Category: Everyday Life

When most people think of the 4th of July, the first thing that pops into mind are fireworks.  Not me.

For the past five years, since we moved to Greene County, our observance of our Nation’s independence has revolved around a community celebration much earlier in the day, the Stanardsville Independence Day Parade and Town Celebration.

It is a traditional small town celebration with a parade that includes almost every business and community organization followed by an invocation from one of the local clergy, a reading of the Declaration of Independence, the ringing of the courthouse bell and the singing of patriotic songs by our own Greene County Singers.

For several weeks prior to the holiday, my Habitat for Humanity buddies and I are busy preparing our float while Dave gets together weekly with  the Greene County Singers, to get their pipes ready to perform.

Generally it’s a warm affair, both in spirit and temperature and the gathered stand beneath the hot July sun connecting with our forefathers.  Not this year.

This year, we were given a break from the sun and heat. For the couple of hours or so while we were decorating our float which included a playhouse the local vo-tech students built for us to raffle off as a fundraiser, the overcast sky was welcomed.  My buddy Chuck checked the weather report on his phone and saw that rain was predicted for us at 11:00.  The parade was scheduled to begin at 10:00 and we were entry #60 but we remained hopeful the “weather guessers” would be wrong.

But, wouldn’t you know it, just as we the line ahead of us began to move from the high school parking lot to the parade route, the rain began. Luckily I brought hard hats for my buddy Suzanne and I to keep our heads dry and disposable rain ponchos to cover our clothes as we walked alongside our float tossing candy from painter’s buckets to the children along the way.

Despite my best efforts to keep us dry, it was one wet day.  In my family, we would call it “camping weather” because for years it seemed like whenever we went camping in the summer, we would spend hours under a canopy watching the rain fall around us.

And so it was for us on Monday.  Following the parade Suzanne and I sat under a canopy in hope that someone would come and buy our raffle tickets.  The two rows of facing canopies looked more like a refugee camp than a holiday celebration.  Those of us who’d brought rain gear were covered and semi dry while those who hadn’t were soaked to the skin.  Still there was a camaraderie amongst us.

As the morning turned to afternoon and the crowd dwindled to less of a trickle than the water cascading off the canopy roof, I could see my neighbors across the way chatting and even dancing to the music from the band hold up and playing on the courthouse steps. Then, one by one, the exodus began.  Weary from the wet, the canopies began to come down and trucks and trunks were hastily packed.  Even though the event was scheduled to run another couple of hours, it was time to call it a day.

By the time we unloaded the car and set things in the garage to air dry, I was cold to the bone and exhausted.  I dragged myself upstairs, changed from my wet clothes into jeans and a t-shirt and spent the next several hours on the couch.

When it was finally dark outside I could hear the fireworks going off down the street and that was good enough for me, more of a footnote than a highlight.  I didn’t even get up to see them.  I just hoped that they would end before I went to bed because my celebration was over and I was ready to sleep.

I was a very skinny kid.  From the time I was born, through college, and into early adulthood, I was thin.

At times, I was actually too thin, especially after a succession of childhood diseases in the primary grades and the later during my sophomore year in college when I struggled with emotional stuff and my weight dipped below 100 lbs.

In fact, my first experience with extra poundage came when I was expecting my first child and I felt pretty chubby.  But, my second pregnancy which followed a mere nine months after the first was much different and again, I was pretty thin. So thin in fact that I weighed less leaving the hospital after Andy was born than I did at my first prenatal visit that go around.  Two weeks later I was at the beach and filling out my suit in all the right places.  I existed in the mythical reality that I would always remain a skinny-Minnie.  Then two things happened that I never could have anticipated that shattered that myth; I quit smoking and turned 30.

At 30, not only did the “gene pool” kick in but I also miscarried a baby and fell into a time of depression.  Seemingly overnight my tiny body seems to burst the seams on my wardrobe.  Nothing fit right.  Nothing felt right.  When I looked in the mirror I hardly recognized the person I saw.  I had become someone else.  In the five years since my marriage I had morphed from a perky thin girl into an increasingly frumpy feeling mother of two small children.

It was a slow climb out of the hole and my spirit was eventually returned and I found myself again.   And I am actually living happily inside my adult unthin body.

But now, 30 years later, my doctor is giving me gentle but firm nudges towards shedding some of my weight to avoid the traps of aging; heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and joint pain.  Apparently I have lived beyond the age when “the extra pounds are better than smoking” reality.

Losing weight is a bitch.  I’ve been a member of Weight Watchers at least five times with minimal success.  I found I was a much better cheerleader than member; my friends did well and received stars while I sat in my chair clapping at their achievement.  I’ve tried tracking my diet on phone apps and a variety of hints from the Dr. Oz show.  Sometimes it seems like everybody has the “right” way to lose weight and they all seem to conflict.  What to do?

Well, yesterday, following a conversation with my sister I signed up again for Weight Watchers.  I’m committing myself to three months of towing-the-line to see what I can achieve.  To stay motivated, I’m going to try share my journey with you so feel free to chime in.  I’m hoping you’ll be my cheerleaders!

These days while most people are giving up their landlines and choosing the anonymity of mobile phones to avoid unwanted calls, preferring to speak the exclusive group who have been granted their number, I have kept a landline for a couple of reasons.  First, it costs practically nothing when bundled into my internet and cable bill.  I get a zillion features including caller ID which allows me to determine whose call I will answer.  Unrecognized numbers are ignored; I figure if they are legit and really want to talk to me, they’ll leave a message.  Secondly, and most importantly, it enables people who want to talk to me to call me, and that is sometimes times a real gift.

This morning for example I received a call from a woman who many would consider a “Grand Dame of Greene County.”  I have known of her for almost as long as I’ve lived here and have been aware of her extreme generosity to the community but I’ve never met her. What I didn’t know was why she was calling me or better yet, how she got my number.  I was on the phone when she called, so I let her leave a message.

It turns out she has a bunch of custom-made drapes and curtains that she would like to donate to our local Habitat for Humanity to hang in our next project home and wanted to know how long it would be before we were ready for them.

So, when I finished my call, I called her back.  What I thought would be a very short call where I explained that our group wouldn’t be beginning a rehab or build for at least another year or two at the earliest, turned into a wonderful forty minute conversation.

Having the opportunity to speak with a very old person with a very sharp mind is a rare thing indeed.  Mrs. G told me of her love for the county and how she has enjoyed sharing the profits made from the sale of her family homestead with the community.  I had heard that she funded the construction of a pavilion at the county recreation park to provide restroom facilities for the children after watching them use porta-potties and then eat their lunches.  She found it unbearable that the children had no place to wash their hands so she contacted the County Board of Supervisors and put her money where her mouth was.  She is a can do kind of gal, but I already knew that.

She is also responsible for a scholarship that pays tuition for local students wishing to take community college courses while still in high school.  This year eleven students will graduate with not only Advance Diplomas but also with Associate degrees.  She is very proud of “her” students.

What I didn’t know was just how old she is because she looks really good.  I’m still not sure, but she did mention that she graduated from high school in 1936 which by my calculations is eighty years ago!  This was after she mentioned she’d spent three hours yesterday mowing her five acre yard and what great joy she gets from spending that time praying, meditating and singing hymns through the job.  It was clear from our conversation that Mrs. G gets great strength from her faith and strives to stay healthy so she can continue to answer God’s call.

I still don’t know how she got my number.  It’s a small county and my number is definitely out there as well as in the phone book.  But, regardless of how it came to be, I’m so glad I accepted the gift of a call and visit with her this morning.  It really was a great way to start my day!

Since the beginning of April I have been attempting to rid my body of a sinus infection.  I’ve been hacking, sneezing, draining and generally feeling miserable for weeks.  Every few days or so I’d begin to feel a little better and then BAM, the next day I would feel like a wet rag.  No matter how much water I drank or how much Mucinex I took, or how often I used my Neti Pot, my body just could not shake the yucky feeling of not wanting to get up and do anything.

All the while, I kept going to the gym in an attempt to sweat out the germs and toxins.  I even pretty much kept up my usual routine of errands and meeting.  For short periods of time I even felt better, until I developed a fever.

I have to admit that as a woman of a certain age, feeling warm is not foreign to me.  I am apt to be stripped down to sleeveless tops while Dave is grabbing a sweater. A fever is a different story.  When your body temperature exceeds 101 degrees, you not only feel like crap but you know you are really sick and home remedies might just not do the trick.  But wouldn’t you know it, the very next day, my fever was gone again and I felt better.

Then last Friday, as I was on my way to Prayer Shawl ministry at Peace Lutheran, I passed my doctor’s office and decided to give them a call.  Several attempts ended in busy signals.  I figured I’d try after my meeting, not wanting to go through another weekend feeling badly.

At our meeting, my friends asked how I was feeling and I told them I was still waging war against my illness; a subject I was tired of even discussing and I’m sure they were tired of hearing about.  They asked if I’d been to the doctor and I told them no but I’d been trying to call for an appointment but not getting anywhere.

As we went around the table sharing the highs and lows of our week, two different ladies mentioned the Minor Emergency room adjacent to my doctor’s office and shared what positive experiences they’d had when they’d gone there.  I wondered if my condition was worthy of emergency room time.  When I asked for an opinion, they all agreed it was and I should go.

So, after our meeting, I drove over to the little ER and presented myself to a rather bored looking receptionist.  I asked if someone would mind looking at me. “Sure,” he said as the time stamped the form waiting in the stamper and then handed it to me to complete.  “I’ve got one in triage” he said over the intercom and I heard an “OK” answer him.

Within seconds I was in an examination room, my vitals were taken and I was given a remote control to the TV.  Not long after, a young doctor entered the room and asked me for a rundown which I provided.  He gave me a prescription for an antibiotic and told me to follow-up with my physician in three to five days.Within twenty-four hours I was feeling much better and I dutifully made an appointment with my doctor for the following week.

So, why have I shared this story? After all, I said I was tired of discussing my sinus infection.  Well, since I’ve had some time to ponder the series of events leading to my ER visit, I have realized that perhaps I was trying a little too much to deal with my illness on my own terms, believing I could handle it all by myself with no help.  And boy, was I wrong!

So much of life is like that, isn’t it?  We sometimes struggle needlessly with things that are really not within our control when we could simply ask for help and put the whole thing in our rear view mirror much faster.  In this case, I should have called my doctor much earlier and I probably would have been spared at least a week of suffering.

Giving up control is not easy for me.  I was raised to not only be self-sufficient but to be the person that others turn to for help.  Asking for help feels like an admission of weakness of character.  Silly huh?  Like I’m omnipotent!  No, clearly I need to re-evaluate this situation.  It’s like the old saying, “If God is your co-pilot, you’re in the wrong seat!”  I need to learn to be a better co-pilot and at times, let someone else take the wheel!

Recently I experienced the most amazing dilemma; to attempt to save a life or let Nature take its course.  In the end, I followed my heart.

Each February, after I finally take down my Christmas wreath, I hang a spring wreath in its place to bring a pop of color to my door during the last dull days of winter.  And, each year, no matter how diligent we are about checking, a pair of house finches manages to thwart our efforts and builds and populates a nest with eggs before we are able to remove it.  Once the eggs are there, there is no turning back for us because we respect the potential lives inside.

With a nursery attached to our front door, we try to restrict our comings and goings through that portal as to avoid upsetting the tiny parents.  The other day I may have pulled the door open a little too quickly because as I began to step through the door, a tiny bit of fluff on the doormat caught my eye.  At first I thought it might be a dandelion top but as I got closer, I saw it was a very tiny chick, his yolk sack larger than his head.

I thought it was dead but then I saw its miniature beak open.  Without stopping to consider my options, I ran to the kitchen to get my step stool.  Then, I reached down and as gently as I could, picked the tiny chick up.

In hindsight, I probably should have gotten a spoon and gently scooped up the little creature because my fingers looked like those of clumsy giant hands trying to collect it without harm.  Instead, I did my best to gather it up and lay it among the unhatched eggs in its nest, a process that was much less graceful than I would have liked.

Since then I have checked on my chick and the others that have followed but I still can’t tell whether my chick survived.  My height prevents me from directly seeing them and I’m afraid to drag the stool out to the door every day, so I just raise my camera above them and snap a photo of them.

All I see is a mass of downy feathers and fluff without even a good vision of where one chick ends and another begins.  I know I need to be patient, until they get a little bigger when I can count beaks to see if there are four or five.

I’ll never know whether my rescue was the right thing to do.  I have to admit,   he  was substantially smaller than the other recent hatchlings and it’s entirely possible that his parents dropped him from the nest intentionally.  In which case, I had nothing to do with his being on the mat in the first place.

The reality is that my responsibility for this little life came not in how he was lost, but in that I found him.  And, from this responsibility came my response to assist and comfort in the only way I could think of, to return him home safely.

It occurs to me that this is what we are called to do as God’s people, to respond to the needs of others.  No matter how small or insignificant, no matter what the circumstances, we are called to accept the responsibility for the world around us and to provide help and comfort in the very least.