LEGACY

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.`Pericles

  


DENTS

Ellie Searl

Katie phoned from college.

"Mom?" She hesitated. "Are you sitting down?"

In the few seconds it took to respond, I conjured scenarios of the typical fears: kidnapping, mugging, bankruptcy, expulsion.

"I wrecked the car."

She had taken my car to school with her for a couple of weeks at the end of summer and was planning to bring it back after Labor Day weekend. Her accident occurred at a five-corner intersection. A car appeared from nowhere and collided into the passenger side door.

"Are you ok?"

"I'm fine. The car's not."

My relief surprised her. But I was mollified by an experience that occurred long before she was born. MORE . . .

____________________________________________________________________

ANNIVERSARY

Carolyn B Healy

Every year it creeps up on me. In late February I start feeling uneasy, not myself. I wonder if I’m coming down with something. Why can’t I sleep? It’ll probably pass, I tell myself. But anniversaries are hidden things that can seep in and seize you unaware. The light bulb goes on when my son Ben calls from Boston or D.C. or Texas or wherever he’s gotten off to and says, “Tomorrow is the day that Lauren died.” Of course.

The first time I met Lauren was in front of the library. Accustomed to awkward middle-schoolers with little to say, I was captivated by this short confident exuberant 12 year old who looked me straight in the eye, stepped forward and stuck her hand out for a shake. Introducing us was my son, also 12, and, I think, also captivated by this new friend. MORE . . .

LOVE

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. ~Zora Neale Hurston

  


THE BREAKUP

Carolyn B Healy

Here is what you say to your heart:

Broken is overdramatic and unnecessarily hurtful. You are not broken; bruised is more like it – alright, perhaps it’s a severe contusion if that pleases you more. You will discolor and feel exceedingly tender for a while; in fact, you’ll hurt in places you didn’t know you had. But no one has to perform open heart surgery to fix you, and you don’t need the paddles to shock you back to life. You’re still beating. You know how to mend yourself, with time. Either you’ve done it before, or it’s time you learned. Over your lifetime, you’ll beat 2.5 billion times. That’s what you’re here for, not to moon over this insult. I can’t get along without you, you know.


Here is what you say to the retreating back of your person of interest:
Goodbye. No pleading, no demands for explanations, no stalking of his/her future activities. From now on, that person is the person who used to be at the center of your life. Old news, out of date, no longer qualifying as the focus of your attention. You need that attention for yourself. He/she is best viewed from a distance, both geographically and emotionally. MORE . . .

____________________________________________________________________

PARADISE

Ellie Searl

We shoved a five-dollar bill into the padlocked honor box and drove into the camping area. Pine needles, damp from a downpour the day before, blanketed the entrance. The weather had turned dry, clear, and warm - a few rays of sunlight managed to sneak through the slatted openings of dense forest walls and ceiling of intertwined branches. Aside from my husband Ed, our thirteen-year-old daughter Katie, and I, there wasn't another soul under the thick stands of evergreens and hardwoods.

Why an eerily deserted campground? In the middle of summer? In this prime location overlooking the spectacular shores of Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula? Maybe we were early and throngs of campers would crowd the grounds in a couple of hours. We'd find out soon enough - the hard way. MORE . . .

BEGINNINGS

Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep upon you sideways, they keep to the shadows, they lurk unrecognized. Then, later, they spring. ~Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assasin

   

TIME MATTERS
Ellie Searl

                                                                                             
“Hey, Ellie, now that you’ve quit teaching, what are you going to do with all that spare time?”

What a wearisome question. All that spare time. A massive life-hole filled with sluggishness and sloth.


“I didn’t quit," I'd say. "I graduated."


My plan was to find opportunities in a creative field that didn’t involve grading papers written by 12-year-olds who emulated Britney Spears and Dennis Rodman. As much as I loved the energy and enthusiasm of middle-schoolers, and as much as I enjoyed the classroom interaction, I hated reading and grading those papers. Despite my efforts to hone writing skills and instill effective techniques of framing a good story, the students' papers seemed to be written by motor mouths, without direction and without brakes. Accounts of family vacations were the worst. Mind-numbing litanies of nonessential details, with the actual visit to, say, Disney World, a one-line after-thought stuck somewhere between packing for the trip and driving home. MORE . . .

_________________________________________________________________
HEROES HAVE TO START SOMEWHERE
Carolyn B Healy


It is the season of change. The holidays have faded, we can see more clearly with the leaves off the trees, and the snow piles nudge us to stay home more than usual. So we end up staring in the mirror trying to reason out how to improve ourselves. Lose weight? Stand up to an oppressive relative? Finally quit smoking? Stop the affair?


With all my years as a therapist, I am a big fan of change. I’ve spent years trying to figure out why it happens when it does, and why it fails to happens when it doesn’t. But I want to push beyond the shallow New Years’ Resolutions construct that plugs the media hole between the end of the Christmas holiday and Valentine’s Day. MORE . . .

CELEBRATE

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love! Hamilton Wright Mabie

  

ROSE TO THE OCCASION
Ellie Searl

The phone rang at four in the afternoon just after I put the egg yolk glaze on the braided bread dough. It was a guy named Bill. He wanted to check the time of the open house.


“At five . . . No, you needn’t bring anything . . . Yes, please, your friends are welcome.” Thank god someone was going to show up.


I didn’t know this Bill, nor his friends, but now at least a couple of people would enjoy my superb hors d’oeuvres and appreciate my style and grace as a hostess. I slid the bread into the oven, poured another glass of wine, and leaned against the counter. I looked at the serving dishes ready for goodies. What was next?


The open house would be the first gathering in our home since we moved to this hellhole of a city in September. I didn’t like Youngstown. A steel town. Certainly not a garden spot. Smokestacks belched dirty clouds of iron ore debris. Street gutters ran streams of rusty water when it rained. MORE . . .

MS. CRANKYPANTS SEIZES THE SEASON
Ms. Crankypants - Guest Contributor

For starters, let me introduce myself. I’m Ms. Crankypants, guest contributor for the month. Carolyn is busy with other things – well, to be honest, I sent her what looked like an official email that the blog was taking the month off so she didn’t have to write anything. I don’t even feel that bad about it. A girl has to make her own opportunities after all. So this is my chance to tell you what I think for once.


About the holidays for instance. I’ve had it – year after year with the shopping, the decorating, the wrapping, the baking. Well, I don’t personally actually bake, but searching the stores for the special cookies that come in the cellophane covered boxes that are like the ones my grandmother used to make takes a lot of my time. MORE . . .

GRATITUDE

Human beings are actually created for the transcendent, for the sublime, for the beautiful, for the truthful...and all of us are given the task of trying to make this world a little more hospitable to these beautiful things.
-Archbishop Desmond Tutu

  

CANADIAN LANDING

Ellie Searl

Dan’s laid-back attitude and grubby appearance made me skeptical - wrinkled, flannel shirt, frayed jeans, scruffy boots, yellowed fingers, and long, greasy hair oozing out of a ratty Montreal Expos cap. Would he pull out a pocketknife and scratch dirt from what was left of his fingernails? He lit a cigarette. Did he take drugs, too? Drink? The snob in me bubbled over. But then we couldn’t be choosy about who would escort us through this critical event. We either drove ourselves - with our own car, sporting our own license plate, risking arrest - or let someone else drive - someone like Dan – someone with experience sneaking people like us, American war resisters, back and forth across the Canadian-US border. MORE . . .

CATCHING ON

Carolyn B Healy

I met Lucia at a writing seminar. She was slight, with a lined, hard luck face and unruly dark hair that obscured her small brown eyes. Twelve of us, all strangers, sat in a loose circle in a sunny high-desert retreat house waiting for the first session to begin. Our leader, a successful and engaging author of personal growth books, arrived and immediately handed out water bottles and instructed us to drink and keep drinking to stay ahead of headaches and any other high altitude symptoms. It was a way of telling us we’d be safe here. MORE . . .

FRIENDSHIP

A friend is someone who is there for you when he’d rather be anywhere else. - Len Wein

SMALL (TOWN) FRIENDS

Ellie Searl

Before Becky moved to town, Gloria was supposedly my best friend, although I never much liked her. She was mean. And bossy. At her house, we played her games, danced her way, and ate her peanut butter, potato chip, cream cheese, and pickle sandwich creations. At my house, she rode my bike, used my mother’s lipstick, and dulled the tops of my new crayons. But she seemed popular with the other kids, so by association, I was popular too. I didn’t understand enough about personality types to figure that because she bullied her way into relationships, probably everybody hated her. MORE . . .

FRIENDS, NOT ENEMIES

Carolyn B Healy

We flew in from the west over O’Hare, then banked over the Loop, studying first the close-together highrises and then the suburban houses ringed with still-green grass. Our friends sat in the row behind us and we talked about how great the city looked if only those puffy white clouds would get out of the way. We’d had a great week playing golf and seeing the Texas Hill Country but it was time to return to normal. We headed for that lovely moment of touchdown, when you are back home where you belong, but not yet overtaken by daily responsibilities. My calendar for the coming week was full. I’d see my writer friends on Tuesday, my poet friend Wednesday, a counselor friend late in the week. I felt fortunate to have all that to return to. MORE . . .

LESSONS LEARNED

“. . . people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou

  



THE GREATEST OF THESE
Ellie Searl
Ed smiled and said, “Now is the time to declare with a kiss the wedding you have performed and we have witnessed.” Friends and family dabbed tears. The just-married couple embraced, kissed softly, and held onto each other, a little longer than usual, as though they couldn’t let go for fear it might all be a dream.


I took pictures of the crowd, and of the lanterns, and of the flowers, and of the tasseled wedding program resting on the seat of a white chair, and of the radiance streaming through the branches.


My husband Ed, a Unitarian Universalist minister, often asks me to go with him when he officiates at a wedding for people I don’t know. Ed gives me compelling reasons to attend, probably because he doesn’t like to go alone: the mother is a famous writer, the father is a New Delhi cartoonist, the bride is an Argentinean swimmer, the groom is a relative of Andrew Wyeth, the reception will be at the Newberry Library. “It will be great fun.” He says. “You’ll love it.”


So when Ed asked, “Want to go to a wedding in Dubuque? It’s in a park overlooking the Mississippi and the reception is at Eagle Ridge Resort. Should be pretty,”


I thought - Road trip. Wedding in Iowa. Reception in Galena. Great.
And when he told me who was getting married - Absolutely. This was an event I wanted to honor and celebrate, and it didn’t matter that they were perfect strangers. MORE . . .


UP DEEP CREEK
Carolyn B Healy



I stood on the bank and squinted at the two white-clad figures in the middle of Deep Creek’s swirling water. As a nine year-old city girl temporarily plunked down in the Smoky Mountains for a family visit, I was on high alert for things I couldn’t see back at home, and this was going to be a big one.


My cousin Annette, six years older, was on the list of my most admired people. She could cook and sew and win 4H prizes. She had the same name as my favorite Mouseketeer, and I harbored a secret hunch that she was really the famous Annette and the family was keeping it secret. Plus, she was a teenager with teenage friends, some of them boys.


Now she was standing in the middle of the creek in a pretty white dress with lace trim. I bet she made it, I thought in a spurt of pride. I knew from experience what she was up against out there. That water was cold as ice. I knew that because her mother Anna Lou would regularly pile the cousins into her Plymouth and barrel over mountain roads to take us to the swimming hole “up Deep Creek” and then back to her house for popsicles. MORE . . .