The Pigeon Lady

I have always been intrigued with eccentric people, those so different from me. My favorites are people who have twenty cats, or little old ladies obsessed with feeding pigeons in public parks.

I wasn’t much of an animal lover in my youth. I was a little disappointed in my new hubby when he wanted to spend an entire day of our honeymoon at a zoo. He took more pictures of the animals than he did of me. He appeared to have traits of one of those eccentric people and I wasn’t sure I wanted my husband to be one. It was years before I would agree to a dog or a cat.

Many years later when we moved up on a mountain, a new world opened up to me—a world shared with wild creatures. My first encounter woke me in the middle of the night. It sounded like a woman screaming outside my window. With my heart racing, I sprang from bed and slammed the open window shut. As I got my wits about me and listened, I could tell the cry was not quite human. Hubby, who has a degree in Wildlife Biology, was halfway across the country, and I couldn’t ask him until the next day. “It was a fox,” he said from a hotel room in Kansas.  

As I stepped out of our basement one afternoon, I came face to face with a momma bear and five cubs. I needed no help with identification. The cubs and I were terrified. I ran back inside the basement and the little ones climbed a tree right outside the door. I cracked the door open a bit and heard the baby bears crying like kittens. Trapped inside, I thought about crying too as I waited for Big Momma to convince her babies to come down and journey on.

The following summer as I sat on my front porch putting in my evening, I heard the strangest owl call. It sounded like a human trying to do an owl imitation. Hubby was out of pocket and didn’t hear it, but he played YouTube videos of owl tunes for my selection. It was a Barred Owl. So I spent my evenings on the porch anticipating Hootie’s call. He hooted all summer long— then mysteriously stopped. Channel 13 did a news piece on a Barred Owl being struck by a car up on the parkway above my house. I knew it was Hootie. With specialized care, the Nature Center believed the owl would survive and could return to the wild. I have only heard that call a few times since—I prefer to believe it is Hootie.

This past fall, I became acquainted with a tiny furry fellow donning a brown coat with black and white stripes. Chippy—the chipmunk began making his daily appearance storing nuts and seeds along the rock wall in view of my kitchen window. As I made breakfast I watched—back and forth he went dashing from one end to the other—his tail raised straight up like an antenna, crisscrossing the gravel drive. Chippy grew accustom to my presence and continued his work even when I was outside.

On one of Chippy’s visits, I was on the porch watching when a hawk flew over, descended, and began screeching and circling overhead. I ran inside to Hubby. “Do something! The hawk’s after Chippy.” Hubby raised one eyebrow and smiled. Outside he went and stood in the middle of our driveway. Chippy disappeared among the rocks and the hawk moved on. Hubby’s such a good man.

Soon after I was returning from a walk up the mountain, Chippy was waiting with his wife beside the front porch. How did I know she was his wife? It was fairly easy to recognize they were consummating their relationship. Thoroughly embarrassed, I scurried inside. There has to be a few boundaries within a friendship, I thought, as I untied my shoes.

Then I began to laugh—clear as day—I had become the pigeon lady!

Who's Hip?

I was ecstatic when my UPS man came up the driveway bringing my latest package. I was expecting my beautiful tree of life cache for essential oils. I like to flatter myself believing I am hip when it comes to herbal/alternative medicines and the necklace was so trendy. I unwrapped it, opened up the locket, and proceeded to dampen the fabric centerpiece with a dab of essential oils my acupuncturist had prepared. Not sure of the amount, I figured more is always better. I clasped the necklace back together and placed it around my neck—well, more was a bit too much. Herbal remedies smell nothing like Chanel No. 5. I couldn’t bear the strong aroma so I placed the necklace on the back porch to air out.

As I closed the back door, a memory came to mind—my mom, a storyteller of the old days, told stories of her momma, Annie Bell, and her quest to keep her children healthy. In the 1930s during the cold season, my Grandma Annie Bell would wrap a horrid-smelling ball of acifidity in a scrap of cloth, tie it up with string, and make necklaces for the children to wear. I am not sure how Grandma came about procuring her acifidity since they lived deep in the Appalachians Mountains, but she did.

According to the book “Healing Spices,” the root is native to the higher altitudes of the Mediterranean, Middle East, and China. Harvesters would cut the root and a resin would ooze out that would be formed into balls and hardened. This healing spice asafoetida (or acifidity) was used as a remedy during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic that killed almost 100,000 people across the world. The method of use: placing the malodorous spice around ones neck inside an acifidity bag would ward off the deadly influenza. (Paraphrased from article by Bev Walker, https://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/3613).

Whether or not my grandma knew those particulars, she was a firm believer in those putrid smelling necklaces and believed it would save her children from colds and flu. My mom was terribly ashamed to wear one and could hardly stand to smell herself. She definitely couldn’t tolerate being around anyone else sporting one.

Years ago I asked Mom, “Did it work?” She thought about for a moment. “I suppose since we couldn’t stand to be near one another when wearing those acifidity bags, our distance kept the germs from spreading. So yes, I suppose it worked.”

I went back out on the porch, put my necklace back on, and flattered myself no more…Grandma Annie Bell was hip long before me.

Virtual World Part II

It has been a long wonderful summer, one spent with nature, children and grandchildren, back porch dining, and lazy afternoons in a wicker chair reading in the shade. But the seasons are changing and I now huddle indoors as torrential rain turns my lovely landscape to ruin. The fall weather reminds me that I must face my foe since my dreams are tied to it, this slender, gray-metal device with its gateway to the land of dashboards, system preferences, utilities, mission controls, word and excel, and the document swallowing iCloud. So I swallow my dread, open the lid, and say a small prayer …… Dear God, help me deal with what they have updated, changed, or removed since I’ve been gone. I hear no answer. God doesn’t need technology, but unfortunately I do.

Most of my anxiety comes from my extreme dislike of typing. Dredging up my old high school typing inefficiencies, I was terrified when computers began invading our lives in the 1980s and 90s. Back then, I watched as my husband and daughters waited patiently for “dial-up” over the phone line to transport them to realms beyond imagination. I wanted to crawl back in my cave and draw stick figures, but I soon discovered workplaces were demanding everyone to learn. I worked as a teacher’s assistant then, and Gary, the media coordinator (previously known as library teacher when I was in school) offered to give me a quick tutorial. After a brief instruction, he told me to give it a whirl, and whirl it I did. Within ten minutes I succeeded in locking down the library’s entire computer system. Hours later, he succeeded in undoing the damage, and he never offered another teaching invitation. 

Plain and simple…computers are not for me….. but then we moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas. Needing to find a new job, I searched the Help Wanted section in the newspaper (in those good old days) and saw that every good job desired computer skills. Buckling under the new way of the world, I enrolled in a class at a local community college and bought a textbook thicker than the M Encyclopedia Britannica (reference books of information sold in a set—topics from A-Z). Have you ever tried to memorize the M Encyclopedia Britannica? I drove home with a heavy heart.

Many weeks later, I had not memorized my Computer Encyclopedia Britannica but spent hours placing multicolor sticky notes on every other page, hoping I’d access the page quickly when I started my newly acquired computer skilled job. I set that big book on my desk ready to go. My supervisor smiled when she saw my book. She said, “You won’t be needing that.” I slid my big book in a lower drawer as she handed me the company’s M-sized Computer Encyclopedia Britannica and walks away. Why God, why does it have to be so hard? But my prayers couldn’t be heard over the factory noise outside the office area.

So I survived—I learned, and managed to move up to better jobs. And with that upward movement, I decided to go back to college to finish my degree. It was there I became acquainted with a program called Word. Oh…my…Word! With steady term paper demands, Word was to be my constant companion. We had a rocky relationship from the get go. Word was needy. Word wanted me to press Save every two or three words, and if I didn’t, Word would stub up on me. Literally! Freeze up, go down, and after its little tantrum all that was left of my paper was a shabby sentence or two. I lost my religion multiple times. Said words, shameful words, words a sailor wouldn’t utter—I typed and cried to the wee hours because I didn’t Save, Save, Save.    

As time went by, the Internet speed improved; Word and I became friends; I finished college and landed a great job, worked for years, retired—my computer worries were finally over. For a blissful month or two, I basked in a tranquil world— then I began to dream of a writing career.

My chum, Word was there every step of the journey. With the finishing my novel and my current quest to publish it, all the successful writers tell you to become a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and most important you should have a Blog. So here I go again—clueless, back to bottom of the virtual pool of ignorance. Load pictures, use hash tags, become a follower, insert Emojis, load videos, on and on. Their operations confused me, but I typed on. My latest attempt has been my Blog. I signed up. I paid the money. No guidebooks the size of anything, no human Helpdesks. Only videos of people talking very fast: headings, titles, picture placement, writing areas, tons of simple options. I would have felt no more intimidated had they suggested I swim in shark-infested waters. Lord, “Why a Blog again?” God ignored me.

As I watch the instructions over and over, those beautiful young people in the Blog videos make promises beyond measure. In her dreamy snappy voice she says, “When your Blog site is completed, do these simple four thousand steps and the site will automatically transport your Blog announcement to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google, Snapchat, remote villages in Asia, across the universe….And best of all, you will find this, so simple and so easy to do!” Beautiful Person went silent and off I went.

Five days and eight hours in, my framework chosen, pictures loaded, titles, my writing there— I begin the simple four thousand steps. When these are all accomplished, I check Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google, Snapchat, remote villages in Asia, but I skip the universe. Where are all my announcements? I see no headlines, nothing at all! Hmm, now for the next few hours I do the simple steps again and again. Over and over, then oops, wrong step, back out of that, then press Send—MY ENTIRE BLOG GOES BLANK!… All my stories, pictures, hard work—gone into a virtual dark hole.

In an instant, I managed to lose what little religion I’d reclaimed over the past few years. My husband came running when he heard books slamming against the wall and my shameful language. He calmly said, “Let me see if I can help. You must be doing something wrong.” That was a very gutsy thing for him to say as I stood wild eyed, still holding a book in my hand. Within minutes, he had my stories, photos, all of it back. I felt so stupid. I am cursed, I just can’t get computers to work for me. Husband then boots up the lovely videos with the Beautiful Young People for instructions to those “little simple steps” as I go lie down on the couch and leave him be. Near bedtime he trudges into the living room and says, “Something’s wrong. Those stupid steps don’t work.”

I smile. Maybe God does care about my computer woes— I could have sworn I heard God say, See, I told you it wasn’t you.

Virtual World

Living in a virtual world has been a struggle for many of us Baby Boomers. Struggling with my new website and working on this blog, I questioned why it was so hard. I looked down at my keyboard and it all came spiraling back—back to the dark ages of typing in 10th grade.

The year was 1974; I had never been exposed to a typewriter before. The first problem became clear as soon as I sat down at my desk and confronted the clunky, boxy, metal machine. All the letters were out-of-order on the keyboard! Being a visual learner, the alphabet misplacement caused my brain to rebel. “This is not right!” it said. Not only that, I’d need to build up muscle strength in my fingers to shove down each key hard enough for steel rods to spring forward, press their corresponding metal letters against an inked ribbon, and hopefully leave an accurate imprint onto a piece of paper. I am not the most coordinated. I found that out in tryouts for basketball—I lasted one day. I never dreamed typing on a manual typewriter was a sporting event involving the correct finger pressure and manual dexterity to go from key to key.

The first day we learned the base keys (the left hand, f d s a and the right j k l ;). Over and over, we did these typing drills. Each week more keys were added to the assortment making it possible to type real words, then whole sentences. My neck hurt from switching back and forth from the typing book to the keys. Mr. Edwards, the typing teacher, noticed my head action and added a new rule. “No looking at the keys. Eyes must remain on the page at all times.” To make matters worse, he went to his desk and pulled out the evil egg timer. Dear God no!

 “You have ten minutes to type the sentences on page 21. This will be graded by correct words per minute. Go!” he ordered.

My brain completely malfunctioned. I was overwhelmed trying to remember where the letters were positioned, keeping my place in the text, and fearing Mr. Edwards as he observed my progress. It didn’t help that he was an attractive man not many years out of college. I still remember the terrifying first practice sentence: Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Surrounded by the sounds of rapid, frantic clicks of twenty-eight other typewriters and the general watching behind me—I felt like a soldier trapped in typewriter warfare.

It seemed the timer rang before I had hardly begun. I looked over my paper. It was pitiful. “Count your correct words and divide by ten,” was Mr. Edwards’ instruction. “Correct words” was my undoing. I managed a whopping ten. My piano-playing friend easily managed sixty and never broke a sweat. I stopped taking business classes thereafter, assured typing and anything associated with it wasn’t for me. For the next twenty years I lived in a perfect world….

But in the 1990’s in a faraway land of virtual reality, a keyboard processed a warning: I am coming. I will take over your life— your fingers—your mind will yield to my power….

Soar

I found a speckled-belly wood thrush lying on the ground below my window today. I picked it up and held it in my hand.  It was still a bit warm. I rubbed its belly gently looking for a glimmer of life as I’ve seen my bird-loving husband do—as he so gently coaxes many little fellows back to life who had gone face to face with a window. I don’t seem to have my husband’s magical powers. 

I was sad and I wondered why it flew right into glass that was so clearly surrounded by metal and wood siding. To me, the window bears no resemblance to the blue sky or tree top canopies of green foliage, but then again, I have made wrong decisions even though I could see all the warning signs and sailed on full speed ahead.

The majority of our window-crashing birds have managed to fly away with only a severe headache and a lesson to beware shiny enclosures.  As humans, we too can learn from our failures. I listened to a very successful women, Barbara Corcoran, on a NPR podcast and she said something similar to this, “I try not to be so hard on myself. Of all my many failures, success came right after.” She was talking about a successful career and her words have been ringing in my ears since.

I took what she said more towards my daily life and how I so often fail by what I do or say. I beat myself up and allow my mistakes and failures to take me low and defeat me. This defeat is as bad as the failure. I should follow the example of my feathered friends who took a near death blow but lived, and Barbara Corcoran—shake it off, heed the warning signs next time, determine to do better, then spread my wings and soar.

Jury Duty

I received a jury summons a month ago, and I was a little anxious about serving.  I had a weird feeling as I walked into the courthouse, kind of a sick feeling, like when in grade school you heard your name called over the loudspeaker with an order to report to the principal’s office. Guilt by association, I suppose. I went through courthouse security at my appointed time and joined a group of thirty or forty people in a large waiting area. The crowd was somber, it was quiet and no one was talking.

Were the other people feeling like me? Maybe some of them may have even had an experience with the law. My first and only speeding ticket happened in the state of Oklahoma. Lord, that road was eternal, long, and forever straight—then up from behind came a blinding light in my rear view mirror. I pulled to the side of the road fearing my punishment. I was so scared I babbled like an idiot and confessed all my sins. Waiting now for jury duty, I was feeling bad about that ticket all over again. I decided to think about something else.

My mind flitted to a story my daughter told me about her younger daughter, Care Bear, and that child’s first run in with the law at age three. Care Bear was visiting her other grandmother in Connecticut and they were at a hair salon. After the appointment, Connecticut Grandmother backed out of a jam-packed parking area and lightly touched another car. She found the world’s tiniest dent but decided to go inside the salon and find the car’s owner. The owner only had the car on loan for the day, so she refused to swap insurance information. Loaner lady insisted on having the police come.

So Connecticut Grandmother, my daughter, and Care Bear waited in the car for the law to come and assess the situation. Thirty minutes later, the blue lights of the bright colored police car alerted everyone the law was here and the patrolman pulled side-by-side Connecticut Grandmother’s car.

When Care Bear saw the patrol car out her window she shrieked and broke down in tears. My daughter tried to calm her, “Baby, what in the world is wrong?”

Barely able to talk, Care Bear sobbed and said, “I don’t want to go to jail! I don’t want to go to jail!” Guilt by association runs deep in our family.

Just as I was concluding that thought, the Clerk of Court walked into the room and made an announcement about our case. After days of legal teams bantering, when the jury was ready to enter the courtroom, the parties of who were going to be found guilty or not guilty must have felt a similar fear to my own and Care Bear’s. They agreed to settle out of court rather than let a panel of jurors decide their fate.

“You are dismissed and your check for twelve dollars is in the mail,” the Clerk said. People around me started smiling and chatting and I celebrated the lifting of my own guilt by association. I skipped out of the courthouse, joyful, and scot-free.

For the Love of Snow

This past weekend Mother Nature reminded me… “it is still winter.”

I was enthralled with the beauty of the crocuses, Easter flowers, and the yellow bells in bloom, but snow came and brought the artic cold down our way. I suppose a lot of folks, like me, were disappointed when the snow started falling. I didn’t want the cold to aggravate my aching bones and joints, or disrupt any of my weekend plans. But deep down, I knew somewhere out there a child, a young person, or a wonder-filled adult was thrilled and prayed for more.

I remember those days, watching Channel 3 and the Tennessee weatherman giving us hope for snow overnight. I would find it hard to sleep and occasionally I’d get out of bed to peek out the window. Of course I couldn’t see anything, the plastic wrap Daddy had put across the outside of the window for insulation made everything a blur.

On the blessed mornings when the weatherman was right, Momma would make us get dressed for school anyhow just in case the bus showed up. By 8 o’clock we knew it wasn’t coming and the hooping and hollering began. Nothing like a snow day! My brother, two sisters, and I would put on all the warm clothes we could to the point where we could barely move. We didn’t have snow boots so Momma made do by sliding empty Merita bread bags over our shoes and securing the top of the plastic to our socks with freezer tape. Many times we didn’t have gloves so socks and bread bags covered our hands as well. This method worked just as good as any North Face product ever made. We played all day.

So when I look out across the snow-laden landscape, I feel ashamed that I was disappointed. Somewhere someone is having the thrill, the joy, and the opportunity to create a memory that will warm their heart for an entire lifetime. How dare I not feel overjoyed by the snow.

Water

Water

This past week, the pump went out on my well, and after two days with no water, I was struggling to find anything good about the situation. All I could think about was my lack of water.

When I was a little girl, we didn’t have a well. Our water came from a mountain and filled a concrete reservoir above my house. We had so much water it supplied our house as well as two neighbors, one of whom was the greatest man to have ever lived. His name was Leslie Hedrick, and I was his adoring granddaughter.

Back then, we were blessed to have only one channel on our TV and the picture was so snowy it was painful to watch. So with little to do, a walk over to Grandpa’s house was the highlight of many evenings.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

I would find Grandpa and Grandma sitting by their fireplace having devotions. He would fold his bible shut and welcome me with as much hoopla as if the Queen of England had graced him with a visit.

Grandpa was always reeling me in with his antics. One cold winter evening he said to me, “Just a while ago, I had the best drink of water I’ve ever tasted in my life.”

 “Where from?” I asked.

“Out of my dipper from the spigot in the kitchen.” He grinned when he saw my reaction. I had fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker. I still made a trip to the kitchen for a taste to be sure. The aluminum dipper had a round teacup sized bowl and a long thin handle with a hole at the top. Grandpa had hammered a nail on the window facing and hung the dipper there for all to use. I suppose that dented dipper was fairly old, used long ago to draw water from a bucket that was carried in daily from the spring outside. It worked just as well with indoor plumbing.

I filled the dipper with ice-cold water, put the dipper to my lips, and had a drink. Nothing quite like it, he was telling the truth. From then on, every time I visited I would make a beeline to the kitchen for a drink from that dipper—even after I was grown.

When the well pump man finally showed up at my house and water began to pour from my spigots once more, I took a good long drink, and it tasted quite good. Yet, it will never compare with the water that trickled down from a crevice in the Snowbird Mountains filling Grandpa’s dipper from his kitchen sink, but it was pretty close.

Grandpa Leslie

Looking for the Good Around Me

New Year’s Day is the day of resolutions. Usual common goals are weight loss, getting in shape, or breaking a bad habit. I promised myself to work on a few of those, but I lacked the passion to be successful. The truth is I needed more. I needed something to revitalize me. I needed something to take me to a happy place. 

I know it sounds corny or that I might be embarking on a drug habit, but it’s much less expensive. I chose this simple phrase: look for the good around me. 

Now how easy is that? 

Well… it’s more difficult than it sounds. I have to give time to it and actively seek it. There are side effects…it’s habit forming and I am craving more of it. With this in mind I have made look for the good around me my personal theme for 2017.