs. Robin around the yard. So far, though, the nest has remained empty. Either they've decided not to start over with another clutch of eggs, or they've built another nest in a better location. It probably doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things. Still, we would like to know.

I'd Be Glad To Show You Pictures

Random thoughts on spending a few days looking after the grandchildren while their parents are on a well-deserved vacation:

A brisk 45-minute walk while pushing a 25-pound toddler in a stroller is more exercise than one might think.

Little kids have short attention spans? Don’t believe it. The attention span of a one-year-old is far greater than the attention span of an adult who really doesn’t want to play peek-a-boo, watch Barney, or fold the same piece of laundry for the fifty-eleventh time.

Kids aged eight through eleven are quite capable and competent people who can get themselves ready for school, navigate their grandmother to the library and the park, and find the Internet password and the power cord for the electric skillet.

It is possible to fit one adult, four kids, one toddler in a car seat, and two bicycles into a mini-van and still have everyone in seat belts.

Once your own kids are grown, you mercifully tend to forget that an inevitable fact of life with babies and small children is the slime factor.

A shopping cart containing a toddler, two pairs of shorts, and several shirts will fit into a small dressing room in a discount store, along with one medium-sized adult. It is even possible to shut the door and try on the clothes, then to maneuver the cart back out of the dressing room.

I knew, of course, that my grandchildren were brilliant, but one of them is even more of a genius than I had realized. In fourth grade, he has already figured out the answer to one of the enduring puzzles of Western civilization: why is the Mona Lisa smiling? His conclusion, as set out in a school assignment, was this: “Leonardo bribed her with 300 pounds of the world’s finest chocolate.” Like many inspired discoveries, this one is obvious after a great thinker has realized it. Why did no one come up with this before?

A sixteen-month-old, suspicious on the first day of this strange person in his orbit in the place of Mom and Dad, can by the second day come running up with his arms out and a grin of delight on his face. This causes a strange melting sensation in the vicinity of the heart.

If you plan to rob a bank or a store, take along a cute toddler. Everyone will smile and coo and say hi to the kid, and none of them will ever be able to identify you.

To adults, two of the most beautiful words in the English language are “bedtime” and “nap.”

And finally, one of the many pleasures of spending time with grandchildren is realizing what good parents their parents are.

Getting Off Your Stump

Imagine being at a ski area, watching the skiers. They’re swooping down the mountainside in elegant sweeping curves, having a wonderful time.

But then add something else to the picture: off to one side, there is a person sitting on a stump, not having a wonderful time at all. That was me, on my first attempt at downhill skiing.

My husband, the only one in the family who could ski, was busy helping five kids get their boots and skis on and get started. So I headed off to the beginner’s slope by myself. I managed to get onto the tow rope, get to the top, and get off without falling. I worked my way over to the top of the run.

From the bottom it had looked like a gentle little slope. From the top, it looked like a precipice.

I froze. I didn’t know how to start down. I didn’t have a clue how to stop. I was afraid I would fall, and if I fell I was afraid I wouldn’t know how to get up. We talk about being “petrified with fear” or "paralyzed with fear." That's exactly what I was.

Eventually, I got over to one side and sat down on a tree stump. I sat there for at least an hour, watching other people skiing. Some of them did it easily, some of them fell down a lot. But they all seemed to be having fun.

Not me. All I wanted to do was quit—but I couldn’t even do that, because in order to quit I had to get down the hill, and I was too scared to get down the hill so I could quit.

Finally, after he had gotten the kids started, my husband came to my rescue. With his help, I managed to make it down the hill. With his encouragement, I even went back up and tried it again, and then again.

The next time we went skiing, I did something radical—I took a lesson. The instructor didn’t laugh at me for being scared or tell me I shouldn’t be scared. He acknowledged my fear, but he didn’t treat it as a reason for me not to learn to ski. What he said, by his actions more than his words, was, “Yep, you’re scared. Now watch me and do this.”

I was paying for the lesson, after all—so I watched him and did that. And by the end of the lesson, I was learning to ski. I knew how to stop, I could more or less make my skis go where I wanted them to go, and I knew how to get up when I fell down. I was still scared, but I was no longer petrified with fear.

By the end of the season, I was one of those people swooping down the slopes in—mostly—graceful curves. Once I overcame my fear. I had gotten up off my stump and become a skier, and I was having a wonderful time.

As I look back on that experience now, I can see there were three factors that helped me conquer the fear.

One was the fact that I could see something I wanted at the other side of the fear. As I sat there on my stump, watching other people having fun, I wanted what they had. I wanted to learn to ski so I could enjoy myself with my family.

Second, I asked for help and support. I got encouragement from my husband, and I invested in myself by taking a lesson from someone who knew what I wanted to learn.

Third, I learned to separate the fear from the goal. Instead of thinking, “I want to learn to ski, but I’m afraid,” I learned to think, “I want to learn to ski, and I’m afraid.” Simply changing one word—from “but” to “and” makes those two separate facts. Yes, I want to learn something new. Yes, I’m afraid. One doesn’t cancel out the other. I can be afraid, and I can still move forward, one small step at a time.

Those same three factors can help us conquer fear of anything that’s new and frightening—such as public speaking. Toastmasters, for example, uses all of them with great effectiveness. When we listen to more experienced members, we can see what’s on the other side of the fear of speaking in public. We get support from other members at every meeting, with encouraging evaluations, warm applause, and useful suggestions for improvement.

And finally, Toastmasters can help us separate the fear of public speaking from the goal of wanting to learn how to do it. Older members will say, “Of course you’re scared. I was, too. Almost everyone is.” Then they’ll put you on the schedule for next week, or call on you for Table Topics. Because what we’ve all learned is that speaking, like skiing and many other things, can only be learned by doing it—one small step at a time.

If you’re facing something that threatens to leave you paralyzed with fear, try using these three steps: Focus on your goal so you can clearly see what’s waiting for you on the other side of the fear. Ask for help and support. And recognize that your fear is real, but that it isn’t a reason not to take action toward your goal.

Before you know it, you’ll be swooping gracefully down your particular mountain. You may even discover it isn’t nearly as steep as it looked in the beginning. And you’ll probably be having a wonderful time.

(With this speech for the spring 2009 Toastmasters competition, I placed first in the area contest and second at the division level.)

Taking Tea With the Grandchildren

I had tea with my grandkids this morning. Yesterday morning, I had tea with a couple of Siamese cats. The morning before that, my tea went along with a Smith family 100-mile walk. (It took three cups.)

Even though the grandchildren live some 500 miles away, they can be here for breakfast any time, thanks to this year's Mother's Day gift. It's a cup that has all their names on it under little cartoon pictures, with the heading "My Grandma Rocks." The geologist who shares my breakfast table initially read it as "My Grandma's Rocks." This was a perfectly natural mistake; in his world, everybody's grandma would have her own collection of rocks as a matter of course.

The Siamese cats, blue eyes wide open with a curiosity that matches the question-mark curves of their tails, sit on one side of a cup that was a Christmas gift from my daughter. The paw prints on the other side suggest that their sophisticated poise might give way to mischief at any moment.

The 100-mile walk cup commemorates a family challenge a few years ago to walk every day until we had each accumulated that many miles. Those of us who made the full distance or more have the cups to prove it. A guest who used that cup one day was very impressed that we had walked so far. It took me a few minutes to realize he assumed we did it all at once. I would have explained, but correcting a guest who was just starting on his first cup of coffee hardly seemed polite.

Every now and then, I think I would like to have a matched set of attractive cups instead of the eclectic collection of mugs in our cupboard. ("Eclectic" sounds so much better than "stuff that doesn't match.")

But then which cups would I get rid of? Certainly not the grandchildren. Not the cats. Not the 100-mile award. Not the cup reading, "Thank you for loving me just the way I am" that my son gave me when he was 12. Not the cartoon-decorated cup my late husband used to use in his office.

They aren't elegant. They don't match. But each one means something special to me. They are reminders of the family members they came from, small touchstones that brighten my mornings. Tea just seems to taste better out of a cup that warms the heart as well as the stomach.

Just Because We Haven't Upgraded to Digital TV Yet . . .

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! Step right up for a free demonstration of one of the most amazing inventions of the last century.

I have right here in my hand a miraculous device that is guaranteed to transform your life! This simple little gizmo will help you lose weight, get more exercise, and eat a healthier diet. It will improve your family life. It will make your children smarter. It will help you finish all those projects around the house you’ve been meaning to get to. And that’s not all; it will do wonders for your love life and help you maintain a happy marriage.

Yes, indeed—you truly can get all those benefits from this one astounding gadget. It fits easily in one hand. It’s so simple to operate that even a child can use it. And, best of all, ladies and gentlemen, you can try out this miracle device without spending a single dime! That’s right. There is absolutely no cost or obligation—because you already have one or more of these amazing little tools in your very own home.

This life-changing piece of technology is a television remote.

With just one quick motion of your thumb, you can play, rewind, change the channel, change the volume—or change your life. Each remote is equipped with a special button marked “power.” Power is precisely what it gives you, because with one click of that very button, what you can do is turn your TV set OFF. That one simple action can indeed give you all the benefits I’ve just described.

The trouble with television is that, once you begin watching a program, it sucks you in. This is the case whether it’s a high-quality drama, a vivid historical reenactment, a sitcom that makes an art form of inanity, or a documentary on the 87 kinds of spiders found in a tiny section of the Amazon rain forest.

You turn it on “just to see if there’s anything worth watching,” and you get hooked into something, and before you know it three hours have gone by and it’s bedtime. You were planning to call your sister, help your son get started on his science project, take a walk, and do a couple loads of laundry—but oh, well, it’s too late for any of that now.

A long time ago, when television was still in its youth, comedian Fred Allen said, “Television is a medium because anything well done is rare.”

It does seem only fair to point out that Fred Allen’s successful comedy career was almost entirely on radio. Nor is his clever comment entirely true. Television is a powerful medium. It can show us the intense reality of a dramatic news event, recreate history, move us, entertain us, and educate us.

It can also fill our evenings with mindless hours of mediocre entertainment. It can keep us sitting instead of doing something active—meanwhile bombarding us with commercials for high-calorie foods until we just have to go make some popcorn or grab a bag of corn chips. It can give us the illusion of spending time with people we love, when all we’re really doing is sitting together with our separate attention focused on the imaginary people on the screen instead of the real ones in the same room.

Now just in case there’s anyone reading this who might someday want to make a television movie of one of my books, let me be clear I’m not saying it’s bad to watch television. Just watch it deliberately and consciously. Decide what you want to see and make an active choice about it, instead of letting the TV set decide how you’ll spend your evening.

Remember—you’re the one who holds the miraculous device in your hand. Right there, that red button. That gives you the power. All you have to do is use it.

Digital Entertainment

We are facing a crisis at our house, and I’m not sure how we’re going to get through it. Apparently, we’re about to lose all contact with the outside world. Television is going digital, and we haven’t gotten around to buying a converter box yet.

I know Congress has been busy these last couple of weeks. It must be exhausting to pass a borrowing-and-spending bill with so many zeros (by “zeros,” of course, I am referring to the billions of dollars in the package, not our esteemed representatives who voted for it) that not even the IRS has calculators that can count that high.

Still, our elected representatives took a few moments out of their busy schedules to take care of the little people. They voted to extend the deadline for switching to digital television. Some people—including, perhaps, some people so deprived that they have only one television set for an entire household—might not be ready. Maybe, even with the governmental coupon for $40 off a converter box, they might not be able to afford one. Or maybe they hadn’t heard about the February 17 deadline.

I watch about two hours of television a week, mostly PBS. And even I have heard so much about converter boxes and digital television deadlines and the need to be ready for the big technology conversion that I’m sick of it. Even I know that, despite the extension, South Dakota Public Television is going ahead with its conversion according to the original schedule.

If I know all this, any regular television watcher has to know it, too. Anyone who hasn't heard about the conversion by now must have been living in such remote isolation that they don’t have television, anyway. They probably spend all their time either hunting and fishing or raising chickens and goats and preserving the organic vegetables they grow in their own gardens, so they’ve been too busy to notice or care that Barney the purple dinosaur is going digital.

Just imagine what might happen if the digital conversion went ahead as originally scheduled and some people, deprived of what is apparently their Constitutional right to television, weren’t ready for it. Suddenly, their TV sets would sit silent and blank in their living rooms. They wouldn’t know exactly what was driving the housewives to desperation this week. They would have to look outside to check the weather. They wouldn’t know about the latest crises in the love lives of the various Britneys and Jessicas and Jennifers. They might be lost without “Lost.”

These poor suffering people might have to resort to extreme measures—like reading books, for God’s sake. Or talking to each other. Or going for walks. Or even, no matter how horribly last century it might be, Or even, no matter how horribly last century it might be, employing a different form of digital entertainment—knitting, for example. Or playing board games or cards or dominoes. They might have to endure evening after quiet evening, forced to find ways to keep themselves occupied.

Come to think of it, that sound a lot like what we do at our house all the time. Is anyone up for a trip to the library?

Have You Hugged a Tree Today?

It’s finally happened. I’ve begun hugging trees.

It was inevitable, I suppose. I’ve always admired trees, after all. If I were the painter that my attempt at a college art major persuaded me I wasn’t, I would paint trees. There something infinitely satisfying about them, whether it’s the graceful symmetry of a young elm, the fascinating gnarl of a venerable willow, or the stark elegance of bare cottonwood branches against a winter sky.

Much as I like trees, though, I’ve never actually gone around hugging them. Smelling them, yes. There’s nothing quite like the enticing clean odor of fresh-cut wood. An apple tree or plum thicket in bloom in the spring smells better than a whole hothouse full of roses.

Trees have more subtle smells, too. On a warm summer day, the bark of a Ponderosa pine smells like vanilla. Put your face close to the trunk and inhale, and you’d swear you were in your grandmother’s kitchen helping to mix up a batch of cookies. And at certain times of the year in the Black Hills, the air even in town smells deliciously of turpentine.

So I admit to being a tree-watcher and a tree-sniffer. Not a tree-hugger, though, until this week.

We went for a hike on the first day of February, a sunny day with unseasonably warm temperatures but a brisk wind. Our route took us across a meadow and up to the top of a high ridge. The last part was a scramble rather than a hike, over steep rock ledges where juniper bushes and young pine trees clung on by their toenails. In between layers of exposed rock, the surface was a loose mix of soil and pine needles, made even more slippery by a dusting of fresh snow. Getting to the top meant anchoring ourselves carefully, one boot at a time, and pulling ourselves up by grabbing whatever plants were within reach.

About half way up, it occurred to me to wonder what in the name of common sense we were doing this for. By then, of course, it was a little late to change our minds.

The reward at the top was a level hike along the ridge top, with a spectacular view of the Black Hills to the west and the prairies to the east. Then came the hard part—going back down.

I’m not proud. I did most of it crouching or sitting, snow or not, wet jeans being preferable to sprained ankles or broken legs. I clutched at bushes. I crab-crawled down rocks. And I hugged trees—every one I could get close to. When you’re making your way down a slippery slope that you wish you hadn’t begun in the first place, there’s nothing like wrapping your arms around a good, solid tree while you negotiate that next treacherous step.

So it’s official. I’m now a tree-hugger. I just hope  my new arboreal best friends never find out about all the firewood I’ve helped cut this winter.