Top Ten Ways to Laugh More at Work

June 29, 2012 By

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I have had my share of crappy, miserable, insanely-awful Tuesdays.  My mornings usually consisted of lukewarm coffee, screaming children, re-heated muffins, and boring NPR stories.  I was stuck in traffic, with bad hair and pants that are an inch too short, and when I got to work I noticed half-done reports and a computer keyboard covered in the crumbs of yesterday’s subway sandwich.  Is that really the day care calling to say my kid as a fever?  Do I honestly have a meeting in ten minutes? It’s only Tuesday for crying out loud.

But sometimes the negative can be turned into the positive. It’s a byproduct of being a writer, I suppose, where I look at life as one huge collection of stories.  But I’ve had to ask myself – was I good about finding the humor at work all those years?  Work is the one place where you hang up your personal, jovial self in the closet next to your blazer and and trudge off to Get Things Done.

I think back through my career.  I’ve snapped at support staff for packets not fully prepared and have been angry at opposing counsel for unrealistic discovery demands.  I’ve worn sour expressions and said so many disparaging things I’m sure my co-workers wanted to slide Midol pills underneath the crack in the door with a note that read “For heaven’s sakes take these pills, eat a cupcake, and come back when you are nice.”  But what do they know?  Work is a place where you Get Things Done.  Where you beat deadlines and answer emails and attend meetings.  Grrr.

But can’t we get some fun up in here?  I’m not talking about the lame birthday cake parties in the break room.  I’m talking about real and honest joy.  Is it even possible given today’s demands?

The answer is yes.  An overwhelming yes.

But you have to go about it the right way.  One particular website suggested that in order to break the tension in a workplace, a manager should bring a panic button into the meeting and tell their staff to “just push the panic button when it gets too stressful.” It breaks up the monotony!  It creates a light-hearted environment!  It’s so darn fun!  If I were in a meeting where my manager brought in a panic button, he’d have about as much credibility as my two-year-old.

Another piece of advice said to take fifteen minute walks, develop games with cube-mates, work puzzles in the break room, and take jokes with you to meetings.  This just doesn’t ring true.  If I was discussing a merger, I couldn’t be all “hold up there, folkzies.  Before we begin this discussion, have you heard the one where the elephant walks into a bar?”  No offense to those people who love puzzles, or elephants.  I’m just saying it wouldn’t work particularly well for me.

But the more advanced I became in my career, the fear and insecurity of being accepted wore off and faded into oblivion.  So I began to let loose and hauled my normal happy self into the office. After all, my shoes are from TJ Maxx and my brain only works about half the time.  If I had a joke about an elephant that I thought was really funny, I’d probably say it.  Because elephants are endearing little things that crush vehicles with their hind quarters.

So here are the Top Ten Things that I learned after so many years that helped me start to enjoy work again. To bring humor back into my working life.  To learn to really live a little:

(1) Don’t take things so darn seriously.  Humor creates a psychological distance.  After all, if you don’t get that report turned in and your boss gets mad, and you end up being fired, you could work at Dairy Queen and eat Blizzards all day.  Think of the toppings!

(2) Get out of the office for lunch.  This is key so your head isn’t buried inside your computer from 7 am until closing time, causing you to be grumpy and lumpy and snappy.  Just leave.  If you aren’t hungry, drive around.  Pick up some iced tea.  Head to a park and walk a bit.  But take a mid-day break.

(3) Think of your commute as a very special time, not some horrible long wasted hour.  Listen to music that uplifts you.  Pray.  Call a friend or check out a book on tape. Enjoy a cup of good coffee.  This is your time, without kids yelling or bosses snapping or husbands talking. How many times do you tell yourself “I have no time for me!”  Well here it is, you whiner.

(4) Be the bearer of silly little gifts.  Everyone brings something different to the table in a workplace.  Some people are more organized.  Others are great with follow-up.   Some are good listeners.  Reward those talents by leaving candy or gum or little treats on their desk with lame, corresponding sayings that you find online or make up.  You’re worth a mint to me (mentos)!  The way you listened to that client was so smart (smartees!) Your organizational skills are worth all the cash in the world (100 grand!) It’s not laugh-out-loud funny and might cause people to roll their eyes a bit (rolos!) but it makes people smile and it helps them see you as a human being and not just a widget (or whatchamacallit!)  Tell me to stop.

(5) At every opportunity, send out poems (Today is just another day, it’s Wednesday in December, but if you have a moment at all, can you call that counsel member?)  I use www.rhymezone.com so much I think they created that site exclusively for me.  Now, instead of simply barking orders, you can bark orders in rhyme, which is far better and makes you more likeable.  Unless you’re firing someone.  Then I’d steer clear of rhyme.  I also like to use unusual similes and metaphors, like “this is similar to fighting alligators” or “imagine this project is a large lion.”

(6) Be a gossip killer.  When someone comes into your office, closes the door, and says “I’m so sorry but I just have to get this off my chest” and then begins to rant about someone with glee, think strategy. It’s fine to listen.  But when they are done, ask them if they often have to replace buttons on that blazer or start a conversation about space exploration.  Don’t give in to employee-bashing.  It’s not helpful, it ruins the office mood, it destroys morale, and it’s hateful.  Hateful humor doesn’t warm the heart. Unless it’s your boss, of course, which is an exception and you can both plot his/her demise in good conscience.  Think of what will be on the gravestone.  Pick the funeral flowers.  Whatever.

(7) Send notes of praise and thanks all the time, to anyone you can think of. Email someone’s boss and blind-copy them.  It makes you feel better, and happier, to give rather than receive.  We learned this as children around Christmas, and it’s so true.  Unless you are receiving a new Nikon 5100.  Then getting is good.

(8)  Smile.  When someone walks into your office, stop your train of thought long enough to let a smile erupt on your face.  Even if it’s forced.  If you hold it long enough, it might turn real.

(9) Despite advice to the country to form “lunch bunches” and all kinds of work pot lucks, I’m not big on dining together with work colleagues all the time.  After all – you see these people enough.  Do you really want to sit together in the break room heating up leftover lasagna?  Find your own space.  This makes everyone happier and more interesting.

(10) And finally, admit when you are wrong.  Apologize when necessary, and embrace your faults.  No one can find humor, warmth, and joy in the workplace if you are constantly trying to fight battles of will, or cover something up, or lie to save yourself.  Be true to your inner self.  The self you were born to be.  The self that wears pants that are sometimes too short with coffee stains.  It’s cool.  You aren’t the only one.

We all have those kind of Tuesdays.

—

Photo:

Lauren

Filed Under: Career, Humor, Inspirational Tagged With: , , , , ,

Role Play

May 23, 2012 By

It’s no surprise that I went into health law. Being a natural control freak, it has been nice over the past dozen years to be the one in charge. To say to a surgeon, who is so incredibly skilled and calm under pressure, it’s okay. Let me explain how this works. Even though inside, I’m probably laughing a bit, like “this is only a deposition!  If it ends badly, what’s a half-day mediation among friends?” And yet I’m a lawyer, and this is what I know. Surgeons tell me colonoscopies are easy, but you stick me in front of some sleeping guy with a probe, I’d faint on his anesthesia-filled abdomen like a Victorian bride.

I think I’ve worked with doctors long enough to know how to relate to them. They know how to deduce and diagnose and empirically treat.  We lawyers know how to protect and defend and watch over them.  We each play an important role.  And, if my legal knowledge fails to impress a physician, I simply need to sit for an hour listening to their drug-seeking patients explain how they flushed their Norco pills down the toilet by accident while the doctor gets back on schedule.  That wins them over every time.

If you are a drug-seeking patient, by the way, let’s all just agree to come up with more creative stories.  How many times does one actually lean over and inadvertently dump an entire bottle of pills into the toilet?  Pills that are allegedly so vital to your daily survival as a human being?  If this really does happen, you should (1) create some other story that sounds more plausible, maybe one involving aliens; (2) “I left them in my friend’s car in Las Vegas” is never an acceptable substitute; and (3) try to go without your pain medication for a day so you won’t fall asleep or feely loopy while you are learning basic life skills like “hand stability” and “how to open child-safety locks without spraying pills all about the dang place.”   

But whether you’re a doctor or lawyer or rocket scientist, it’s never fun looking at life from the vantage point of a patient.   When I was lying there in a hospital bed in a paper-thin gown so many times, staring at water-stained ceiling tiles, I felt helpless. I hung onto my physician’s every word.  I tried to understand the things they were all collectively telling me, but it all sounded so strange.  You have a detached retina.  You have an unexplainable infection.  Your heart stopped. You have cancer. Those statements were harsh and foreign to my ears.  I wasn’t trained at this.  I was out of my comfort zone. All I saw was a doctor’s mouth moving, throwing my entire world around like balls in the air.  Cataracts and cancer.   Bleeding incisions and scars.  Bouncing up and down, up and down, up and down.  Crazy words I couldn’t control.

Then I realized we are most scared of what we don’t understand. I understand how to be a lawyer.  Pediatricians understand why children get sick.  Surgeons know how to cut. But put a doctor on the witness stand, or try to explain a complex Rule 11 agreement, or why a counter-claim is necessary, and a doctor looks more like a patient who has been told they have a tumor.  What?  Come again?  I’ve not researched that.  I’m not trained in this area.  For this, I am not prepared.  And that’s terrifying.

We all want to feel comfortable.  Some are experts at making an Americano with two raw sugars and a dash of steamed milk.  Others can peel cysts off an ovary with their bare hands.  Others still can argue a case in front of a Federal Judge and an impaneled jury.  But put any one of them in different shoes, and there would be mass hysteria.  Vascular surgeons building houses?  Internists writing contracts? Lawyers fixing air conditioning units?  Unacceptable.  Type A people like us need to be in control.  That’s why we chose a career that only some can attain.  Multiple degrees somehow shield us from failure.   From attack.  From fear.

But to be a child of God, we must strip off the titles.  It doesn’t really matter whether you pour coffee or set broken bones.  God doesn’t give you more points for writing contracts than for fixing sewer lines.  We all simply have a role to play in this world.  Trust me – if a thoracic surgeon is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he is no better off than a gardener or a street sweeper.   Titles nor residency nor a thousand letters of reference matter.  They all just float like dead leaves to the ground.  People crunch atop them on the way to their office buildings and news stands and subway stops.  Student loans and years of education are useless, ready to be bagged up and thrown away, never to be thought of again.

Self-importance has no role to play in a Christian’s life.  We aren’t meant to find our worth in a material world.  Through our titles or careers.   Through our lineage or trust or years of service.  We are simply designed to serve.  To seek God’s truth and wisdom as vigorously as we pursue our degrees, and when we feel that we know enough, realize that we have so much left to learn.  After all – we all have scars, and bleeding incisions, and cancer that invades our purest intentions.  We are all drug-seekers of some kind, although our drug is power and control and feeling too comfortable rather than something we abuse in pill form.

Someday, in the blink of an eye, it will all be over.  On that day, we walk in tandem. The drug seekers.  The doctors.  The lawyers.  The latte makers.  We are all on the same level field, playing a role until the curtain comes down.

Filed Under: Career, Eye, Health, Inspirational, Religion Tagged With: , , , , ,

brown paper stories

May 16, 2012 By

I hate to use the word artist to describe myself.  I’m not covered in tattoos and don’t work a night shift at IHOP.  I’m not struggling to make ends meet, recovering from a drug habit, or walking around with paint on my elbows.  I’m a lawyer, for goodness sakes.  The amount of artistry it takes to craft a well-rounded, persuasive argument is only appreciated by a select few.  To everyone else, lawyers are just suits whose mouths open and shut and money comes funneling into their pockets every time they answer the phone.  As if.

But even now that I’ve made a conscience decision to walk away from practicing law, it’s hard.  Hard to call myself a writer.  Hard to create things simply for the pleasure of creating them.  I feel a need to aim that ambition, the same one that fueled me through honors classes and bar exam courses and clerkships, directly into the heart of the creative process.  It’s not good enough just to write.  Any fool with a laptop can do that. I need to be validated.  I need to be paid.  I need for this to mean something.

But art is subjective.  What makes one person laugh or cry or want to call their mother might be pure drivel to another.   My husband read a blog post once that I found particularly emotional and decided to point out an inverted quotation mark.   Thanks, dude.  Glad that hit you right there in the ticker.

When I was writing my novel, I stayed up into wee hours of the night pouring my heart into the story.  I went away for writing weekends.  I traveled to Upstate New York and rode cabs alone in Manhattan and hired babysitters in the stale Texas heat just to finish.  It took almost four years of painstaking rewrites and hundreds of deleted pages.  An editor helped me comb out the background narrative and useless rookie mistakes.  But then, I expected my hard work to pay off.  I would find an agent.  I would get published.  My words would matter.  

And yet here I sit, after putting two children to bed and wiping off kitchen counters and throwing in yet another load of whites.  I don’t have the look of an artist, sitting here in black-rimmed glasses and an oversized t-shirt, with a box of triscuits and a jar of peanut butter by my side.  I instead resemble a slightly-crazy person, ignoring reality and doing what I didn’t think possible:  I’m giving in to my instincts. I’m not published.  I don’t have tangible validation.  And yet I keep on going because I simply cannot imagine a world in which I have to stop.  I put my hands over my ears when that small little voice starts screaming in my head.  No one cares.  Quit while you’re ahead.  You’ll never make it as a writer.  Damn you, little voice.  You are meaningless.

I thought perhaps I’ve not been praying enough, or listening enough, or being present enough in this writing process.  I stopped myself tonight, standing right in front of the microwave, and prayed that God would reveal to me the best path.  How I should be reaching people.  Or perhaps learning not to care so much about what those people think.  After all, I can’t move mountains.  My name might not be in marquee lights. But I can certainly speak with passion – words driven straight from the heart that was formed and blessed by God in my mother’s womb.  My heart is ravenous with emotion.  My soul is aching to be heard.  My hands tremble at the thought of writing about sadness and joy in a way that has never been done before.

And then it comes to me: God’s listening.  I create simply for the joy of creating.  My words are an offering and a sacrifice, and I can imagine no other audience that matters more.

I am an artist. I offer up these small gifts, my brown-paper stories filled with sparkling words.  And that matters, even if no one else is paying attention.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Religion, Uncategorized, Writing Tagged With: , , , , ,

apple of my eye

May 14, 2012 By

I was annoyed.  Here we were on a budget and my husband was off buying random things for his computer.  Didn’t he understand I’d see the bill?  Didn’t he get it that we are trying to be frugal?  The conversation went something like this:

“I see you bought something at the apple store,” I said.  I was scrubbing food off plates after dinner.

“Huh?”  He looks up at me from his magazine, looking empty and confused.

“You don’t recall what you spent hundreds of dollars on just last week?”  I rolled my eyes.  I scraped harder.

“It must have been some kind of mistake.  Maybe they mischarged me for something I bought on itunes.”

“Not possible,” I said.  “It said apple, not itunes. You should call them.”

The following week, I emailed my husband the 1-800 number listed next to the charge on the credit card bill.

“Did you call?” I asked one morning.  “The apple store, I mean?  That’s a lot of money to be overcharged.”

“Back off,” he said in a hurry.  “I’m in meetings all morning.  But I will.”

On Saturday, I brought it up again, how crazy it was that he didn’t remember what he bought, or that apple really overcharged him that much, and reminded him that we had to cut back.  Did he not take this seriously? Why was he acting like it was no big deal?  Am I the only one around here that worries about such things?

But Sunday was Mother’s Day, so I let it go.  Early in the morning, while the sun was just peering around the horizon, my husband got out of bed and woke the children.  They all came bounding in, singing and yelling.  “Happy Mother’s Day!” my daughter shrieks, handing me a poem she had written and a box she claimed to wrap herself.  Her hair was wild and messy as she sat cross-legged in a tie-dye shirt and underwear on our king size bed. “Open it!” she yelled.

I start to unwrap it, and I see the little familiar white logo peering around the wads of tape. A brand new iphone.  From the apple store. My heart sank.  All that scolding and nagging, for goodness sakes.  I felt ashamed.  “I saved up my allowance to pay for it,” my husband says as he points to a wad of cash in the top drawer.  Just put it in the bank and use it on the card.  He had a glimmer in his eye, like he pulled one over on me.  Like he got me good. And he did.

I hugged my kids.  I read the poem with gusto.  I ripped open the box and hugged my husband for the secret he held onto for weeks.  I smiled at the gesture.  For the love and sacrifices and surprises my family has always shown me in my short stint at motherhood.  I texted my husband later, on my brand new phone.

You make it so easy to be a mother, it said.

I love apples.  You can throw them in a bag on the way to the park.  You can surround them with cinnamon and bake them in a crust. Or you can talk into them, and hear your husband’s deep voice on the other end telling you he’ll be home soon.  Kiss my boy for me.  Keep the soup warm.

My family is so fun to love.  They make my heart swell and I just want to wallow in them for the rest of my days.  It’s not the poems or expensive gifts or trips to the vegetarian place I love (that they hate) that matter.  It’s that I get to see the members of my family open their eyes every morning, one by one.  I get to wrap their sleepy bodies in my arms at night.  It’s the expressions on their faces when they are excited, and the longing need for me when they are weeping.  It’s the surge of sweetness I feel when I touch them, like a slice of warm apple pie on my tongue.

Filed Under: Embarrassing Moments, Inspirational, Motherhood Tagged With: , , , , ,

Brushstrokes

May 8, 2012 By

The artwork of Georges Seurat is ugly when you stand up close.  The compilation of colors and brushstrokes and dots make no sense when you’re staring directly at them.  You go take a look at Monet’s Water Lilies from a foot away and tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. I think life is that way.  Up close, it’s messy and ugly and disorganized.  But just take a look how breathtaking it is when viewed as a whole.

CAMILLE PISSARRO: “Landscape at Pontoise”, 1874.

Just this week, I tried to capture unique, individual moments.  Globs of paint just slapped on the page.

  • I walked into my daughter’s room and my son had happily covered himself in black Sharpie marker. I mean all over. On his legs and his hands and his stomach. “What in the world have you done?”
  • “Don’t you ever swing with your brother walking behind you,” I yell to my daughter as my son lands face-down in the dirt, screaming.  “Swing! Swing!” he says to me as if I didn’t just see what happened.  Then she starts crying because she feels bad and says  he shouldn’t have been there to start with.
  • “Can you read just one more chapter?” my daughter begs.  “Just one more?” She cuddles down into the pillow with sleepy eyes.
  • “You eat that carrot,” I say.  “It’s good for you.  There’s just one more on your plate, for goodness sakes.  It’s not like I’m asking you to eat a mouthful of dirt. Why are you making that face?”
  • “Ice creeeeeeam!” my son shrieks.  “Not for breakfast, kiddo,” I say in return. He throws himself down on the floor in protest.
  • I look at my daughter, with a headband and a ruffled purple skirt and a shirt that says Girls Rock.  She’s wearing shades with Tinkerbell on them and her hair is all messy. “But why are you wearing sweat pants underneath?” I ask.  “It’s 90 degrees out.” She shrugs.
  • “Is that hail I hear?” my husband says, as he rushes outside to check the garden.
  • “Time for bath,” I said as my son took off running.  I had to chase him all over the living room while he squealed with delight.  I finally grabbed his shirt and pulled him to the floor.  “Noooooo!” he yelled.  “No bath!”
  • “Let’s move,” I say to both kids.  We are late, as usual.  My daughter’s pony tail looks horrible.  It’s all lumpy.  And is that a stain on her jumper?
  • “I’ll just have Wheaties,” my husband said.  “But I made chicken pot pie,” I whined.  “I worked so hard and made the crust and everything.”  I’m not proud to admit it, but I think I stomped my foot a little.
  • Why is there a pair of scissors lying in the bathroom?  Why is this toothpaste open?  And why, for the love of everything in this world, do you kids always run around messing things up the very moment I clean them?
  • Re-fold that towel.  Put away your shoes.  No, not in the middle of the floor, but in your closet.  Please don’t hit your sister.  No, you can’t have another juice box.  Did you get into my makeup? PICK THAT UP, for crying out loud!

But when you stand back from afar, it’s a blend of screaming and laughing and crying that somehow makes up a family.  It’s the texture and pattern of our journey.  I try and gather up all these tiny brushstrokes in my heart.  At the end, I’ll look back and think to myself –

Oh dear God.  How breathtakingly beautiful.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Love, Motherhood, My life Tagged With: , , , ,

What makes up a life?

May 3, 2012 By

I’ve heard it at least a hundred times.  Whether it is coming from a contestant on a reality show, an artist I’ve known, a musician I’ve sung with, or a fellow mom in book club – it’s always the same.

This is what I love.  This is what I was meant to do. This is my life.

It’s an innocuous phrase, meant to place emphasis on a particular thing as important.  I get it.  Others might wander aimlessly around, trying to find their footing on the tall and slippery ladder of life, but you?  Well you’ve got all that figured out.  No more soul searching. You have passion, my friend.  A calling that few others have.  [Art/kids/music/comedy/writing/cooking/acting] is your life and you just don’t think you could continue to draw a breath if that particular thing wasn’t in it.

You can.

I’ve been amazed at how many people put their life’s worth into things that don’t last.  Fame is fleeting.  Inspiration comes and goes.  Our senses dull over time and sometimes we lose them altogether.  You will lose friends and even the strongest earthly bonds can crumble or be taken in a moment’s notice.  Children you devote your entire life to – all those waffle and banana sandwiches, for goodness sakes – can turn and just walk away.

The value of your life cannot be measured by these things.  Even though it’s tempting.  Even when these things bring you great joy or tremendous success.  Rachmaninoff gives you goose bumps.  Playing your guitar in front of a crowd is the best drug in the world. Writing makes you feel normal instead of a crazy person with ribbons of words spinning around and tying knots in your brain.  You finally made it. These are gifts that have been entrusted to you alone, to polish like fine silver and use for a higher calling. That much is true.  But it’s still not your life.

Your life is a soul, housed in a ruff-hewn body whose organs and tissues break down with time.  A body that is complete with a mouth that says stupid things, and a stomach that consumes more stupid things, and feet that rest and stay clean more often than they get dirty.  And this soul has a decision to make.  It has to choose its master.  It can dedicate its life’s work toward fleeting fame, or something that does not disappear into dust.  Music, art, writing – these do not make up your life.  But forgiveness.  Grace.  The unconditional love from God, the Father.  And Jesus Christ, his only son. This is life. 

I was raised in the church since birth.  I was sheltered and kept in a small, clean box where truth was easy and evil was dark and avoidable.  I cringe now at the judgment I placed on others who chose different lifestyles than me, or who took long, meandering paths to express themselves.  People call themselves believers and yet go home to beat their wives, cheat on their spouses, make their children feel like pond scum, or feel absolutely nothing at all. There are horrific things done in the name of God, and going to church on Sunday means nothing, really, to sanctify one’s heart.

 I’m not saying this to be righteous.  God knows I don’t have that right.  But through the course of my life’s many misadventures, I’ve grown to realize that everyone finds truth in their own time.  In their own crazy, soulful, serpentine way.   It’s not our place to judge or tell people what to believe or how or when or why.  Last I checked, we aren’t the savior police.  But when it comes to my own soul, it has been filled with love that has no human replication, warming my brittle bones and washing clean what I used to think was white, but later realized was stained and broken.

I used to think that tangible things mattered.  Like if I wasn’t here to raise my children or be my husband’s partner that their lives might possibly end.  But people will go on without you.  Someone else can sing or write or love just as easily.  These things are not the foundation upon which your soul is supported.  You cannot place your trust in these.

But the purity of God – a light so bright that you cannot view it head-on and emotion so strong it fills you with something stronger than fear itself– this is not something found in a cheesy Christian bookstore.  It is not limited to those wearing pink silk dresses and sitting in pews.  It is not reserved for those who say the right things or look the part or tug at your heartstrings or lack all intellect.  It is simply for the soul who seeks it, and accepts it with grace.

So as it turns out, the pure, unabashed, accepting love of God is my life.  My screwed up, messy, inadequate human life.

That’s all I really have.  It’s all that matters.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Religion Tagged With: , , , , ,

little white lies

April 30, 2012 By

I’ve been thinking lately about the concept of lying.  It seems to be acceptable in the world we live in to lie about things that don’t matter. What you had for lunch.  Your plans Friday night.  Where you bought your shirt.  White lies, people call them, as if labeling them a certain color washes them clean and sanitizes all the dirty out of them.  But sometimes lying is just lying, regardless of the color.  Have you ever said your child is sick or you can’t attend an event because you had company? Your kid is sitting there playing scrabble and your company is really just your neighbor who came over to tell you your gate’s open.

When we lie, the truth is distorted.  The strings of words coming from our mouth are all tangled and knotted.

I’m one to talk.  I’ve said a shirt costs forty bucks when it was really $49.99 plus tax, or claimed I read a book that I only just started, or told a friend I had plans when I was just really lazy and tired and didn’t want to change out of my pajamas.  After all, you can usually justify it.  You had plans that night to watch trashy television, now didn’t you?  Doesn’t that count?

Yesterday in the car, my son was screaming for iced tea.  A shrill, piercing scream that made me want to pull the car over.  I almost just gave in and handed over the dang cup.  “Want tea mamaaaaaa!” he wailed.  He tries to wear me down, that kid.  He’s a persistent one.

“Let’s just call it water so he won’t want any,” my daughter said.  I could see her rolling her eyes and covering her ears.  Just make it stop. It makes sense, really.  He’s only two years old. It might generate a moment of peace, and he wouldn’t know the difference.

It’s technically a lie.  But it’s a stupid, white lie that doesn’t matter. No one gets hurt, and there are more important things to stress about than calling tea water, for heaven’s sake.  The light changed to green as I pondered a response.

“But it’s tea,” I said as I dreamed of Advil and a quiet room where no one was screaming.  “Let’s not call it something it’s not.”

It’s tough to teach children the value of words.  It’s all we have, really, to showcase our faith.  Our value.  Our honor.  Others might not notice if we tell them we ate a hamburger when we really had a fish sandwich.  But we are allowing our mouth to mold into knots.  We allow our mind to bend the truth like hot metal, and those habits are so very hard to break.  It becomes easier.  Lies come out faster.  Evil can always find a weak place to enter in.

You control your own mouth, even if it’s full of twisted, dirty lies.  It’s your job to untangle them.  Correct yourself.  Apologize.  After all, speaking the truth is pure.  It is sparkling and buoyant.   The words we use should mirror our very character – full of strength and freedom and beauty.

As it turns out,  you didn’t go to the dry cleaners. You haven’t started those edits.  And tea is just tea, my sweet baby girl. 

Lies are never white, after all.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Religion Tagged With: , , , ,

A decade of milestones

April 25, 2012 By

Yesterday was my ten-year cancer anniversary.  Those who have been in my shoes understand that it’s a day of reflection.  A day where you review all the milestones that have occurred in the last decade and wonder what will happen next.

A few to mention:

(1) I was on national television.

(2) I got to live in New York for a while.  I survived the subway and tag sales and bad Mexican food.

(3) I have been to many cancer screens, visits, and appointments, but my cancer has not metastasized.  Survival is just as good as the next test.  So far I’m hanging in there.

(4) I had many interactions with Martha Stewart.

(5) Got to eat at a fancy NYC restaurant with Donald Trump

(6) I wrote a children’s book on contract for a company in California

(7) We had a baby girl, who is so precious

(8) I had a life-threatening infection after the birth of our little girl.  I was in the hospital for a month.  I survived.

(9) I wrote a novel about the extraordinary friendship between two women.  One woman undergoes a battle with cancer, which was cathartic and memorable to write about.  Part of it’s very funny, and I like funny.   After tears and late nights and edits and hundreds of pages thrown out, I did it.  I survived the novel-writing process.

(10)                I got on facebook and connected with old friends I hadn’t heard from in years

(11)               We had a baby boy. So love that little guy.

(12)               My heart stopped right before the c-section when my son was born, as I was lying on the table. They had to do resuscitation measures.  Miraculously, I survived.

(13)               My husband and I went to Maine, and as we were on a yacht off the coastline, I was so glad he married me so many years ago

(14)               I worked as General Counsel to a large medical group, a job I never thought I’d attain and was so thrilled to have.  Being a lawyer is quite fun.

(15)               I quit said wonderful job as described above to stay home

(16)               We moved into a wonderful limestone house.  We have a garden and land to roam.  Next up is chickens.

(17)               I started a blog

(18)               Our house was struck by lightening.  We survived.

(20)               My novel is not yet published, but I’m still trying

By His mercy and grace, I keep surviving.  Here’s to the next decade.   Let it be as rich and wonderful as this one.  Let me live every day with compassion and curiosity.  After all, I want to do more than survive.  I want to sing.  I want to write.  I want to thrive.

Filed Under: Career, Health, Inspirational, Religion Tagged With: , , , , ,

Victory or Death

April 23, 2012 By

There is a subdivision near my daughter’s school called ”Travis Country.”  We pass by the limestone sign every day, surrounded by verbenas and turk’s caps, shining brightly in the sun.

“Who’s Travis?” she asked one morning. “And why did they name this place after him?”  Despite my various inadequacies, I felt relatively comfortable explaining who this person was that so important to our state’s history.  After all – I was born and raised in Texas.  I grew up forty-five minutes from the Alamo. If anyone could tell her who Travis was, I could.  Here was my very helpful answer:

 

 I think he was a Colonel in the Republic who fought at the Alamo.  Did he wear a coonskin cap?  No, wait.  That was Davy Crocket.  Anywho, it was either he or some other dude that met with a Mexican leader under a tree regarding surrender.  No wait, that can’t be right.  Well I don’t know his first name, honey. But I think his middle name started with a B.

Yes, folks.  That’s it.  Colonel Travis wore a coonskin cap while not dying at one of the biggest battles in Texas history because he apparently morphed his ghost-like dead self into Sam Houston and was busy negotiating a surrender.  Most importantly, however, his middle name started with a B.  Of that, I’m certain.  Well thanks a lot, small-town history teacher.  Thanks a lot.

That night, I asked my husband to better explain it.  His first response was “please tell me you didn’t try.”  What?  Why would he jump to such accusatory conclusions?  I lied and said no, even though I’m very well-versed on the subject and all.  He snickered at that.  So at bedtime,  my husband allowed my daughter to stay up late in order to re-tell the story of William Barret Travis dying in a hard-fought battle against Mexican soldiers, leading a team of outnumbered and starving misfit settlers.  He dramatically drew his hand across the bedcovers to imitate how Lt. Col. Travis drew a line in the sand, urging those who wouldn’t fight-to-the-death to walk away.  No one walked.  They all crossed that line. My daughter sat up with rapt attention.  Please don’t mention the coonskin cap, I thought as I tried to beam it directly into my daughter’s head.  I’ll never live that one down.     

The way my husband wove the tale you’d think it was a work of fiction, with William Travis walking away from a sordid past in Tennessee to find his home in this rugged new place, leading a pack of dirty men, all huddled behind a Catholic mission’s dirt-and-mortar walls.  They all died bloody deaths in the battle of the Alamo, but the Mexican soldiers finally prevailed.  “A woman named Susana Dickenson survived to tell the tale,” my husband said with raised eyebrows.  My daughter breathed in fast. What did she do? Where did she run? Why did they let her go?  The stinging smell of independence hung like fog in the air around her pink covers.  The Battle of San Jacinto.   Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.  The capture and surrender.  Gunsmoke.

I passed the sign again today and it had new significance.  It reminded me of why I live in the great state of Texas, tucked away in the hill country amidst bluebonnets and wild Indian blankets,  the soil fertilized with the blood of those who died for our right to stake a home onto this great land.  The tall, blowing grasses are moistened by their tears, and their yet untold lives whisper to me in the afternoon winds.  This state is special not just because of the stories told today, but of stories long since past.

On February 24, 1836, mere days before the end, Travis wrote to the people of Texas and all Americans in the world, saying “I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna. I have sustained continual bombardment and for twenty-four hours and have not lost a man. . . I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of liberty, of patriotism and everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch. The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily and will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor and that of his country. Victory or death.”

Thank you, William Barret Travis.  For the fight.  For the intensity for which you loved this place.   For drawing that line in the sand.  I thank God for you, for what you did for us so many years ago, and for your unyielding urge to never give up even as solders were climbing the wall and closing in. I salute you, my dear patriot.  Even if it makes people look at me funny while I drive by that sign, in my sweats, possibly talking on my cell phone, on a Tuesday afternoon.

Others might have chosen to walk away – but you?  In that dark day in March, 1836, as you breathed your last breath, you thought not of these things. You thought of victory.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Love, Texas Tagged With: , , , , ,

Infinity, plus one

April 19, 2012 By

“I sure love your daddy,” I said to my daughter once as we were walking hand-in-hand though the grocery store parking lot.  Sometimes I do that – say things I’ m thinking out loud.  It often gets me in trouble, like when I’m judgmental or harsh or wish someone would move the freak over in the fast lane.   But this particular day I was thinking about her father.  My husband.  The man I love more each passing day of our almost thirteen-year marriage.

“You love him more than anyone in the whole world?” she asked.  “Like the entire earth?” Her little hand was clutching mine as she looked up and squinted through the sun.  I’m wondering what she’s getting at, like if we lived on a smaller planet I’d just sorta hang out with him.  Maybe buy him a soda or get him a ticket to Sea World.

“Do you love him more than me?” she asked.

The question hit my face like a slap as we walked into the grocery store.  Right there by the pineapples.  How do I answer such a question?  How can I possibly explain such a love while picking out grapefruit?  This was my first-born.  My precious child.  I was the center of her little world.

“Well it’s just different,” I said.  I was really hoping she’d just let this go so I could head to the cheese section in peace.  But she was so fixated on my response that she flat-out ignored the free samples.  This was serious.  I could have just said I loved them both exactly the same – children like for things to be fair and equal and perfectly symmetrical.  Half the pie.  We each get a balloon.  Three candies each.  But I couldn’t lie.  Not to my own child.

My daughter and I gush a lot.  It makes my husband roll his eyes and leave the room, mostly because it’s (1) annoying; (2) loud; and (3) insanely repetitive.

“I love you a million times,” I’d say to her.  Of course she loved me too.  Except a million zillion times, plus infinity.

“I love you that much, plus one,” I’d say.

I do love her so.  I have an immense longing to protect my children at all costs and surround their world with freedom and creativity.  And they love me, to the extent they know how.  It’s so innocent.  Full of happy bubbles and sparkles.  It’s so squeaky and pure I wish I could bathe in it.  But my daughter has so much yet to learn.

I met my husband our last year in college. He was a fraternity boy with political ambitions.  He wore beat-up, red wing boots, pulling his hat low on his head to cover up his red, tired eyes.  I was drawn to him in a strange way that ignored all consequences.  His crooked smile kept flashing through my mind all the moments of my days, and the world was somehow off balance without him in it.  That was how things always were with us. From the very first moment we spoke, it was like that big wheel in Lost where all time and space shifted.  We didn’t really have a choice.  We were all but helpless participants in God’s master plan to yoke us together, one pushing and one pulling in all the right moments.  I melted when he touched me.  I would have followed him anywhere, to the very ends of the earth.  No matter what the size.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love my children with an emotion I didn’t know existed until their faces were raised to meet my eyes.  My throat closed up when I saw their bodies like tiny angels and thought I wasn’t worthy to own such beautiful things, even for such a little while.   Sometimes I stop folding laundry or scraping old oatmeal off cereal bowls and just look at them, my sweet precious little children, basking in the glow of the everyday.  They are the big miracles of life.

But someday, they will go.  They will take the extra china and good thread count sheets and beg me to make them cookies, but they will still leave.  Some other mother, who rocked and held and loved their child as fiercely as I have loved, will send their offspring out into the world and the two will meet.  And I will be but a memory of past days.  The woman of remember when and you just won’t believe. Then, it will just be us, my husband and I, rocking away on the quiet front porch, alone.   Or sitting in some café in France, drinking wine with grins on our faces.

I suppose when my daughter is older, after she struts headstrong into her own separate world, she might understand.  After she survives her own youthful heartbreak and finds a partner who feeds her soul.  Maybe then, she will know the answer, standing in the produce section, with refrigerated air blowing into her face and melon in hand, how to answer a question from her child about the intricacies of love.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Love, Motherhood Tagged With: , , , ,

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