Lucky Me!

    I. Just. Won. The. Lottery! Oh my goodness, I feel so lucky!
    Before you run to your phone and call me to remind me of the depths of our enduring friendship, I should divulge to you that I am now the fortunate finder of a whopping $3. Oh, yes. It was a winning scratch-off ticket that someone had discarded or inadvertently dropped near my car in the parking lot. Clutching my bags and purse, I screwed up my eyes and craned my neck sideways to see if it was a winner before I picked up the wet, muddy little card.
    My eyes got big as I stooped to retrieve it, wiping it ever-so-gingerly. You see, I have always said that if I won the lottery it would be a miracle. Because I never buy a ticket. No, not even a $1 scratch-off. Way back in the '80s when the lottery came to Texas, we committed to buying a few chances each week with the strategy that playing regularly would increase our odds. It didn't take long to realize that we would occasionally win a buck or two but that the big jackpots were probably not a reasonable investment. Now, I generally get one ticket a year because my father buys them at Christmas for stocking stuffers. The past few years, I didn't even score a dollar.
    So, considering my investment, (nothing), today's pick was a total windfall.
    My life to date has been a series of happy events having very little to do with lucky breaks and very much to do with hard work and perseverance. Every once in a while, life would throw some serendipity my way and make it look like luck. I won a fancy-dancy hair cut as a door prize once and enjoyed a fabulous haircut and an accompanying head massage. A fortunate thing for sure, but all it did was raise the bar such that I could no longer be satisfied with a cheap, imprecise 'do. Another time I won a lovely lounge chair painted by a local artist whom I admire (Leigh Yardley, if you're wondering). This win still graces my backyard and makes even the weedy flower beds look smart.
    But other than these few-and-far-between bonanzas, the rest has been largely devoid of miraculous strokes of luck. While luck is quite capricious, I find that my blessings are the true win. My children, above all that I have contributed to, remain the top of the heap of my blessings. They are two of the most interesting, kind, and thoughtful people I know. My husband of 30 years is still my best friend. We have weathered many storms but mostly end up dancing in the rain. My family is close-knit and we enjoy spending time together. My friends are gracious and good, and many are practically family. I am healthy and reasonably strong, live in a supportive community and a free country, do work that I enjoy and find rewarding, and have had a life experience that I find gratifying.
    Compared to these, today's lottery winning is simply chump change.

Winter Surprises

After the relative warmth of last weekend, this week's frosty temperatures are a reminder of how capricious and unforgiving winter can be. The following is adapted from a column I wrote back in 2006, with a few small changes.

Today is the first official day of winter as far as I’m concerned. Yesterday was the last day I could leave the house without taking my gloves and hat. By the time I walked home in the late afternoon, my fingers were stiffened like icicles and a cruel wind whipped around my hatless head. I can’t say I haven’t been warned – the leaves have been dropping hints for me for several weeks now, settling in piles around my yard. The gentle flowering plants have collapsed with cold exhaustion and only the evergreens are looking cheerful.

For someone raised in a warm climate, winter is no trifling season. It is a season that requires gear. To say gloves are essential is like saying plants need water. Unless you’re one of those people who won’t miss the use of their fingers for four or five months, I recommend a pair with weight – how about 40 grams of Thinsulate™? Winter isn’t a season that you can slip sideways into like spring melts into summer or summer congeals into autumn. Winter announces itself one afternoon, when you are least prepared, ready to give your left big toe to get a cup of steaming cocoa. Oh, wait – the left big toe is a little frostbitten, would the right one work? I’ve long believed that a real northeastern winter is not for the faint-hearted, like growing old isn’t for sissies.

The cold season is about long naps on grey skied afternoons, cauldrons of hearty soups bubbling like witches brew, and tumbling pell-mell down powdery hills wondering what happened to the bits of wood, aluminum and fiberglass that were once strapped to the bottoms of my boots. Winter demands respect, expects you to be man and woman enough to take it, shoving forward through gusts of wind that could snap the trunks of trees and keeping a stiff upper lip through days upon days of no sunshine.

Winter and I share a special kinship, we are the same color. Having been graded by the Color Me Beautiful cosmetic company as a “winter”, I can confidently wear navy and jet black, pure white or cherry red. When I learned of this propensity that seasons had towards color, I was deep in the 1980s, those days of NFL-like shoulder pads and feathered hair. I also lived in a warm climate. I felt about as alienated with a season as I have ever felt. Winter and I didn’t know one another.

I didn’t know the wonderment of being outdoors when the first snowflakes begin to fall, turning adults into children and children into puppies. I didn’t have an appreciation for the timeless black wool beret my brother gave me twenty years ago, or the way that even plain outfits can look like L.L. Bean if you have a great colorful scarf to wrap jauntily around your neck.

Now, I appreciate the warmth of a roaring fire as if it were melted gold and cherish those hushed silent days when everything is quiet, muffled by a trillion mounds of snow blanketing everything – even the old pile of rubbish that you forgot to throw out. There is nothing like a good all-night snow fall to cover all manner of sins committed by man or nature. It is nature’s way of saying, “hey, I’m beautiful too.”

I am happy to report that after more than nine years in the snowy white north of central New York, I am well acquainted with winter and it seems to know me as well, although every once in a while, it does give me a chilly surprise. And I hate surprises like that.

Different but the same

    Last Sunday, the lector at our church was a 15-year-old young man with no arms and no legs. A special lectern had been set up that was height-appropriate and the mic adjusted properly. Ordinarily, he would be the sort of person that you couldn't stop staring at. Trying to make sense of how on earth his hands (normal looking) could possibly be coming straight out of his shoulders and how his feet (also normal-sized) were inches below his hips.
    No one stared awkwardly at him, though, because we had already seen him so many times. We knew more than his name, we knew his family, knew his favorite sports teams, knew by heart the sound of the resonant voice that was already deep into adolescence. Knew that he was a fiend for jelly doughnuts and personally spearheaded the Coffee Hour signup sheet to ensure that said confections were close at hand. Knew him for more than the outward signs that made us different. We knew him for all the little things that made us the same.
    At what point, I wondered, did I begin to view him for who he was and look beyond the outward features? How many of us have differences that aren't so neatly visible and how do we treat those we perceive as different?
    What kind of courage did it take to stand in front of a congregation that might stare and tsk-tsk at his misfortune? Unless the kind of courage he exhibited was that he trusted us to take him as he was, without judgment or analysis.
    As I watched this young man's mother translate all that was said and sung into American Sign Language to another child of hers - a daughter who was an altar server and also hearing-impaired, I knew that this was church. This was the way that a spiritual community should be: every person is valued, every person is needed. There may have been a time when an altar server who couldn't hear the sermon or speak the prayers was unheard of, a time when if you couldn't reach the lectern you were not needed. But I am glad to live in a time when bit by bit, people are beginning to accept differences as incidental and our sameness as essential.
    I feel at peace to live among people who recognize that you can't always control who you love and that we all dance to different drumbeats. I am content to have friends from all walks of life, friends who accept me as I am, and friends that love as fiercely as family.
    It would be a shame to waste even a moment slicing and dicing our differences when there is so much living to do.

Family - Puts the FUN back in "dysFUNctional"

    Over the holidays, we were fortunate to spend time with both sides of our family. Separated by just a few hours drive, my husband's brother and my brother both live in two ends of one state, along with their extended families.
    A hallmark of our family time is sharing food. Not the peanut-butter-sandwiches of sustenance but the redolent feasts of roast turkey, tamales, and buttermilk pies. We ate. A lot. We played games, we cuddled our sweet two-month-old grand-nephew, we were eccentric aunt and uncle to our older nephew and niece who are growing into clever and thoughtful kids.
    An otherwise ideal holiday was marred by the fact that our daughter, while advancing in her career, drew the short end of the holiday coverage stick and couldn't get time off enough to travel to be with us. It was our first Christmas without her and it felt weird. It didn't help that we had just seen her a couple weeks before and exchanged gifts with her and her boyfriend. Seeing her face in a Christmas morning video call on my cell phone was like a consolation prize. 
    Many of us grew up in the Brady Bunch generation. Even Hollywood's idea of a nontraditional family may have left much to desire in our own. The Brady kids were mischievous but respectful, and the parents were fair and respectful. Even the live-in maid (what, you didn't have one, either?) was efficient and respectful. No temper tantrums in the grocery store over cereal; no month-long groundings for sneaking out of the house to toilet paper a rival; and subsequently, no great embarrassing stories to bring out at future family gatherings.
    The Bradys gave us a benchmark that was impossible to achieve. Perky mom Carol with her cute little beauty mark seems eerily content in retrospect... wonder if she had a Mother's Little Helper prescription tucked away in the pantry behind the cupcakes. When work-from-home dad Mike invited a recalcitrant teen into his office for a "big talk," he was preternaturally calm when you expected to witness a grand-scale whupping.
    While we struggled with real-life problems and heartaches, the Brady Fam happily whistled their way through picture-perfect situations. Ones that had real solutions. It was a high bar to reach and I doubt that many of us achieved it.
    I recently spotted a game on a friend's FB page that sounded intriguing - Dysfunctional Family Bingo. Played like the usual senior center parlor game, instead of numbers and letters, you gain points by identifying family situations that are a tad strange or generally inappropriate. You score points for "unsolicited advice" and for "sibling rivalry" or "inappropriate attire" and "story repetition". All in good fun, for a change you can win if you have the goofiest or most annoying family. Not that I could ever play this game and actually WIN because my own family is without flaw and beyond reproach... (whew, dodged that one!)
    Unlike the Brady Bunch, real families don't always agree, don't have to be carbon copies of each other. All that's necessary is a combination of somewhat-flexible tradition, filial love and a wee bit of respect. And really great food.