A Slice Of Mother's Day

On the gorgeous Mother’s Day Sunday I headed for North Salem, NY, to the Old Salem Farm Spring Horse Show. My fifteen year-old grand daughters (cousins) were both competing. My son and daughter would be there. This was going to be a good day!

 The only kicker in the deal was that I was driving myself to N. Salem. Knowing me, and my hopeless direction impairment, my daughter had emailed me detailed directions to the show grounds: “Turn left at the farm stand that has a large pink ice cream cone sign in front of it.” etc.

I can do this, I thought, as I printed out her directions. Motivation is everything and I wanted to be there.

And I did fine until, whoops! I came to the end of a road and faced a yellow sign with a glaring black arrow pointing both right and left. I hadn’t a clue. I searched my paper. No such sign was mentioned.

 Steering the car off the tarmac onto a roughly graveled patch, I stopped--so annoyed with myself. Stuck again for the millionth time in my life. Breathe in and out, I muttered, as I rummaged through my pocketbook for my cell phone and dialed my daughter.

Forgive yourself: forgive yourself, I thought, as Taylor’s phone rang.

Such relief when she answered!

“There’s this big yellow sign and I don’t know which way to turn.” I said, trying to keep my dismay out of my voice.

“You are almost here, Mom. Take the left and follow the road. You will see the show, but you will have to go past the grounds to the parking lot on the left. A policeman will be there and he’ll show you where to park.”

She was right. I passed the grounds teeming with spectators and girls astride gleaming horses in fenced, circular rings scattered with flower-decorated jumps. The hilly acreage of Old Salem Farm was green and lush, landscaped with lovely trees, many now in bloom.

A large, paunchy policeman waved me into the uphill parking field. Stopping the car in front of him, I rolled down the window and asked him where he wanted me to go.

“I don’t want you to have to walk too far,” he said, taking in my grey hair. “So why don’t you turn right here and back up this hill?”

I couldn’t believe my luck. I looked at the short, but steep hill I would have to back up and then, gauging the turn forward that I would need to make, I slowly moved ahead.

My careful calculations elicited a friendly, “Can you reverse?” He was clearly prepared to jump in and do it for me.

“Yes!” I called out the window, as I did just that. I can’t find any place, ever, but I can reverse. Done! I was perfectly parked right at the entrance to the lot already packed tightly with cars. What luck! What kindness.

 “I’m here!” I told Taylor on the phone. “Right in front by the road.”

“I’ll send Hannah to get you. Just wait for her.”

“Great!”

I got out of the car and walked to the edge of the road to watch for my grand daughter.

The policeman approached me. “You can take the shuttle into the grounds,” he offered, pointing at a black van behind us.

“Thanks—and thanks for the wonderful parking place—but my grand daughter is coming to get me.”

We both stood, looking down the road.

“And there she is!”

“That’s your grand daughter?” I could see him taking in her fifteen year-old slender form, the smiling pretty face, her long brown hair pulled back in a pony tail, the tight tan jodhpurs and riding boots.

“Yup!” I took off across the street, waving both my arms triumphantly in the air. "I made it!" I yelled. 

Hannah returned my waves and we sped along the grassy edge to meet each other. We hugged, laughing together, and with our arms around each other, walked back toward the show.

I was sure that the paunchy policeman was watching us and smiling.

***

Thoughts and Prayers

We continue to pray for the more than 200 girls kidnapped by the Muslim militants, Boko Haram, that are they are found and safely returned to their families.

We hold in our hearts the families of the hundreds of coal miners who have died or are still missing in the disastrous explosion in Soma, Turkey.

Facebook: Unforgiving

As you may have noticed I do a fair amount of writing. I write my blogs on Word at first, blathering away until I’ve figured out what I am writing about and then, over a three- day period or longer, depending, I cut, re shape and sharpen. I can do that on Word. Word is forgiving. I can move lines, delete, shift whole paragraphs, adjust spaces and leave out letters and Word doesn’t mind. It alerts me, but doesn’t give me any grief. Everything can be fixed. Word is perfectly designed for writers who tend to be in process and to be truthful, are rarely satisfied with their work.

As my sister-in-law, the former Editor in Chief of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, says, “Publishing is purely arbitrary. Writers are never finished.”

Next I have to post the blog. Although I know the Blogger/ BlogSpot routine quite well by now, as I set out to publish--early in the morning---I carefully place my How To Publish The Blog sheet beside my computer to reawaken me if my mind has suddenly gone back to bed. I cut and paste the blog content from Word and then, guess what? I get another chance to edit the piece on the work sheet of the blog. Fantastic.

Furthermore, even after I have clicked on PUBLISH, which appears to be irrevocable---as if I had hung myself out to dry-- surprise! Even if some of you have already read it, I am able to revisit the blog and change a word that began to bug me as I was munching my cereal.

I love all this flexibility. I’m sure there are more confident writers less in need of these EDIT opportunities than I, but I am utterly grateful for every chance I get.

Facebook? Totally unforgiving. Once you POST a blog you are committed for life. That’s it. There is no going back. I should say, at least I haven’t found it. If any of you know how to accomplish an edit for a blog already posted, I will receive your advice with gratitude.

The other day, at the suggestion of a friend, I “hovered” my cursor over the right corner of a comment box, which suddenly revealed a here-to–fore hidden opportunity to “Remove.” I inadvertently did remove a friend’s nice comment about my blog. So much for that!  But now I know that I can at least rewrite a comment if not a blog.

 Assuming I am correct—and I admit my Internet know-how is low grade--and a once posted blog on Facebook cannot be edited or if it can, only with difficulty, I am immensely curious as to why. What harm would it do? After all, Facebook is awesome in its capacity to gather our information. Indeed it pesters us for personal data to share with the world.

With all of that going for it, couldn’t FB offer EDIT opportunity and let go of some of our information, thereby cutting some slack for those of us who stammer and stutter on the keyboard?

Going Home--To Fight

Tuesday afternoon on WNYC I caught the tail end of an interview of a 23 year-old Ukrainian young man who told the interviewer that he was abandoning his very good job here in the US in order to go "home to fight."

"I don't want to kill anyone," he told the interviewer, "and I don't know how to fight, but I will for my country's independence."

The interviewer asked him about the Ukrainian soldiers who are fighting for Ukraine to belong to Russia. His response was that they are "afraid" and that they have been "brainwashed." 

"Ukraine must be independent," he told the interviewer.

When asked if he was afraid to die, the twenty-three year-old, said, "Yes".


If you were this young man's mother or father, I ask you, how would you feel right now?

I suggest: a stomach-churning mix of pride and terror.

***

Blog Business:

     If you have subscribed to Life Opening Up, the new delivery time via email will be between 7 and 9 AM on the day I post the blog.

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I Would Go Mad

I can’t get past the militant Islamist abduction of 276— the latest count—of the young girls in Nigeria.

As an interfaith minister I am compelled to try to understand other faiths and other cultures. I have been struggling. I have read the Koran and I know that women are seen and treated differently than we are in countries of Judeo/Christian heritage.

At the same time, I also know that in no way would all Islamists support such an horrific action as that abduction any more than all pro-life Christians would burn down a Planned Parenthood clinic that offered abortion counseling and procedures or murder a doctor that served at such a clinic.

I keep picturing my daughter at ten years old: the soft, plump skin of her face not yet molded to the bones, her body still untouched by puberty, her eyes, the innocent clear blue of a summer day.  What if she had been abducted? What if she were to be sold into slavery as the wife/possession of some man in all likelihood, twenty or more years older?

And what if I lived in a country that, at least to all appearances, did nothing about it?

What if, when commanded to appear by the president of my country, I was unable to get to the southern capital city because there were no flights and/or I was too poor to get there any other way but on foot, which would take days and therefore—even if I was willing, and I would be---to walk until my feet bled clear to my ankles, I still couldn’t make it in time for the official gathering of the mothers?

What if I asked a friend who lived in the capital city to represent me, to plead for government action to save my daughter and, instead of being allowed to speak, she was arrested for impersonation?

I would go mad.

Nigeria, Nigeria! You are a people from an ancient, soulful land. What has become of you?

Letting Go: Not So Easy

At lunch on Friday, a friend and I talked about my latest blog, Captivated by a Classic.

She told me she had enjoyed the story of Lassie and her trials. Her attention, however, was particularly captured by the place in the story where the old people, who had nurtured the wounded dog, fallen in love with her and hoped to keep her, had come to the painful understanding that now that Lassie was on four feet again, they needed to let her go.

“I know you were writing about the hero’s journey, but this was the part that got to me,” my friend said, “because it is where we are in our family right now.”

Her oldest daughter will graduate from college this month and has lined up a job and an apartment with friends in a distant city. Their other two daughters have nearly finished college and have internships away from home this summer.

“Over and over again,” my friend went on, “I have to remind myself that our daughters are up and running, have places to go and personal purposes and dreams, some of which are still unknown. I have to let them go,” she said, solemnly. “And my job now is to find ways to fill the emptiness in my life that I sometimes feel.”

She shook her head, smiling wistfully as she reached for the huge chocolate chip cookie that we were sharing. “So promise me,” she said, laughing and biting into the cookie, “that if I start taking on the form of the Pillsbury dough boy, you will have an intervention!”

Did anyone else have a similar take on that part of the story?

***

Thoughts and Prayers

We pray that the 200 young girls recently abducted in Nigeria will be found soon. We hold their families in our hearts.

We pray for peace in Ukraine.

***

Blog Notes

For those of you who are subscribers to this blog on email and have not been receiving it, I apologize for the glitch. My blog guru took a shot a fixing it last week to the end that on Saturday I believe subscribers suffered from a blog tsunami, receiving three blogs at once. I am hoping that today’s post will fly through cyberspace and successfully land on your email doorstep all by itself.