SNOWSHOE:

February 10 – 16, 2018

Departure:

Six hours into our sixteen-hour drive, with snowshoe on my mind, it is Georgia that currently gets my attention. Crossing over a bridge with segmented pavement our minivan bounces to its rhythm like a galloping horse. I chuckle at the idea and attempt a remark to my driver son, but, speaking of horse, hoarse I am, of course I am.

Last night, the night before our much-anticipated ski trip, some NyQuil and a good night’s sleep combined to help me feel quite well in spite of the scratchy throat and voice thief that has intruded.

A familiar aroma from outside, seeps inside. To the east, stacks belch out odiferous billows carried on a breeze, a paper mill’s cast-offs. That is when you know you've entered Georgia.

We are a caravan of three. One Suburban transports four of us, another eight of us, and a minivan five of us. These are my offspring, and my offspring’s offspring. Four of my seven children, plus three mine by marriage, and nine of my twelve grandchildren. Each of the three vehicles is laden to capacity with every imaginable paraphernalia anticipated may be needed for this Florida group headed north to play in the snow.

South Carolina requires caffeine, whatever delivery preferred, and Jolly Ranchers. It is the middle of the night, or early morning, either way, a time that all of us would typically be checking out the scenery behind our eyelids, thus the flavorful assistants.

The sons make me so proud.

The parent me, the me that continually learns to let go and let them, has not yet fully relinquished the “it is up to me and I must protect” role that has long been mine, but I am learning.

When I drove this type of lengthy trip, and the times are too numerous to count, the full responsibility and burden for our safety and wellbeing rested squarely on my shoulders. I was strong then, when it came to bear that particular load, my best effort of bringing my children safely to adulthood.

Life battered, scarred, broke, knocked down but not out.

Those fight or die experiences produced strength. Strength that would have lain buried under slight and simplicity had they not demanded the warrior arise. There are times in every life when becoming a warrior is no longer optional if success is the end goal. If the beast sleeps there is no need for a fight, but the beast always wakes and eventually sets his sights on us each.

I fought.

I fought as if my life depended on it, and it did, they did. They depended on me, and they were my life.

Now, after many battles, one of the finest victories is to be a passenger in the car of my driver sons. It is they who now tell themselves in the wee road-weary morning hours of a sixteen-hour drive through the night, the pep talks I have so often told myself: perk up, keep it between the lines, precious cargo on board.

They battle the drowsies armed with Jolly Ranchers and pop. They shift in their seat, stretch out the few kinks they are able to within the confines of the shoulder belted driver’s seat, and watch the white reflectors on the black pavement approach and disappear, determined to defeat their menacing persistence with the rising sun.

These are my sons, keepers of precious hearts.

Battle on boys, you’re doing great.

The sons make me so proud.

                                                                                   

And the girls, ahh my daughters, plural, to call my own.

They are angels, sugar and spice and everything nice, all that and a bag of chips. They planned, shopped, borrowed, and packed for themselves, their babes and their men. They have gone along with whatever their husbands collectively decided because they enjoy seeing them enjoy. They ate and “rested” at the stops that were more the choosing of others than their own. They tried to get in forty winks as we jostled over the miles but in fact only got in about three and a half winks, yet, they smiled, hushed sick of being harnessed tots, and found beauty between raindrops that fell on us for hours. They wearily succumbed to quitting time, painfully aware of the fast-approaching morning that would bid youngsters explore the new day.

Gems.

Rare, valuable, precious.

Those girls adorn my family like a royal crown.

Nine tots and smalls; four girls, five boys. Two one-year old’s, a two-year-old, three three-year old’s, a five-year-old, six-year-old, and eight-year-old. Whew, I am exhausted just typing it! They traveled well, all things considered.

One boy, just one year old, randomly yelled out “Jesus”, together with his skyward extended arm, as if tapping in on that supernatural power to persevere. Truly, on behalf of us all, unbeknownst to his cute self with a pure childlike exuberance, we needed that.

I do love this second batch, more than I thought I would, more than I knew I could, before they were here.

I was still trying to finish up the first batch when the second one started coming. Until that time I had been under the mistaken impression there would be a break between batches.

There would be no break from child responsibilities and obligations for me who began them at the age of eighteen, and for me who after rounding third base heading for the home stretch with home plate in view, was handed a baton to continue on for another precarious lap.

I just couldn’t…

But then, I didn’t have to.

The full brunt of responsibility was not, as it turns out, a requirement of grammahood. Being grandma is much less sacrifice of self, and far more a valuing of self. The tiny’s and smalls make me feel I am the inventor and sole possessor of fairy dust. They look with wonder at their world, and I look at them and wonder, how could I have been so wrong about this grandma thing, and how, I wonder, did this grandma get so lucky. It’s a magical arrangement!

Day 1:

So basically, the experts say to “ski the whole mountain”, going across from side to side in graceful S’s. That is my goal, even still I somehow positioned myself on the slope in rather a W shape.

The fork in the trail would have been a safe bet for me whichever side I chose. I complicated the choice when in a split second having started on one side, decided to go to the other, preferring the lift offered at the end of that trail instead. The decision created a situation that I could not correct in time to keep myself from going over the edge. It was a soft edge, a gradual decline over snow, not like some that abruptly dropped to a danger filled landing onto trees below. I likely would have slid down it with little difficulty but was determined not to, and did stop, right on the edge, one leg over, one leg still on top, knees bent opposite of the other to each side of me. I would love to have seen a chalk line drawn around me, or an overhead view. I later thought how it would have been a great scenario for Lucy Ricardo.

The pop I heard and felt come from my left knee as I bore down heavy to brake myself, prompted me to say out loud, “oh, that’s not good”. From on my back in the W position, thankfully out of ski traffic, I could sit up but could not move my legs from beside me. It was like trying to stand up while in a splits position, on ski’s, on a hill. It just wasn’t going to happen. My skis were like giant restraints that needed to come off for me to get a leg under myself to get up. I couldn’t get a grip in the middle of the ski pole to depress the release on the ski, and while holding the grip on the end of the pole my arm was too extended to put enough pressure on the release to get it to snap open.

I felt sixty years old.

A thoughtful man asked if I needed help, my reply, “I am so stuck”, if you could just get my one ski off I will be able to manage. He helped with both ski’s. I stood up, re-ski’d my boots, and ever-so-cautiously continued down the mountain.

There was some discomfort, but I made it to the bottom and took the lift up, deciding to do one more run before the lifts closed for the day, forcing quit time.

On my way to our winter home away from home, I hit ice and fell hard on my right hip and elbow. I thought to myself, ask me what hurts, my answer would be can you name a body part that doesn’t.

I knew the next day would be worse so after getting changed out of my ski clothes, I walked to the village with one of my sons, his first time at the resort. We enjoyed an outstanding sunset over the valley and distant mountains, which was a lovely way to take my mind off my knee, elbow and hip, and to enjoy some one on one mom son moments.

I was grateful, and righter than I knew about the next day.

Day 2:

Dawn brought with it a whole new realization of the seriousness of my knee situation. I still hoped it might get better as the day progressed and my muscles got warmed up, still hoped I might ski, but my knee barely permitted steps. Skiing was out of the question and by day’s end I knew it would be for the next day too as my knee could not bear weight, let alone maneuver slippery slopes.

My three days of skiing were reduced to one, in an instant.

I was sad about that.

I did find other ways to enjoy the time though, grateful for the ability to hobble around on the third day, with indications there was hope for healing with time, and hopefully, without a physician.

I hope, still.

Day 3:

Valentine’s Day. I found some kitchen shears in the drawer and used them to cut white hearts from napkins, write some Valentiney words on them and stuck them here and there with strips cut from a bandage. This I did after all went to bed the night before so that when they awoke there would be that simple surprise. Although the morning for me started too late to witness the reactions of the first young risers to find a few hearts in a trail on the floor, I heard they were indeed enjoyed.

After being cooped up the day before, nursing my banged-up body, it was a great relief to get out of the house and enjoy the village a bit. I took my camera, and my Jamey, and with a walking stick in hand hobbled painfully and deliberately, but I was moving and outside and it was good. It was actually my second trip to the village that day, having gone out earlier for a coffee with the girls, kiddos in tow.

Homeward bound:

West Virginia is beautiful with its layers of mounded terrain topped by puffy clouds in various shades of gray and white, and a promise every so often that blue is indeed still up there, while our caravan aims south to the sunshine state.

Beneath the gray-green, dense tree covered, almost furry looking hills, sprawls harvested fields golden dry, at the same time wet with rain and melted snow, creating textures and patterns of muted earthy tones. Naked woodlands show off their slender forms. White tree trunks contrast with the black of wet ones and the dark of thick acres. Rivers that rushed the color of a caramel latte on the trip to, are completely changed on the landscape of the trip from, with soft shades of green tipped by white where rock beds ruffle the swift current.

The hills are spattered with buildings, dilapidated barns a favorite, while others wear fresh paint proudly. Rusted metal roofs and peeling clapboard sided homes with smoke spouting chimney’s, shared space in harmony with warped, sagging trailer homes. Stately hilltop houses resembled royalty overlooking peasants, in comparison.

We pass miles of tractors, haybales, cows, horses, whole yards of junk collected probably unintentionally, collected none-the-less. Rock walls of cut away mountain on the highway sides give way to valleys of villages. Little white churches with steeples stretching toward God, anchor.

I appreciate and find beauty in each unusual, so out of my ordinary scene.

The caravan is rolling along, across two state borders so far, three to go, with a five o’clock sun to the west.

Part of me silently begs turn around, go back, reluctant to accept that our mountain snow trip is past.

 And why wouldn’t I be?

 I love the people I have shared the Treetop with. I have completely enjoyed their company around the clock for five full days. I have completely enjoyed the ski, the few runs I got in before my knee popped under the W shape of me on the slope. I have completely enjoyed the sun, sunset, mist and fog veiled views, fireplaces, grown man-brother shenanigans, uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandma Pattycakes interactions, hot cookies, little feet thumping carpeted floors instead of their usual pitter patter on bare Florida floors, and even the chance to boot and bundle up to fend off the cold temperatures I bristle against under any other circumstance. The scenery both coming and going made even the travel between destinations completely enjoyable, especially sharing with first-timers taking in sights.

Some of the kids are old enough to remember. Hopefully the future offers a similar trip and the younger ones will get their chance to remember.

Each trip is unique.

There will be new firsts for us each, next time.

This time, our trip wraps up in a short ten hours, when the caravan will split up to carry us as individual family groups from within the whole, to our own beds and baths.

The new morning will bring a too quiet breakfast, and within a few days our Snowshoe vacation will quickly and certainly be smothered in chores, jobs, obligations, and routine dailies.

When the kids go to sleep and the parents have think time, they will go again to Snowshoe, in thought. They will smile remembering the little arms that hugged big. In the stillness they might hear again the laughter and exclamations of merriment over cold snowballs, newly acquired ski skills, bungee flips, plastic track cars, cake pops, fabulous rocks, eight-point bucks, and hiking sticks.

 Back home, back in the grind, Snowshoe vacation will be over, but some of its residue will be stuck on us like a tattoo on the heart, a branded soul.

Pictures will recreate whole moments, while others may look but will only see pictures.

One day after the Valentine’s Day we were able to spend in our Snowshoe home, a day for love and hearts, the thought comes to me that if gratitude were a shape, it would be that of a full, plump heart. 

Home:

The first morning back in Florida is too white.

White curtains, white walls, white floors contrast abrasively on my heart still attuned to dark brown wood walls, and beige carpeted floors. Beige and brown would never be my choice for home décor, yet, in our Snowshoe mountain home it created a cocoon of warmth and comfort, and this morning there is where I would like to still be.

Alas, everything ends, and our snowy mountain time by means of a sixteen-hour drive, has morphed into the tropics that suit me better than those harsh winters and their heavy, bulky wardrobe requirements, and bottomless bottles and tubes of ointments and lotions to battle dry skin, ever did, ever could.

Unpacking looms, along with the laundry, and the return of borrowed snow clothes.

My knee injury, and bruised hip and elbow scream at me each time I dare forget them.

Pictures show me where I’ve been and what I’ve seen, and I am again impressed by the beauty, the experience, the together time, the privilege, grateful.

May it linger and come up for review in our thoughts and conversations and may we each have a fresh flutter of joy because of it.

May its reasons to smile not fade even as days further separate.

May God smile because we have appreciated His creation, and His goodness to us.

Already, only hours home, with the thought of a next time,

I dare ask,

Lord, may we be given another! 

P.J.

FRESH

It is the third day of a brand-new year, a fresh beginning.

Hopes and desires for how it may play out over the 362 days of the year that lie ahead, are not too dissimilar from the previous year’s 365, health, happy family, needs met. It is not the monumental that I aspire to, just,

more please.

More of the best of what I have known. Such goodness. Such abundance. Though not without hope for a few things, to be even more still, than in the past.

God knows.

So, I just trust.

I love the much anticipated Christmas season, its sights, sounds, smells and activities swell me. But today, sadly, I began its dismantling. Garlands were gathered, lights looped, cards collected, and beautiful baubles bagged and boxed. The porcelain baby, sheep, Mary and Joseph were carefully paper swaddled and packed, their service suspended for the next eleven months. I quietly pray I don’t pack up the flesh and spirit Jesus, even for a moment, desperately needing Him always near.

Bit by bit my outdoor display was reduced back to its original form; wire, string, green rope lights, and gold garland. It had for these last few weeks whimsically framed the front door, up one side, over the top, and down the other side in swirls and curls, finishing in a long trail along the front of the house. A passerby during installation was prompted to offer his fond opinion of its “Whoville” reference, unintended on my part. As I undecorated, I couldn’t help but feel like I was doing the wrong thing, repeatedly, but at the end of my feelings I knew I had disassembled beyond a point of salvage, and I did not have the heart to begin a reassembling.

Besides, it really was time for some fresh.

The wind determinedly pulled a cold front from the north, nearer.  I could feel the temperature change in the couple hours spent outside. In my long sleeves I was cool, on the edge of cold, but the coolness felt too good to do anything about. The briskness was refreshing, and I liked it. I opened the windows to let the cool crisp outdoor air in, infusing my stale indoors, not warm or humid enough for the air conditioner to kick on and circulate it. Within minutes the whole inside was marvelously freshened. Christmas clutter out, fresh, in.

The Christmas tree is still up, well, my odd version of a tree anyway. No dropped needles, no fresh pine scent, it is simply branches painted white, clumped and secured around a pvc pipe, with a couple tied on horizontally. White lights and white garland line most branches, though a few sticks were left bare. My most admired ornaments line them in such a way that each could be appreciated. A white paper chain creates airy, slight swags. Vintage mercury glass balls and baubles, dangle. One of my favorites, artistic liberty taken in its creation, a vellum angel hovering over a gold wire and mesh nest, where a tiny baby swaddled in cotton, lay sleeping. The tree topper is a large gold tinsel wrapped ball, stuck through with skewers to which varied, small sized gold balls, were added on each skewer end. The result, a nod to a Mid-Century-Modern atomic star. My son Jamey, who is a MCM aficionado, used his own artful eye to assemble it as the topper of my tree design for a local outdoor Christmas display, a couple years ago. It just so happened to be the perfect addition for my personal Christmas décor, this year. I was thrilled to get to use it again, especially as it was a nice reminder of time spent with him, working together for several Christmas seasons, on those events. I left the tree up, maybe just ‘till tomorrow, maybe for another week, who knows. It so far, does not detract from my craving for fresh.

And finally, the crisp, cool air delivered through open windows, stirs the scent of hanging, air-dry, fresh washed laundry, as I am about to take my bath after a full day of tasks. I’ll add Christmas gift bubbles, light a Christmas gift candle, and further splurge with a gift of Christmas chocolate. I expect the experience altogether to cleanse and soothe me to sublime freshness. My freshly laundered gown and robe await, and when the time comes, I will slip me into fresh, smooth sheets.

Then, just like that, the third day of a new year, will end. Already three days of 2018’s history, written.

The fresh is but a moment, a split second ahead just as quickly becoming behind. Oh, how I love the fresh, the looked forward to, the possibilities. I love new year’s, clean sheets, fresh air. I love Monday’s, fresh beginnings to fresh new weeks.

Fresh is not easy to maintain. Dirty clothes pile up, clutter accumulates, stink happens.

I make a fresh commitment here on this early January day, to be a better me, already exasperatingly cognizant of the fact that I will fail,

too often,

but when I do fail, I will say to myself, yup, big fail, and as a new next breath comes, so too does a new next chance to get it right, or at least right-er.

A fresh chance, with each, and every, breath.

Every breath a fresh chance.

Remarkable, really.

P.J.

I don't think it's possible to go wrong with Christmas lights!

Early January Prayer

Oh Lord, how I need the fresh, and a refreshing, hopeless outside of You. The old year is out and the new in, but the old one’s stink lingers, for so many. Pains, too great to bear, Dave and Cheryl, Mindy, Sylvain, Susan, Shawn and Sherry, Nancy, Michelle, Diane, Marie, Betty, and more, many more, are not bringing loved ones with them across this yearly threshold of time. They have expressed the freshness of soul wounds in their deep loss, not so able to fully join in while the world cheered on the holidays.

Lord, there are many who begin the new year without freshness, as they have no choice but to bring the old baggage of illness, injury, or heartbreak, heavy burdens that they are, with them into the new year. The two Kathy’s, the two Danielle’s, Brian, Rebecca, Helen, Wyatt, Ed, Peggy, and again, many more, pray for reprieve and healing. Lord, I pray it for them. I find hope in knowing You are the Great Physician, may these have that hope too. And for Garry, Bella, and Annie who know Your healing, I am grateful that hope is real, in You.

There have been 2017 highs that could only have been orchestrated by Your divine hand. Oh Lord, life changing, life enhancing moments too beautiful to write into our stories, if they were ours alone to write. Children have been added, four to my family alone, amazing! Gatherings of loved ones have been celebrated. Travels have provided together time, exploration, re-union, and refreshment. Job opportunities grew bank accounts, and paid off a mortgage. A first home was purchased. Generosity was given, and received. Health and well-being, enjoyed. Friendship stakes driven deeper, and surer, caring for one another. You Lord, have given good gifts in 2017. Even while Your adversary prowls, seeking whom he may devour, he is powerless to overcome Your goodness and light.

These lives we live are a crazy oxymoron, Lord, of sorrows and joys, and You know it, and feel it all with us, as a loving Father does his precious children. Your mercies are new every morning, and we know it, as children of a loving Father, who in the middle of every imaginable chaos stretches a hand to be pulled into the escape, into You, where peace is found despite turmoil. I say thank You, embarrassingly aware it is vastly inadequate in comparison to the abundance of Your endless love and care for me, yet, I must say it. I must live it.

Thank You, Lord, Thank You, Lord, Thank You, Lord

In the name of Jesus, Emanuel, God with us, in this 2018^th year I pray, amen.

P.J.

Fall-filled

Fill me full of Fall, for the eighth of what has become my annual leaving for the leafing.

This little northerly jaunt each Autumn is a time of reflection, a gathering of thoughts, a rejuvenation of spirit, one that I look forward to long before it arrives, grateful for its nurturing affects that linger considerably after.

Another year has begun departure. The kick-off event; a dazzling display here in the northern south courtesy of Oaks, Cypress, Ginko, Elm, Poplar, Sassafras, Sumac, and Maples, always the Maples which seem most anxious to strut their brilliant stuff. And no wonder, they do have so much to offer, with shades of yellow, orange, red, black, and beautiful combinations of any of these. Even the Poison Ivy that slowly slithered around dark trunks of summer hosts, now here in Autumn, is proudly worn by Fall forests like strands of strung rubies.

Unlike the screeches, shrieks, squawks, and wails from large southern tropical birds of home, eight hundred miles away, here in the northern south I bask in the lighter, sweeter bird songs overhead. These combine with the scampers of chipmunks and squirrels across crisp carpets, dry leaves that have had no choice but to let go, while butterflies still enjoy slurps of nectar from late blooming flower cups. 

Altogether it is what draws me, why I come here. I attend this grand affair to bear witness of the living cycle that at year’s final quarter, begs me stop, make some effort to bridle the shock, that it is indeed time to wrap up another.

At least this once yearly, I relish my melancholy.

Yes, I know, a curious oxymoron, but I find great solace in facing what ails or has ailed, when quietly surrounded by God in His handiwork. When, and where the constant commotion of dailies are dulled, I am “dwarfed” (Jackie Kendall) by Him, instead of by them. And that is ever so much the preferable dwarfing! There is great comfort knowing none of it, this living business that I allow myself to think I am orchestrating, is, ever has been or ever will be, my burden to figure out after all. Every sense is reawakened, renewed, as I remember, “re-member” (Ann Voskamp).

When we were both young, the year and I, there were hopes, sprouting like tiniest buds on bare branches that up until then appeared lifeless.

Spring promised.

Before we knew it life’s youth like Spring’s buds, burst into full Summer bloom, lavish, dressed to the nine’s, ten’s even. Perfection from hair to shoes, Summer’s waist sashed in beautiful gardens, her lush locks laden with bustling aviary villages, and her dancing toes sprinkled with butterflies, dragonflies, and buzzing bees. Unrivaled opulence. Strong limbs extended invitation to climbers, and swingers, while protecting gently from stinging rays.

She tirelessly nurtured.

Time goes. Not fast really, it simply goes, little by little, almost imperceptibly, until one day looking up to the sky, one sees the dark undulating formations in choreographed unison, light gently in long rows on the wires. Migration has begun. What time is it anyway? The light of evening grows shorter, deceives. Pumpkin spice invades.

Summer’s sweet chariot swings low. She smiles and cues her princess wave, looking back, looking ahead.

The weather report states a cool front is coming, and riding in on it, evidence that Autumn popped in for her brief annual visit. She is tenacious against her inevitable defeat, doing her very best to be spectacular. Undeniably admirable, she dresses like gypsy royalty, layering colors and patterns without regard to fashion etiquette. She can arrive early or late, it’s her own affair, and can stay until she is kicked out, which is exactly what she does. Autumn is willing to risk the steal to third with every intention of sliding into home, safe. Autumn reminds, rewinds the year, simultaneously preparing for the little of it that remains.

It surprises me, who loves a perpetual summer, how much I crave the fall season. We are a lot alike, Autumn and me. We both have invested the best we had to work with to reach this place and time.  Now here, every intention is to dazzle, delight, and defy, until at last, we each are ushered out.

P.J.

To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

Let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if do not lose heart.

Galatians 6:9

A Lyrical Melody Medley 

We’re driving Cadillacs in our dreams,

You’ve been all over the place

and it’s been all over you

There’s no such place as Neverland,

Peter Pan.

I can’t stand to fly

Men weren’t meant to ride

with clouds between their knees

We call them fools

who have to dance within the flame,

convinced it’s not living

if you stand outside the fire.

I’ve wasted time

I’ve wasted breath

I think I’ve thought myself to death.

Turn up the collar on my favorite coat

This wind is blowin’ my mind.

Every storm runs out of rain,

like every dark night turns to day.

Pull in to town,

step off the bus,

shake off the where you came from dust.

Driving along, just me, the Autumn road, and mountain radio stations, changed often. I was struck by the music’s cleverness of words. This is a bit of creative credit to those writers whose prose and rhymes resonated in the moments.

Are you familiar with the term “the butterfly effect”?

The exact definition can get a little bit tricky, but for the sake of my story, I will use an explanation offered by Wikipedia, which is this: “the idea that one butterfly could eventually have a far-reaching ripple effect on subsequent historic events”.

For many of my adult years I have lived on considerably lower than the highest dollar amount within the definition of poverty, but for the most part that was not known, as we had a fine home, dressed well, and never went hungry. Though many meals and articles of clothing stretched much farther than they reasonably should, and regularly I was uncertain how the bills would get paid, still my family did not appear to be poverty stricken. I attribute that to a frugal upbringing that rubbed off onto me, and included a common-sense, figure it out and make it work, mentality.

To this day, my finances are almost as tight as they have ever been. It is the result of my choosing. Rather than to pursue a career years ago, I considered a more important work investment for me to be that of bringing my kids to adulthood successfully. Trying to give 100% of myself to both a career and motherhood seemed to me an impossibility, both would suffer. I chose to apply myself wholeheartedly, to the best of my ability, to my children. It was a conclusion that took some time to reach, as when my mom journey began I was barely more than a child myself. Just eighteen and a half years old when my first was born, he was followed every couple of years for the next fifteen with another, until there were seven. The deeper into my work as mom, the less I could justify leaving them alone for some period of time every day as “latch-key kids”, or even in the care of someone other than me. So I didn’t.

 I always had some sort of earnings from jobs I could complete between the morning and afternoon hours when they were in school. Summers posed a bit of an obstacle, and we do have the stories of shenanigans when mom was not home to prevent them, but for the most part, my kids did not go unsupervised by the adult whose biggest concern was for their well-being. This has been my most rewarding work, my most important life investment, and though I am dollar poor, the result of my work being the adults my children have become, is the far superior measure of treasure.

Now that I have to claim three score for my age, I feel a strong urge to have an income that might allow me to take proper care of myself, like with healthcare, home repairs and car replacement, without being a financial burden on my kids who think they need to take care of mom, and without my parents who have kept me in their used cars for more than three decades. Of course, I love being cared for, but dislike knowing the sacrifices that need to be made by my loved ones on my behalf. Aren’t I supposed to be helping them, like my parents have me, and not the other way around?

I decided it was time to try my hand at a “career”, my first, at the age of sixty. Seems I’m a bit late to the party but hey, I’m still breathing so why not. I’ve had many jobs over the years but only one I considered as a long-term position. I worked in a laboratory for a couple of years and it felt like important work. It was the greater good that most connected me to that job, a work that mattered, a time investment that made a difference besides simply providing me an income. I liked the job quite a bit, but the business was sold to a larger company whose existing employees would absorb my position.

Three of my sons either have been, or currently are, insurance adjusters. I have listened to their stories and thought maybe I could fit into the job. I started toward that goal, taking the forty credit hour class, passing the final exam, getting my fingerprints submitted, and applying for licensing, and then, I left for vacation.

While out of town, hurricane Harvey slammed Texas and hurricane Irma was spinning in the Atlantic on a path toward Florida. Even without having my license yet, my kids encouraged me to apply with catastrophe companies to try to get immediate work in light of these storms. When the need is so great, emergency licenses are issued. It seemed like having completed a class and having already submitted for licensing, I would have a pretty good chance for that to happen.

One company let me apply without existing license information, and that application was filled out while still away on vacation. Upon my return, I found in my stack of mail a letter from the department. I thought, oh yay, my license is here. But oh contraire, the letter was in fact, stating that I would be required to submit certain certified court documents to explain “background information deficiencies” in order to be licensed. Specifically they listed one event, an arrest for theft, on August 22, 1974. Not in all the forty three years between that time and this, had I ever been required to provide that information. I suppose due in large part to my non-career life choices, and the other part just for the fact it was not a serious enough infraction, misdemeanor of a minor, to be deemed necessary for review.

For over thirty years I have lived more than fifteen hundred miles from those courts. To go in person for these documents would be costly and seemed unnecessary, so some online research and phone calls, advised sending a Freedom Of Information request to the arresting police department, which I promptly did. The form asked for details that would help them locate the proper records. I can barely remember what happened two days ago let alone forty three years ago.

 One of my life conclusions has been that a person remembers what was traumatic or dramatic, and years removed have a way of altering details. Like it or not.

This process forced me to think about these things that I hadn’t given a moment’s thought to in many years. All I really knew of the specifics were that I got arrested one month after my seventeenth birthday, and that only because the letter from the state listed that date, for trying to steal a t-shirt from a store in the plaza near me, that, I remembered. I was put in jail for trying to steal a t-shirt. Crazy!

I was with a couple friends at the time, one of which made it their mission to collect the hundred dollars needed to bail me out of jail. They were able to do so very quickly and I was released, with a court date. That same friend’s mom accompanied me to court as one in charge, since I was a minor. I have always had respect for my friend’s mom, respect that grew deeper as my own kids reached the age I was back then. I never told my parents, any of it. Parents find these things out even still, eventually, but never on my account for having volunteered the information. At this point it just seems mean to make them “go there”, and at sixty years old I am still afraid to tell them of this sordid past.

 Back then, I was so stupid that I actually believed I was smart!

My friend’s mom was able to perceive that in me, seeing a fragility that I myself was completely unaware of at the time, and for that matter, not for many years following. She knew this could bode very badly and was willing to intercede. Right, or wrong, her care was, and is, undeniable.

We went to court, she and I, and that was it. A year later I was refunded ninety dollars of the hundred posted for my bail, end of story, and from then until now, it has been. I only remember the money part of the story because for me at that time, it was a large amount.

This is the part of the story where “the butterfly effect” begins to come into play.

 I had a volatile friendship at the time that had morphed into time spent together shopping, which for us actually translated to shoplifting, perfume, earrings, nail polish, that sort of thing. She took pleasure in showing me her latest acquisitions, quickly stepping up her craft to stealing underwear and tops. Naturally I felt I should do the same.

On a particular summer evening we “shopped”, entering a store whose name is long forgotten, where my eye fancied a yellow t-shirt with a butterfly on it. I no longer have a picture of it in my mind’s eye, but remember this much; I liked it, did not have the money to buy it, so I put it in my purse. Of course I knew it was wrong but the consequences were not considered. In fact at that time in my life, it was all about me, and the moment. Consequences were never considered.

I was the most ill-equipped person for real life that I have ever known. Fortunately some good stuff stuck, and as it turned out, I have made it to today.

The one company that accepted my application for insurance adjusting even before I had my license, emailed me stating that they wanted me to come to Texas where I could get the training I needed and   be issued an emergency license. Of course I was excited to be offered this fast path opportunity. Home from vacation only two days at that point, no matter how I figured it, I just could not maneuver a trip to Texas in only two days from receipt of that email. The following day however, a starting date four days away was offered, and that one I believed I could manage.

My car had had some issues that my son, with a bit of assistance from another son had corrected just a couple weeks prior, without which the twenty hour drive to Texas would have been impossible. I thought my licensing process was on track. So, off I went like a cowgirl on her trusty (hopefully) red steed (my fifteen year old nearly 200,000 mile Mercury Sable). My steed and I galloped toward the goal even while knowing the same licensing issue could occur. I figured (and mostly prayed) that it be as God intended, for my good, and I told Him I would accept the outcome. If the door opened and I could work, ok. If not, also ok. Well it did open, until it shut. As the reality of the shutting was sinking in, I lost a night’s sleep with worry. My it’s “ok” Lord if You don’t allow that door to be opened to me, was usurped by emotional exhaustion.

 When the morning sun finally came up, I called my ex-husband Larry, another casualty of my not so glory days, who was living in his childhood home back in Illinois where we met. As I was telling him what was happening, I was surprised that he was surprised. He has an exceptional memory, but did not remember that this whole me getting arrested thing ever happened. That made me feel at least a little better that so many of the details had left my own lousy memory. He anticipated my need and offered to go to the courthouse to try to get what licensing required of me, even before I asked. Repeatedly reassuring me he was happy to help.

I did not expect him to meet with success, thinking there was no way he could do what up until then had proven too difficult for me, but I felt desperate and gratefully answered yes, please try. Within a couple of hours at the most, he did in fact have in his hands the very paper that licensing required me to submit, a certified letter from the appropriate Clerk of the Court stating that the records had been destroyed. No record against me existed.  

Why my home state turned this up, and how it could be considered relevant as an only infraction on my background, as a minor forty three years earlier, I will never know. Nor will I ever know what exactly did happen in court that day. Was I “convicted” of a crime? I do not remember the legal terminology.

 Until these past few days I have never really considered what a different matter it is altogether between an arrest, and a conviction of a crime. There were no further requirements of me by the courts as far as I can recall, which may mean the charges were dropped or dismissed, satisfied in some way that I don’t remember. A conviction of a crime may never have happened at all, and in fact, I think not.

 Maybe all these years if ever the subject came up, I was the only one convicting me.

The words “purged”, “destroyed”, and “non-existent” had been used as I spoke with officials in my effort to obtain these certified copies. I cannot know, now that I am interested to know, what I was incapable of understanding back then. It was something I did do, but it is not who I am, and does not need to be what defines me.

Larry sent me a picture in a text of the certified letter from the Clerk of the Circuit Court. One page, a couple of simple sentences essentially acquitting me, giving me permission to let it go, because it was gone.

I never again have to consider how to answer “that question” when filling out an application. The signed and raised seal pressed into the lower left corner of court letterhead gives a forever and official, no records exist status. The official letter that clears me did not come quickly enough to help me stay for work in Texas, and that was so disappointing, but I can now submit this letter to my home state, and hopefully be granted licensure through normal processes.

So, what do I know through this less than desirable experience, whose ending turns out to be really quite desirable?

 I know that after years of trying to do the right things for my children and myself, failing often, but pressing on determinedly, reaching for the finish line of raising my kids successfully, even still, to so many and maybe myself as my own worst critic, I do not measure up and never will. I am still being viewed through eyes of doubt, and still being required to explain and defend myself.

And, I ask me, will I never rise above, never get this and all the other monkeys off my back?

And, I know that in the middle of it, when I am losing sleep and finding tears, as the minions of Hell persistently pick at scars in an effort to draw fresh blood, that I should not forget I hold a certified letter stating that the records have been destroyed. They do not exist. There is nothing against me.

By God’s mercy, grace, and love I have indeed reached the finish line of my first most valuable and important job, child rearing. If I never had another work to invest myself into, I still will never consider the choice I made to make motherhood my priority, inferior to any other profession I might have sought. More fullness of life could not have come by any other means.

In whatever way the rest of my insurance adjusting pursuit plays out, it has up to this point shown me at least this, which is no small thing: The butterfly on the yellow t-shirt from my past, set in motion something I never expected would affect my present. A kind of literal butterfly effect, proof that choices, even those as seemingly minute in the grand scheme of things as the ever so light swish of air from a butterfly’s wings, has the potential to reach far. How much more so for life’s choices of greater significance.

Hell’s minions are tireless, and their assignment is nothing short of total annihilation. They will cause a sin sickened spirit to fester into such a state that the focus turns to one of oh, woe is me, look at all I have lost and all I do not have, instead of the life affirming message of God that would cause me to say woah, look at all I have been given, in spite of my own self.

Be brave I tell me, stand tall.

I have a certified letter of sorts, signed with the blood of the cross of Jesus Christ, who for me chose to pay every single one of the penalties I have earned. He died, willingly, so that I can live, and just as He rose again, so too will I. Knowing this strengthens me to hold high, and with a rebel yell of mutiny against the Hell minions who only seem to have gained an upper hand, read out loud for all to hear the part that states, the records have been destroyed, the records do not exist. And when I am not acceptable to others, and when even my own self is deceived by the lie that I am not good enough, I need only remember that God has called me out to be His forever daughter and because of this I possess the right and power to wave my own personal certified letter, issued from the high court of the Most Honorable Judge Jesus Christ, who states that by Him and on my behalf, there is nothing, nada, nix, zero, zilch, nothing, against me.

P.J.

As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us. Psalm 103:12

I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins. Isaiah 43:25