The Pushback

Well, just when you think you have it all figured out, you find out that you don’t.

If you read my last piece, Here’s My Card, you’ll know that I created a new business card. Not so much as a way to market myself, but to introduce myself. The me, myself, and I that is now 70 years old.

In that blog I make no bones about the fact that I’m not a fan of the camera. It’s the rare photo of myself that I like, which means that every time another photo op comes along, I’m already tense and pretty sure it’ll quickly become another deleted photo. Which it often does. It’s a vicious cycle that’s been hard to break.

In real life, not in front of the camera, I actually think I’m pretty cute. Beautiful, even. I walk through life, into a room, or up onto a stage with confidence. Confidence in who I am, what I bring, and, how I look. But bring in a camera, and all bets are off. It’s like, “Wait, that’s not how I look.”

The blog was waiting for subscribers to my newsletter when they woke up this morning. My eldest daughter texted me about what I had written. She wanted to push back against what she had read. Her text brought me to tears as she talked about how she sees me. In her eyes, I’m beautiful. Always have been, always will be. Even when my hair was permed. (That might be taking it a little too far. If I was meant to have curly hair I would have been born with it.)

After our text exchange, she followed up with a Marco Polo. I learned three things from her beautiful, honest, and insightful message:

Even though she no longer lives in my home, she’s still paying attention.

We are always modeling what it looks like to the generation behind us. More than anything I want them to see what it looks like to age with grace. To embrace the changing face in the mirror with love and respect, wrinkles and all. To fiercely tend to the needs of a body not meant to live forever. To laugh at ourselves because it’s good medicine for whatever ails us at any age. To look through the camera and connect to the people on the other side of the photo.

It’s time to make friends with the camera, because every photo captures an irreplaceable moment in a never-to-be-repeated life.

How we talk about ourself matters.

Our thoughts create our words. Our words create our stories. When we tell our stories, others are listening. What is the story I want others to hear? If, as I profess to believe, that we are all created in the image of God, then every single one of us is beautiful in our own unique way. And that includes me.

It’s time to talk to and about myself as one who reflects the beauty of the One who made her.

Deeply rooted stories require uprooting.

My daughter reminded me that my dad feared old age. He fought it. He denied it. He made some of us a little miserable in our efforts to love and support him well as his time on the planet grew shorter. I wonder if my apple doesn’t fall too far from his tree. There isn’t a ready answer to that question. Maybe yes, maybe no, probably a little bit of both. Regardless, there’s still plenty of time to do something about it.

It’s time to dig in, dig out, and cultivate a better story. A more accurate story. A story that I want my children to be able to tell their children about who I was, how I lived, and, how I left.

Like I said, just when you think you have it all figured out, you don’t. Which is why we need people in our lives who love us enough to push back.

A Seismic Shift

On May 18, 1980, at 8:32 in the morning, Mt. St. Helens erupted. It was the deadliest and most destructive volcanic eruption in U.S. history.

On that same day, a 32 year-old geologist was living in New Zealand with his wife, and a 26 year-old buyer for Nordstrom was living in Tigard, Oregon with her husband.

A month later that same geologist was back for a short visit to the U.S. for a family wedding in the state of Washington. Borrowing a car, he drove from Seattle to the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, WA, where he handed his CV to the scientist in charge of hiring. Returning to New Zealand he began applying for teaching positions. In September of that same year he received a call from that same scientist who offered him a job. He accepted the position, moved to Vancouver, where he worked as a research scientist studying lahars (mudflows), like the one that occurred on Mt. St. Helens. His family grew as he and his wife welcomed two daughters into their home.

The 26 year-old buyer watched the eruption on the news, fascinated by the immense power that only the natural world can wield. She continued her career in the fashion industry, and she and her husband brought two daughters into the world too.

In 1989 both of their marriages ended.

They were each single for 5 years.

In 1993 the then 45 year-old geologist placed a personal ad in a local newspaper favored by urban professionals. The then 40 year-old fashionista wasn’t looking for love, but while building a fire for the pizza-and-a-movie night she and her young daughters had every Friday, the words Romantic Scientist caught her eye as she crumpled up a page of the newspaper. An oxymoron if she’d ever heard one. But there was something about that ad that intrigued her. On a whim she wrote a letter to the romantic nerd, stuck a photo of herself with her daughters in the envelope, and drove it to the nearby postoffice before she lost her nerve.

A few days later she received a phone call from the geologist.

They’ve been married now for 29 years.

If Mt. St. Helens hadn’t erupted the geologist would have taken a professorship at a university somewhere, wouldn’t have adopted his two incredible daughters, or placed an ad in a paper on the West Coast. He wouldn’t have met the love of his life, nor would she have met hers. They wouldn’t have had the chance to love and raise their four shared daughters, welcome sons-in-law and grand littles, and build a crazy good life together.

43 years after the eruption of Mt. St. Helens I am still amazed at the forces that converge to shape the lives we have. At how we are all part of a great worldwide web of connection that can create a seismic shift in our lives in the blink of an eye, or in this case, the explosion of a mountain.

Credit: Krimmel, Robert. Public domain.

(With gratitude to "Loowit" or "Louwala-Clough" as she is known to those who named her long before people who look like me arrived on the scene. Leave it to a woman to shake up the world.)

One At A Time

Every time I’m out on the trail I am reminded that the life we have is directly under our feet. Not a mile down the road. Not a mile behind us. Not behind that tree or over that hill or under that rock or around that bend. It’s right here. There is nowhere else for it to be, because life only happens one step at a time.

Real life is a messy mixture of the good, the bad, and the seriously ugly. I’ve spent a lot of time and energy wishing that I could have those served up one at a time. Just a heaping helping of goodness without having to make room on my plate for the bad, the ugly, the painful, the frightening, and even the awful that will inevitably land on my plate too. So rather than digging into the delicious, yummy good right when it happens, I’m already stabbing my fork into whatever else might get dished up, but hasn’t yet. It’s like those times when I’ve eaten a delicious meal that was prepared with love and care, and before I knew it my plate was empty and I had no idea what the food even tasted like. I’d missed the meal set before me that would have given me the joy, resilience, and strength meant to sustain me when the going got tough.

Just like hiking on the trail, life only happens one bite at a time.

In A Word

Sitting in the dark, lit only by a few candles and the lights on our tree, the voice leading me through an end-of-the-year reflection asked me to come up with a word that was representative of the year about to end. A word instantly came to mind, but I didn’t like it, In fact, I hated it and tried mightily to land on another one that felt less painful. Less hard. Less awful. Words like surrender, submit, give in (I know, that’s two words, but I was desperate). But try as I might, I couldn’t. The only word that rang true was loss.

Who wants a year best described by the word loss? Not this girl.

Last Thursday I went to the audiologist for my annual hearing test. She is thorough, funny, and kind, and I was having a good time with her, until I wasn’t. After coming out of the booth where I’d been sitting repeating back the words coming through my headphones, she informed me that I’d lost more hearing than she likes to see in the two years since my last test. She referred me to an ENT to make sure there wasn’t something “more nefarious” causing it than the passing of the years. (Probably not given that the loss is equal on both sides, but we’ll see.) After adjusting my hearing aids to compensate for the loss, all of which falls within the range where most speech occurs, I left her office with her words ringing in my ears that are slowly losing their hearing.

Stopping in the rest room before heading to my car, I tucked my new, favorite, been looking for them for years, fleece lined, fingerless, New Zealand wool gloves that I’d purchased in Iceland under my arm as there was no place to set them in the stall. Standing up, I turned around and reached out to flush what turned out to be an auto-flusher, and came out of the stall with only one glove. I can only guess where it is now.

Getting into my car in the parking lot, all I could do was cry. At that point, I’m not sure which I was grieving the loss of more, my hearing or those damn gloves that I’ve been looking for my whole life

My hearing is just the latest in what feels like a series of losses. Things that I might not ever be able to get back, and most of them related to the number of years I’ve been on the planet. It’s been a hard pill to swallow, and yet I’m beginning to understand that loss can be good medicine for what ails me. Loss asks the hard questions. Can I show up with love and joy even when I don’t have as much of myself to show up with? Can I be grateful for what I still have rather than angry about what I don’t? Am I able to live into the truth that giving in to something is not the same as giving up on it? Is it possible for me to shine a light on what it looks like to age with grace even when things I’ve come to count on fall away? I hope so. No, I know so.

Loss is a part of life. It begins on the day we arrive on the planet, and doesn’t stop until we find ourselves on the other side.We are meant to lose our lives by giving them away.

Who wants a year best described by the word loss? I guess I do. That’s my word and I’m sticking to it.

Rural Lessons

There’s so much to learn from our rural neighbors.

Driving through our beautiful valley at the base of Mt. Adams, when passing another car heading the opposite direction, you wave. Not a big wave. Not a royal wave. Not a political candidate wave. Not a red carpet wave. Just a subtle wave. Hands on the steering wheel, one or two fingers lift in greeting in a small gesture that says whether I know you or not, I see you, and you see me.

We need more of that in this country.

The snow is here. There’s a least three feet on the ground and it’s not showing any signs of letting up soon. Because we live on a private road the county doesn’t plow us out. Nor should they. They have more than enough work on too small a budget just keeping the roads we all depend on clear so that people can get to work, kids can get to school, and life can keep going. That means that we are dependent on the help of others to take care of our road. And they do. Whenever it snows we can count on our neighbor George. He just shows up and plows for as long as the snow lasts, and then we settle up at the end of the season. But today, after giving it a valiant effort, he told us that the snow was just too much for his equipment. As it turns out, shortly thereafter he was at our little General Store to warm up with a cup of coffee where he ran into Casey, another neighbor. George asked Casey if he could take care of our road today. Fifteen minutes later Casey showed up on his commercial grader and got er done.

We need more of that in this country.

Driving into town the other day we passed Keith. A local rancher, he and his family raise cattle, grow alfalfa and sell timber. On this particular day as we drove through their ranch, the sun hadn’t come up yet. It was cold and dark and the cattle needed feeding. And there he was, unloading bales of hay onto the ground for the waiting cattle, steam rising from their breath in the cold morning air. Staying inside for another cup of coffee or waiting till tomorrow when the weather might be a little better wasn’t an option. When you’re a rancher, it’s up to you. And because it’s up to you, you just do it, and then get up the next day, and do it again.

We need more of that in this country.

We moved here from the big city fifteen years ago, and it’s safe to say that we cast our votes differently than the majority of our rural neighbors. The lens we look through is probably quite different than theirs. After the 2016 presidential election we were heartbroken and scared for reasons that made sense to us. After the 2020 one, my guess is that many of our neighbors experienced those same feelings for reasons that made sense to them. And yet. We all find ways to come together. We help each other out, cheer for our high school basketball team, lay side-by-side on cots in the school auditorium as we give blood at the annual Red Cross blood drive, show up with our families at the annual Father’s Day Rodeo, and fly our flags for a country we all love, and are all worried about.

We need more of that in this country.

What It Can Look Like

Raise your hand if your Thanksgiving turned out just as you planned.

If your hand is raised, I’m seriously so happy for you.

Ours did not.

Family would arrive from near and far, everyone showing up and departing on their own schedules. At least that was the plan. But then shit started to happen. A plane was delayed. A toilet overflowed. A toddler took a tumble out of her crib and landed on her noggin. And then, on Friday morning, one of our gang woke up with a fever and a nasty cough.

We moved him into the back bedroom so that he could rest, and donned our masks in an attempt for the rest of us to dodge whichever viral bullet had hit him squarely in the chest.

In the end, because being sick at home is so much better than being sick anywhere else, everybody packed up their bags and headed down the road before any potential symptoms might begin showing up.

As life would have it, as of this writing, two more are down for the count.

Oops, another text just arrived. Make that three.

We were all disappointed, because the best part of getting together is, well, getting together. We’d had a different plan than the one that unfolded: Walks in the wild life refuge, hide-and-seek, an epic Charcuterie Board and Old Fashioned cocktails, time curled up on the couches in front of the fire, swapping stories, and sharing a few more days of the magic and the mess that is family.

But here’s the thing. While it may not have turned out as we’d planned, it turned into something else. It was an invitation to figure out, together, what to do with what we’d been handed. And we did.

This is what that can look like…

Holding It All Together

Sometimes it’s hard to hold it all together.

Last week I headed out early in the morning to The Dalles to drop Gracie-the-chocolate-labradoodle off at our vet to get her teeth cleaned. I can’t believe how much I love our silly dog.

And.

As a dog, she receives better dental care than the estimated 74 million of my fellow citizens without access to dental insurance, who, when financial push comes to dental shove, have to choose putting food on the table over a trip to the dentist.

And.

Driving through the jaw dropping beauty of the Columbia River Gorge that I call home, I was overcome with awe and wonder for this spectacular corner of the world. One of the top destinations in the country, people come here to live, hike, kite-board, wine taste, and of course, fish for salmon.

And.

This was once the home of Indigenous peoples long before those who looked like me arrived on the scene, colonizing, displacing, and destroying their homes and ways of life. The once abundant fishing sites, central to tribal cultures, diets, societies, and religion, were destroyed by dams. Today, traditional fishing, and often living, take place at “In-lieu” Sites. These small, poor parcels of land, often without utility services, are supposed replacements for lost livelihoods.

And.

After dropping Gracie off at the vet, I test drove a late model Toyota Sequoia, and fell in love with it immediately. I called my husband, and before the day was over, he had traded in our other car, drove the new one home, and parked it in our garage.

And.

Heading home later that same day I stopped to grab some groceries. A family sat at the corner with a sign, asking for help with rent. Our new car cost more than the first house I owned, and could sleep a family of 5 in a pinch.

And.

Yesterday I paired my iPhone with the car audio system, making it easier to make and receive calls while on the road, listen to podcasts, and car dance to my favorite tunes.

And.

The parts for that iPhone were likely produced with slave and child labor.

And.

On our nightly walk lately, the stars have been out in spades. It’s almost like God is showing off, as only She can. We turn off the flashlight and take in the wonder and magic of the night sky, grateful to live in a place where we feel safe as the quiet darkness settles around us..

And.

The night sky in Ukraine is lit up by incoming bombs and missiles, killing thousands of citizens, destroying property, and sending thousands of others to makeshift bomb shelters and fleeing across borders. As Russia wages a ruthless and evil unprovoked war, God can only be shedding tears at this devastating display of human hate and hubris.

Like I said, sometimes it’s hard to hold it all together. How do we hold on to two huge opposites at the same time—all the good in our lives and all the terrible things happening in the lives of others— when both are real and both are true?

The only conclusion I can come to is that we just do. We don’t feel guilty about the good, we welcome it with open hands.

And.

We use those same hands to do everything within our power to build a better world for all.

(A guilt-free moment, loving our silly dog.)

Remembering To Say Thank You

When the seriousness of the pandemic hit, it was quickly apparent that we needed to find a new way of working out. Going to a gym was no longer an option, and we weren’t ready to put our name on the waiting list for a Peloton. A neighbor had told us about a nearby logging road a fifteen minute drive from our house that he loved to explore with his malamutes. It was rarely used and had views that were worth the effort.

On April 11, 2020 we decided to check it out

We headed uphill, our dog Gracie at our heels with her hunter’s orange vest on since she is the color and size of a small bear. Within minutes it was apparent that if a good workout was what we were looking for, we had found it in this logging road.

From the first step it heads straight uphill for 1.7 miles. 2445 steps to the top, it has an elevation gain of just under 1000 ft. Talking on the way up wasn’t much of an option, but somewhere along that 1.7 mile, 2445 step slog I managed to gasp “Thank you Tom.”

And I’ve said it every trip to the top since.

So just what am I thanking him for?

On that first trek up I was thanking him for being willing to hike this road as a way to stay strong and healthy as we weathered the Covid storm together.

But now, with well-over 100 trips to the top and back?

It’s about thanking him for living life side-by-side through the thick and thin of it all, apologizing and accepting apologies, reflecting on a conflict on the way up so that we can resolve it on the way down, creating sacred rituals one footfall at a time, making new plans and jettisoning old ones, and navigating the slippery slopes and rocky terrain of life day in and day out. And for always carrying the bear spray.

In the beginning he was hiking the logging road because it was good for us. However, over time, all those trips up and down that road have become a metaphor for a life shared, and it is for that shared life that I am thankful.

And when we are thankful, it’s good to remember to say thank you.

“Thank you Tom.”

My Sister's Hands

Yesterday my sister got a new knee. But I just can’t stop thinking about her hands.

I’d know her hands anywhere, and could probably pick her out of a lineup from them.

With those hands she unloads my dishwasher whenever she visits, makes caramel icing for every family birthday cake, sets the table for a party the day before, and lights all the candles before company arrives. Those hands make sure that the decks are cleared and all ducks in a row, so that when people walk in they feel welcomed, loved, safe, seen, and heard. It’s those hands of hers that deftly arrange guests at wedding tables in a way that no one’s feelings get hurt, everyone feels included, and all the people that drive all the other people crazy sit together. With her hands she holds grandkids close, carries on with important traditions, and lets go of the ones that have seen better days. She prefers to keep her hands out of messy food, but loves digging in the dirt. She always wears rubber gloves to keep her hands out of hot water, but fearlessly sticks them into places of the heart where angels fear to tread. Hers are hands that pray without ceasing, love with abandon, and welcome without judgment.

Yesterday, my brother-in-law sent me a photo of her just before they wheeled her into surgery. Looking at that picture I found myself filled with gratitude. Not just for that brand new knee, but for her beautiful 75 year-old hands that are simply an extension of her heart.

Shotgun!

On August 8,1953 my best friend Kristine Lorraine Patterson was born.

So, do you want to have dinner?

It’s a simple enough question, but forty-five years ago it was a lot more complicated than that. The invitation came from the drop-dead-beautiful 6’tall woman with the wild, curly, crazy hair I’d always wanted. Her name was Kristine, and at the time we were both working for the city parks and recreation bureau. For the past several months we’d been like opposing magnets, each of us trying to stay out of the magnetic pull of the other. Tired of wondering if I’d measure up as a friend, and weary from resisting the desire to get to know her, I decided to take the risk.

Sitting out on the lawn in front of my house, our first dinner together lasted for three hours. At the end of the evening, we looked one another in the eye and said, So, we’re best friends for life, right?

And we have been.

Since that night out on the lawn there have been more than enough reasons to leave one another on the side of the road. Too hard. Too painful. Too much work. Too many competing outside needs and expectations. For us, in the end, leaving one another behind has never been an option. No matter what has come our way, and with more still to come, somehow we’ve managed to build a friendship that has stood the test of time, not to mention: marriages and divorces, the births of our children and the aging and passing of parents, the joy of grand babies and grief over the loss of grand dreams, depression and health, money and not so much money, faith and doubt, and at times giving too much of ourselves and asking too little of one another. No matter the odds or how dark the night, somehow we are always able to find our way back and head down the road, ready to face whatever lies around the next bend—together.

This once-in-a-lifetime friend of mine is, in the words of her mother, unique, one-of-a-kind, and special. There is not a heart that is bigger or a mind more curious. An accomplished artist, she brings beauty to everything and everyone she touches. When her heart is broken, she allows herself to be broken open, making even more room for the love, care, and compassion she offers so freely. She champions my work every chance she gets, and calls me on the carpet whenever necessary. She turns grief and loss into grace and laughter, and is fiercely committed to living an authentic and wholehearted life no matter what it takes. She knows the matters that matter, and loves me no matter what.

I can’t imagine life without her.

We can’t know what waits for us down the road, but when it comes to the road trip of friendship there is no one else I’d rather have riding shotgun.

Happy Birthday Kristine Lorraine Patterson.

March 2020