No One Has Ever Accused Me Of Being Appropriate...

I’ve been described in lots of ways but in terms of personality, it boils down to one of two things.  Some say I’m aloof and standoff-ish.   Some say I’m very open and friendly (or, as my husband usually puts it, too friendly and too open).  Both are probably true.  I can certainly be reserved and I can also be quick to hug and smile.  I’ve been accused of being cold and bitchy.  I’ve been accused of being funny and lighthearted.   One thing’s for sure – no one has ever accused me of being appropriate.

I live – as much as any honest person can, anyway – by the Golden Rule.  I try to treat everyone the way I’d like to be treated and, more specifically, don’t treat anyone differently or better than anyone else.  That means that I communicate with the janitor, my doctor, the grocery store cashier, a senator, or the guy behind me in line for the port-a-potty the same way.  For some reason, this surprises people.  And unsettles some.

Many years (lifetimes?) ago, I was at the 1996 Coca Cola Olympic Village, doing interviews with all sorts of people for my radio station.  There were “man on the street” type snippets, a couple of athletes, and the President of Coca Cola.  Later, at another event, I was talking about that day and someone who heard me was astounded that I could have a 2 minute conversation with someone like a high level Coke executive!  It honestly never occurred to me that I shouldn’t be comfortable doing that.  He’s just a man.  Pants one leg at a time and all that.   I asked very predictable questions, he gave me predictable answers.  It was my job.  It was his job.  When we wrapped up, I shook his hand, then shook his assistant’s hand and we said “Thank you” at the same time.  So I laughed and said “Jinx, you owe me a Coke!”  The VIP laughed, I smiled.  Life went on.

Before then and since then, I’ve met lots of interesting VIP type people.  And said or did things that Miss Manners would not have done.  When I crossed paths with Hosea Williams, I stuck my tongue out at him.  I don’t even remember why – we’d just been making small talk while he waited to pick someone up.  I remember that it felt right at the moment and I remember that he laughed and said something about me having “spunk” before the Ambassador left the building.  This seems to be a pattern with me, and I’m OK with that.  I don’t have Turret’s Syndrome and am perfectly capable of controlling my words (and my tongue), I just don’t see why I should.  If I speak to a Senator like a human being, he will probably see me as one, too.  If not, well, I’m not losing any sleep over that and I doubt he is, either.

By the same token, if I speak to a cashier or waiter or the trash guy, I have the same likelihood of putting my foot in my mouth if the moment presents itself.  Life is full of moments.  Life is often embarrassing! Life is messy! Life is funny!  Why do we pretend it isn’t?  I live in my moments.  Embarrassing, messy, funny, or sad.

True, I often do my living in the company of people who actually have filters between their brains and their mouths.  People who don’t speak every ridiculous thought they have.  I try to be mindful of that but the reflex usually wins over the restraint.  So there are plenty of occasions that leave me amused, leave a stranger stunned until they chuckle, and that leave my companions aghast that I just did or said whatever I just did or said.

By admitting that I have no desire to reel it in, one might think that I’m rude or ill mannered.  Not so - see above about striving to live by the Golden Rule.  While I may say what pops into my head to perfect strangers, I don’t believe I am ever rude.  I don’t think I ever say anything untrue, and would never say anything that I think could be construed as hurtful.  If I speak, it’s because I want to make a human connection.  Sometimes it’s about just plain recognition – one human being to another.  I’m not trying to form relationships with everyone I encounter.  I think a bit of contact that brings a fleeting smile is plenty.

As for the aloof description?  That’s pretty accurate, too.  I don’t need to connect with everyone.  I’m just as likely to say nothing at all as I am to say something flippant.  I don’t love small talk and have no desire to discuss the weather or outfits or new hairstyles.  I rarely go to the same hair dresser twice because I don’t need a friend, I need a haircut.  But just because I’m standing quietly in the corner doesn’t mean I’m not connected.  I observe everything around me.  If I speak up in an unexpected way, it’s probably because I felt that the person I’m speaking to needed to hear whatever silly thing I said.

Perhaps Miss Manners and her associates don’t understand this and would label me.  That’s fine with me.  I would still tell her if her clothing tag is sticking out (and would reach out to tuck it in).  I’d still make a lame joke.  I’d still laugh out loud about it.

After all, no one ever accused me of being appropriate.

There's A Bustle In My Hedgerow...

When I was mowing the weed patch I pretend is grass this morning, there was a bustle in my hedgerow.  I wasn’t alarmed, now.  I knew it wasn’t a spring clean for the May queen.  It was just my Carmen chasing the butterfly that she first spotted while sitting in nearby tree.

So, as these things work for me, my brain cranked into overdrive.  All of my best thinking happens in the shower, while doing dishes, mowing the lawn.  Tedium frees the brain, I think.  Of course, it helps when Led Zeppelin replaces the Spongebob Squarepants theme song as the day’s earworm.

Thinking about my youngest daughter’s natural love and attraction to, well, Nature, reminded me of the young girl I used to know.  The girl who chased her own butterflies…and fireflies…and waterfalls (which is a great idea, despite what TLC may have said about it).  I realized I miss her.  She’s still in here, somewhere, but she’s been hidden by the weeds of life.

I spent so much of my childhood in a tent.  Later, we upgraded to a pop-up camper, but most weekends were spent piling into the station wagon for a drive to a lake or river or KOA campground (they might even have a pool!) for a bit of fresh air and adventure.  We built fires, tromped though mud, splashed in whatever water was handy, rode bikes, and scratched poison ivy.  It was wonderful, and I imagine that when I’m 99.5 years old, these are the memories that will still be with me.

Knowing what I know now, I know how hard my mother worked to do these things.  The boys certainly helped to put up the giant Army Surplus tent and we all helped to collect kindling and firewood, but the planning, packing, kid-wrangling, feeding, repacking, and driving fell on her.  I am forever grateful.  You see, we weren’t just camping.  We were together as a unit.  We were laughing together and working together.  We were learning every step of the way.  How to cooperate, how to see the world, and how to survive.  I doubt that was her intention, but that was the end result.

During hikes, or even just brief walks on a trail, my mother would point out plants to avoid – the aforementioned poison ivy, oak, and briars – and plants that we could eat, if necessary.  My brothers taught me how to shimmy up a tree and “parachute” down.  They noticed the snakes on the path and taught me which to avoid and which we could catch (still not sure why we needed to catch them, but I’m sure boys had a reason).  I learned to spot the difference between a slippery rock and a good stepping stone, and I learned to listen for the sound of a probable waterfall around the bend.  I learned to paddle my innertube with my flip flop and discovered the scent of a damp cave worth exploring.

It feels like it wasn’t so long ago that I still welcomed these adventures.  I backpacked the Nepali Coast of Hawaii and slept in a mosquito-riddled mangrove patch.  I’ve hiked along the Chattahoochee River with my dog, splashing, and taking in the beauty.  I’ve slept on picnic tables and on beaches and could build a pretty darn good campfire.  But I haven’t done any of that in years

I could blame it on any number of things.  Doing anything with kids is much harder than it used to be (yeah, I know how lame that sounds, but parents don’t have the “free range” freedoms that our parents had).  My family’s schedules are not in sync.  Any number of things that have come up over the past few years are reason enough to stay inside on the couch.  Excuses.  Legitimate, but still excuses.

I do try to maintain some connection with Mother Nature.  I plant a very small and basic garden and am pleased that at least one of my daughters likes getting her hands dirty and watching things grow.  Every time she has a seed in her hand (like from the apple she’s eating) it MUST be planted!  I love that.

My older daughter is content to play Minecraft.  I’m not a real fan of video games and when I first heard them talking about this, I cringed.  I thought it was landmines and fighting or something.  No.  You know what it is?  Virtual Survival!  Their pixilated characters are wandering some sort of barren region, settling, farming, and..what?  I don’t know.  Instead of going outside to plant a real tomato or walking their real dog down to the real trail at the end of our neighborhood, they stare at a video screen planting fake corn and raising fake pigs.  Sigh.

The bustle in my hedgerow just reminds me that I NEED to snap out of our rut.  I need to drag my girls out into the woods and let them feel the earth under their feet.  I need to teach them to pitch a tent and build a fire.

But who am I kidding?  I’ll probably start with showing them the joys of a restaurant patio first.

I'm Joining The Circus...

I wish, in my high school years, I had known that there was an alternative college meant for me.  I lived in Florida, for crying out loud!  Just 400 miles away from the school that was designed for me and no guidance counselor ever suggested it.  If just one counselor took a moment to suggest the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College to my seventeen year old self, my life would have taken a drastically different path (probably in a very small car with an abundance of company).

I missed the opportunity.  I’ve told my girls that if they decide not to attend Georgia Tech, or Julliard, or to go directly to the Grammy Awards, I will support their decision to head to Sarasota to learn the science of circus.

Look, I know that the circus is not politically correct these days.  I get it.  I don’t care.  Before anyone bothers to shower me with animal arguments, stop.  Don’t waste your breath.  I’ve heard it, of course, but I’ve also read, listened to, and absorbed everything I can get my hands on about the circus:  the good, the bad and the ugly…the distant past, the recent past, and the present.  My love has not wavered.

There’s the show, of course.  They call it “The Greatest Show On Earth” for a reason.  When 8 motorcycles are whipping around in a tiny little cage, that is jaw-droppingly great.  When a guy somersaults from a spring board through a small hoop 10 feet in the air, that’s pretty fabulous, too.  There’s one “Wow!”, “Holy Cow!” after another and I love them all.  And, of course, a terrier riding on the back of a pig, leading a goat while the elephants regally stand watch never fails to make me smile.

But that’s not even it.  Sure, I love the amazing feats.  However, what almost always draws my attention is the show that no one else is watching.  The crew is the show, as are the performers when they’re NOT performing.  The orchestra.  The things the ringmaster never mentions.

All those guys in blue coveralls who set the next ring outside of the spotlight are doing a beautifully choreographed dance.  The guy scooping elephant poop into a trash can does it with speed and finesse.  The clowns are dragging heavy mats across the floor while wearing their giant floppy shoes.  The acrobats who were just swinging from the trapeze are now ushering a parade.  The band director catches every moment and never misses a beat.

We’ve all heard about circus family lineage. Grandfather and sons and grandsons walking the tightrope together while cousins rig the safety gear and daughters fly through the air expecting to be caught.  And we’ve certainly heard about society’s outcasts who run away to join the circus.

I wonder, though. When one runs away and joins the circus, it’s perceived that they’re dropping out of society.  I think the opposite is true.  I think they’re dropping into it.

If the circus is a machine, those people are not just the gears – they’re the TEETH on the gears.  One gear can’t turn without all of those teeth working together.  The gears run the machine that everyone sees, but the teeth make it all happen.  THAT is what I love about it.  From my seat in the audience, I see a big family.  I see familiar relationships.  I see myself.

Certainly, my family’s cars could have been confused for clown cars as a dozen silly people often came spilling out and we could set up a tent at a moment’s notice.  My brother Pat actually set up a tight rope in our back yard and practiced diving off of the roof.  We arrived with fanfare and often upset the status quo.  But we were not a circus family.   We didn’t ride the rails from town to town.  We didn’t swing from dangerous heights and we didn’t hang out in cages with lions.  But whatever we did, we did it like those guys in the blue jumpsuits.  We were – and are – a crew.  We work swiftly together and clean up poop when we have to so the show can go on.

We – and the circus – are not conventional society.  And we have an abundance of clowns.  I think that if I were anyone else, I’d want to run away and join us.

I'm Interesting By Proxy...

Over the last few years, I’ve had a lot of people say things to me like: “Wow.  You’re really interesting.” Or “What an interesting life you’ve had.”.  I have to disagree.  I always say to them “I don’t have to be interesting.  I just surround myself with interesting people.”

It’s true that I have some good stories.  I’ve seen some pretty cool things.  I’ve had adventures and interacted with no shortage of unusual characters.  But none of those things required any real effort on my part.  I was simply along for the ride on the coattails of far more interesting folks and reap the rewards of cool proximity.  Maybe I’m Cool-Adjacent – some of the perks, none of the pressure.

As a child, my brothers’ cool jobs as musicians put me in the path of some really fabulous characters.  Bill Monroe didn’t quite get why an 8 year old girl wanted a tour of his bus, but I got one anyway.  Because I was at the right place at the right time.  I took naps under the keyboards of a cat named Mr. Flex (come on, what’s cooler than that?), while my brother rehearsed with a 70s-era funk band in a dark alley studio in East St. Louis.  I’m pretty sure I got some of their cool just through osmosis.

As my life marched on, I certainly wandered into some unique scenarios and came out the other side with a story or two.  Those experiences shaped my view and perspective and allowed me to absorb it all risk-free.  Cool-Adjacent perks have gotten me great seats at shows, earned me some street cred with my kids (their mom’s brother got them Katy Perry crew shirts!) and we’ve stumbled into some pretty memorable places – all while cruising down the middle of the road.

People often mock the Middle of the Road.  What a boring place, right?  I say there’s no better place to be.

Think about it literally:  when driving in the middle of the road, you have freedom.  Freedom to drift from one side to the other if that’s where you’d rather be at the moment.  But you also have a clearer vision of what’s up ahead and what’s happening around you so you can react accordingly.

Figuratively, life’s not so different.  From here in the middle of the road, I can see a hasty or stupid act and view the consequences.  I’m always learning from mistakes.  They just don’t have to be mine.  From the middle, I can see an opportunity for a detour or a route I hadn’t thought of myself.

Through these Middle of the Road travels, I’ve had a pretty good time!  The Middle of the Road has taken me on career paths, vacations, and unplanned adventures that exposed me to celebrities and athletes, to CEOs and Winos, to philosophical Regular Joes, to talented musicians and broken and damaged but lovely people from all walks of life.  I’ve learned from all of them.  What to Do. What Not to Do.  How to Survive.  How to Find Humor in Everything .  No matter how dire a situation may seem, there’s always a lesson.  There’s always a laugh.

The byproduct of this Middle of the Road Life, is that I’ve recorded enough data from the journey to be able to relate in some way to nearly everyone I encounter and I’m not intimidated by unfamiliar groups of people. 

A much younger version of myself could not say this.  Friends have asked how I can do this.  The answer’s not so complicated.  I know a little about a lot of things.  Rarely through hard knocks or personal experience – I’ve simply paid attention from my vantage point in the center of it all.

At a party or gathering, I’m rarely the first to begin a conversation, but no matter what direction one goes, I can almost always chime in with a relatable tidbit.  This often leads to being asked who/what/why/how I might know such things.  The answer is that I had an interesting experience with an interesting person in an interesting place during an interesting time.

At some point, someone is likely to tell me that I’m interesting.  But I’m not.  I don’t have to be.  I just surround myself with interesting people.  I’m Interesting By Proxy.

The Dough of Life...

I don’t bake.  Wait.  Let me rephrase that.  I USUALLY don’t bake.  My kids get cookies from a package or, when I’m feeling really wild, cookies that come from dough in a tube.  Holidays include pie from the grocery store and someone else makes the birthday cakes. 

I enjoy cooking nice meals and am generally happy to try a new recipe but baking’s just never been appealing to me.  Too much precision required, I think.  If I’m expected to measure and time and possibly do math, the fun is sucked right out of it.

But there are two exceptions to my baking rule.  One:  Mom’s cut-out sugar cookies in shapes that represent the season and Two:  Grandma’s Christmas Stars.

The sugar cookies make sense.  I spent a lifetime at my mother’s side, rolling and cutting those cookies.  Then, sitting with my brothers and sisters decorating those cookies.  The decision to put the green-dyed coconut “grass" at the feet of the Easter bunnies with jellybean eggs or to leave him sans grass was a heavy one.  Did all of the reindeer cookies need a redhot candy nose, or just the one playing Rudolph?  I suspect that, on my deathbed, I will see these cookies in my memories.  Obviously, I want my kids to have those memories so I continue the tradition but the fact is that, even when I was young and single and just barely scraping by on my own, it was very important to me to make these cookies.  Sometimes I’d throw in a Snickerdoodle or Russian Teacake to the mix, but unless there were frosted stockings or Santas, there would be no Christmas in my heart.

Christmas Stars are really more of a pastry than a cookie.  They are a lightly sweet dough, filled with a cherry center, folded into a pinwheel star shape.  My Grandmother made these every Christmas.  Certainly, she made them at other times throughout the year, maybe with different filling.  But to me, they WERE Christmas.

I was fortunate, in my early years, to spend a lot of one-on-one time with my Grandmother.  With 39 grandchildren, this was not a luxury afforded to all of us and I knew that and appreciated it.  My time at her house was spent reading with her or maybe helping her with laundry in the wringer washer and clothesline, but when she was busy in the kitchen, I was usually just there to pass through to snag a sorghum cookie on my way to the toy box.  I must have seen the Christmas Star operation happening, but I honestly don’t remember it, which means I probably wasn’t a part of it.  They just magically appeared around the holidays.

Some time in my early 20s, in those very lean years when it wasn’t possible to go home for the holidays, when it wasn’t likely that I could buy presents, and when I barely knew how I’d buy groceries, it became very important to me to figure out how to make Grandma’s Christmas Stars.  Either my sister or my mother secured the recipe for me, and I dove right in.

Wow!  These things are HARD!  The dough wasn’t such a challenge.  Once I conquered the yeast process, that is.  And I knew how they were supposed to look, so after a lot of staring and studying, I finally figured out the geometry behind the folds and the proper ratio of filling to pastry.  I did it!  They were pretty, they were yummy, and most importantly, they tasted like Christmas.  So I kept baking.  And baking.  And I had enough beautiful stars to share with the beautiful stars in my life – my friends, my coworkers, and the people who mattered to me.

Over the years, with more practice, I feel as though I’ve mastered the Stars!  They’ve definitely flopped on occasion, and when that happens, it’s easy to recognize why.  I’m rushing.  I’m not tuned in to the moment.  And I’ve forgotten to invite Grandma.   There’s no question that when I’m thinking of Grandma (yes, even while she was still here on earth with us), the Stars are at their best.  When I’m rushing through it like a chore, they flop.

Really, isn’t that the answer to everything important?  When you take the time to feel the “dough of life” and roll it out with patience and the vision of what it can turn out to be, the whole experience becomes less of a task and more of a treasured memory.

So, while I was putting the finishing touches on a batch of Christmas Stars to bring to the library, I realized that my girls were watching from a distance.  They understood that these, unlike cookies, were a special thing just for me and they didn’t want to interfere.  And I understood that they are storing the stars in their  Holiday Memory files.  I hope Grandma saw that, too.

Note to self:  make another batch of Stars.  Soon.  And invite my own little stars to dig their hands into the dough, too.