I wish I had a dime for every time I was told “don’t judge a book by its cover.” I’d have at least $10 now. If you break the statement down, we all know what it means. You can’t judge a book by its cover, because sometimes the cover is ugly. Just because a cover is ugly doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read the words.

I think the whole concept is a little too participation trophy for me, because sometimes an ugly cover is trying to tell you something: Don’t waste your time. Then again, sometimes the cover is FANTASTIC and masks hundreds of pages of misery. I picked up Beartown by Fredrik Backman (sorry, sir) because the cover was beautiful. And there was some quote of praise on the front by someone more important than me. What I got was hundreds of pages about hockey, hockey sticks, hockey players, hockey towns, drab weather fit only for hockey, hockey-obsessed men, followed by some punk teens doing things not worthy of hockey’s honor. I quit before the punk teen stuff (I had flipped ahead looking for a glimmer of hope) and threw that sucker away. I didn’t even donate it. I care that much about other people who shop at Goodwill.

I judged that book by its cover and got burned. So I guess you shouldn’t.

With books.

But what about people?

I grew up with a beautiful mother. I heard that I lot. “Your mom is so pretty.” When I was little, people still dressed up to do everything. If I had an ear infection, my mom would put on a dress, hose, and heels. She was never caught outside the house without the makeup that would take her 30 minutes to apply. I was mesmerized by her makeup process, because I loved the smell of the creams she applied. And I loved that her foundation started as 400 tiny brown dots on her face. She started out like a plague and ended up like a princess.

Then there was me.

I struggled to transition out of the plague thing. I didn’t want to. I didn’t see the point. My mother regularly offered to take me shopping.

“No, thank you, I’m good,” I would say.

“But, Missy, other girls your age…” she would follow up.

My answer usually ended in a shrug. I didn’t want to go shopping. I had white t-shirts, shorty shorts from the 1970s, slouchy tube socks with double navy striping, and dirty canvas sneakers. What else did I need? When I got into middle school, I didn’t ask her if I could shave my legs. She asked me if I please would.  I mean, I guess so. Sheesh. That whole thing started and ended on the picnic table in the back yard with a single bladed razor and a garden hose. It took like a week.

But I’m jumping ahead. I didn’t even consider changing my appearance until 1982. I didn’t make an actual change until 1983. Today’s Snappshot is from May 29, 1979. I was 8 years old. The school year was less than 2 weeks from being over, which meant a couple of things: (1) It was hotter than McDonalds coffee, and (2) they were cramming in the last of the field trips, projects, and performances.

May 29 was the last day of the gifted program called College for Kids. Back then, they actually rewarded a person for being gifted. Now it just means extra worksheets and higher-level testing. We spent one day a week on the campus of Florida A & M (FAMU). We took a bus there, spent the day with our best friends, and got to learn about things like exotic animals and cinematography. I loved it.

I don’t remember much about May 29, 1979. If my mother hadn’t snapped this photo, there would be no record of the day at all. But this picture tells quite a story.

My mom labeled the photo with the date and the description that it was the “College for Kids Pet Show.” And she brought my mutt, Benji, to be shown off. It’s hard to know what to focus on. The dog is clearly on a string that we found on the floor of our garage, not a real leash. He is embarrassingly furry.  He never once got a haircut from anyone but us. As for me, I’ve seen better shoes on people who live in cardboard enclosures.  The tube socks, though, are the real shining stars here. Two fat navy stripes that just scream, HEY I’M WEARING TUBE SOCKS. Those socks announced my arrival a good 6 minutes before people noticed the shorts or the hair. Once my fellow students got past the cover, I’m sure our book was equally disappointing.

“Hey everyone, I wanted to introduce you to my dog, Benji. He’s 2 ½ years old. He’s a mutt. We have no idea what mix he is, but we think there’s poodle in there somewhere. He lives in a cardboard box in the utility room of our garage, right next to the hot water heater. We got him when he was a puppy and named him after the popular film star dog, Benji. Are there any questions?”

“Does your dog have any special skills or tricks?” one kid asked.

“No,” I shook my head. “No, he does not.”

“Does he shake?”

Nope. Doesn’t shake.

Roll over?

Nuh-uh.

Come when he’s called?

Sometimes. If I’m holding pork tenderloin.

Does your dog do anything?

He can play dead.

He can?

No.

Benji and I deserved each other and I know he was just a little bit jealous of my socks. But one day in 1983, I looked down at those socks and saw for the first time what my mother had seen from the regrettable moment she bought them and handed them to me. I saw them. And when she offered again to take me shopping, as she had 35 times before, this time I said yes.

I remember my mother’s joy at my response and how quickly she put together a shopping trip to save my life. She was radiating the glee she felt. She was thinking about the Christmas cards she could send out next year. She was getting ahead of herself.

We bought 3 outfits that day that she and I were mutually pleased with. We bought two pairs of shoes to replace the canvas ones I had worn every day of my life since my third birthday. I put one of the new outfits on for the first day of 7^th grade spring semester. And I put one of the new pairs of shoes at the bottom of my picnic-table-freshly-shorn legs. I looked down at myself and said, YES. This is good.

But my old shoes were sitting in the corner next to my bed. Man, those things were comfy. I didn’t have a lot of time to make decisions before heading to the bus stop, so I scooped up my old shoes and shoved them into my back pack and skipped downstairs to eat breakfast.

“Oh, Missy,” my mom said, clapping her hands together under her chin. “You look darling.”

Bless her. I did not look darling. But I had stuck my toe into the land of mary janes and pastel-colored flats, and that was enough to give a mother like mine hope.

That morning, I navigated some unwanted attention from people who had seen the generic t-shirts, gym shorts, and tube socks for the last 8 years. I shrugged them off and continued on my way. Before the first bell rang, I took the most direct path possible to my locker and stuck my old faithful sneakers on the top shelf. Then I headed to 1^st period. All I could think about in 1^st period was my shoes. The ones in my locker singing a melody of loneliness and betrayal in a tone only I could hear. They were missing me as much as I missed them. I looked down at the pink plastic flats under my desk as the teacher rambled on and on about some place in Europe. Those shoes were the worst. It was like binding my feet up with thumb tacks and duck tape.

All I could think about in 2^nd period was my shoes. The new ones. From the devil. The old ones. Waiting for me in my locker. Sheesh.

All I could think about in 3^rd period was my shoes. And by then I’d had enough. So when the bell rang at the end of class, I slung my pack over my shoulder and took off running toward my locker.  I ran like I was recovering from a hip replacement, because one flat kept slipping off at the heel and the other was vengefully pinching the top of my foot. But I managed. And I kept running. I dodged a maze of students and staff and yanked open my locker to see those canvas lovelies sitting there at eye level. FINALLY. I pulled off the pink flats and threw them into the bottom of the locker. I pulled the canvas sneakers off the top shelf and—

Wait a minute.

I forgot my tube socks.

Ah, well. No matter. I wore them sockless.

Thirty-seven years have passed since that initial foray into the tiniest of transformations. And my mother continued to nudge me along as she sent out substandard holiday photos of her family’s fashion eccentricities. And 37 years later, I guess I do believe that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Whether or not you can judge a person by their tube socks is going to be entirely up to you.

But I think maybe you can…

It was 10:32 on a Monday night In the spring of 1994 when I turned on the hot water in the hall bathroom tub. I turned the knob all the way to the left because I have skin like a Komodo dragon and I like my water hot.

Todd was in his music room with headphones on. The house was quiet. This was my spa time. I climbed into my lava water and tried to read for a few minutes. It only took two questionably written paragraphs to lull me into a coma. I laid my head back against the tile and closed my eyes. The buzzing of a florescent bulb and an occasional ripple in the water punctuated the silence, but not my peace.

At 10:43, my eyes popped open in shock at a sound that was as close to a murder at a county fair as I hope to ever hear again. I expected to see a Blair witch situation in the room with me, but nothing had visibly changed. I listened intently as I gripped the sides of the tub. It happened again and I was on my feet like a cat at a fish fry. What in the world? That time I was fully alert and knew exactly where the sound had originated. It was coming from inside the wall, 10 inches from my face.

I got out of that bathroom, into enough clothes to survive a Michigan winter, and into Todd’s music room in a minute 45. His face scrunched with confusion upon my panicked entrance.

“What area you doing?” he asked.

“There’s something in the walls,” I heaved.

“Huh?” he asked, removing his headphones.

“Something terrifying is living in our walls. I heard it in the bathroom. It sounds like the love child of a donkey and a wolf.”

Todd’s face registered raw bewilderment and he followed me into the bathroom where we heard nothing but daffodils and rainbows. Of course there’s never proof when you need it. But an hour later as we tried to go to sleep, I heard it again. We both did. Todd jumped up and turned on the light. But again, the creature was inside the wall. Light was no help.

At 8:01 the next morning, we called our pest control guy. We communicated our desperation. He’s told us we had a rat. He then told us to go buy a tray of DCON rat poison. He said one night of that would be all it would take and the rat would run out of the house and die.

Ok. Good plan.

We bought the DCON pack on our lunch break and stuck it just inside the utility closet door. On Wednesday morning, after a night of hearing the rattled spirits in the walls, we raced downstairs to see if the rat had eaten the poison. Sure enough. High five. It was empty. But that wasn’t the only thing the rat had eaten that night. The inside of the closet door was chewed up and out to the point that the rat had almost made it to the guest quarters of the house. And who’s to say he didn’t? What if he pulled an Ethan Hunt during the night and flattened out, spread eagle, and then slipped under the door? Good thing he’d be dead 12 hours from now.

I carried my relief with me that day like a pashmina. But that night I was forced to set my hope aside, because we heard him again. He was angry and clawing the insides of my wall with an unrelenting energy. Was this his manifesto? His 95 theses? I laid there awake for a long time, thinking about creative ways to destroy a rodent. The following morning I bought more poison and placed it in the closet on my lunch break . Second verse, same as the first.

He ate the poison. All of it. He did not die. Not at all. Nothing was dead. His limbs were all working. His voice was working. The only thing dying was my soul, little by little, night after night.

“I can’t take any more,” I announced to Todd before getting in bed Thursday night. “We have to move. Tomorrow.”

“Obviously we aren’t moving,” he answered. Why was that obvious? It was all we had left. “Just check the tray in the morning and surely this time, he’ll be dead.”

We laid in bed that night like wooden planks with googly eyes. Listening to our friend frolic in a townhouse we were making hefty payments on. Ridiculous. Maybe I will be the one to die, I thought. Or maybe I’m dead already. One of us has to die. Me or the rat. Tomorrow there would be a final showdown.

I woke up ready for a showdown, and tiptoed downstairs with a fly swatter. I stopped quietly at the door of the utility closet. Listening. When I didn’t hear anything, I opened the closet door and looked down at the poison tray. It had been disturbed, but not devoured. I tiptoed back up the stairs to get ready for the day and wondered if maybe I had just seen my first sign of progress.

Todd and I worked at the same company that year. He had a real job. I peeled labels off of floppy disks in the shipping department and made $5.25 an hour. I looked forward to lunches at home with Todd in front of Days of Our Lives. Don’t judge. I was young. And Carly was buried alive with a mic system in her casket. I had to know what was going to happen. When we walked in just before 1, I was greeted by a smell I wish I hadn’t recognized so easily. Death. In this particular case, it was a pungent welcome wagon. A fruit basket sent from long lost friends. It was Christmas. We were able to set the smell of death aside for our show (priorities) and spent commercial breaks looking for a carcass. There was the very real possibility that the fella had died in a section of wall we’d never have access to. But before I had time to again suggest moving, Todd uttered some sort of life changing exclamatory sound from inside the closet. Then he came out and shut the door behind him.

“I found him,” he said. “He’s dead alright.”

“And?” I asked. “What else?’ He looked like he’d seen Carly get up out of her casket, so I needed more details.

“He’s huge,” Todd replied. “I’m getting a shovel. Open the sliding glass doors.”

Now. I was very confused by this last statement, but I got the doors prepared while he went for the shovel. He went in with a flashlight in his teeth. There was a lot of knocking around in the closet behind the hot water heater. And then, they emerged. Todd, the shovel, and the largest white rat I have ever seen in even in national geographic articles of rat infested places. It was a foot long. Twelve inches. It almost didn’t fit in the shovel. Todd carried it out in front of him, holding the shovel as far from his body as he could. I was pressed up against the kitchen wall.

“What are you going to do with him?” I asked.

“Throwing him over the back fence,” he answered, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to heave a rat over a fence. OK, sure. Dead rat on conservation property. Circle of life. I followed Todd out because it isn’t a common thing to watch a rat get tossed like a javelin. Todd reared back, carefully keeping the rat level, and flung.

The rat went up.

Shooomp.

The rat did not come back down in the other side of the fence. Todd and I looked at each other.

“Whoops,” he said.

“Where’d he land?”

Todd pointed to the sycamore tree in the neighbor’s back yard. Our dead white rat with stiff legs in the position of a sky diver, was hovering on a branch next door over the Millers’ back deck. Hanging over their propane grill like a piñata. The gentlest nudge from gravity or a single puff of wind would be just the thing to bring that sucker down and liven up their 4th of July barbecue. We both stood there for a second, thinking through the impacts on karma, neighborly relations, property values. And Todd motioned toward the door.

“Go inside,” he whispered. We slid the door shut behind us and saw that Carly was still in her casket and Vivian was still threatening to actually kill her. “Maybe moving isn’t such a bad idea after all…”

It’s a sign of adulthood when you pull every muscle in your body painting the family room. So, clearly I’m an adult. But in so many ways, I’m operating on a 7th grade level. Fortunately for me, my friends are no better. I have a friend we used to call the Organizer. But it’s weird to call people by titles like that unless you’re in the mafia, which we aren’t. So we’ll just call her Matilda. Matilda and I have always competed. At everything. But it’s always friendly and all in good fun. And you never really know who’s going to win, because we are both insanely obsessed with victory. (At the end of the post, you can watch a YouTube clip where I was clearly not the winner.)

This morning was a little unusual in the sense that I had to stop by Todd’s office to deal with some documents. While standing around waiting for a page to print, I started throwing darts. I was just killing time, chucking darts at the board like bricks. It was more like a shot put contest. Matilda saw my form and in my form she saw an opportunity. She’s pretty good at darts. And again, she likes to win. So she piped up.

“I’ll play ya,” she said, with a game on tone to her voice. Well, duh.

“OK,” I said. “But I’ve never played an actual game of darts.”

“I’ll teach you as we go. We’ll play 501,” she said.

She sniffed fresh game. She was on the hunt. I went first. My first three throws were nothing special. I was mediocre with a technique that could get its own reality show. Matilda went next, throwing just enough better to worry me. We traded turns, whittling down our 501 and trying to be the first to 0.

When you get to the end, you have to be precise. If you are 20 points from 0, you have to get precisely 20 in your turn. She got down to 7. Bummer. That’s hard to do. I got down to 30. And in one fell swoop, I hummed up a beauty and it landed in 15. I hummed a second one and it landed in 15. 15 + 15 is 30. Booyah. Guess I don’t stink at darts even if I do look like I need a horse tranquilizer while I’m playing.

So Matilda did what any 40-something would do when they lose. She threw a tantrum and invited me to stop by tomorrow morning for a rematch.

Game on, sistah. Hope she practices. Sheesh.

https://youtu.be/TAmPHFweYHs

I taught middle school English for one year in 1995. One year is all it took to run me off. I was good at the subject but not at the kids. I enjoyed the kids but not stuffing poetry into the kids. Note confiscation was my area of expertise. Reading the notes during lunch break was my joy. Laughing at the contents of the notes and sharing them with the teacher friend next door–well, I should have been fired. 
Ironic, really. 
Because it hadn’t been so long since I’d been the one pushing the pen across the paper to create the masterpiece that got confiscated. Or almost confiscated, I should say. 

It’s funny what kids think they are getting away with. Every kid tries it and every kid thinks they’ve escaped notice. I certainly thought so. My sophomore year in high school led me to Spanish II under the tutelage of Josephine Bourgeois. I was immediately confused upon walking into the room, because her name was Bourgeois. She was the Spanish teacher with the French name. But she confirmed we were in the right place and launched straight into a language we remembered none of after a long summer break.

I knew from the first 6 minutes that I was in for a ride with this teacher. I wonder if she knew the same thing with me. We were made for each other. And she was smarter than I was willing to admit.

Mrs. Bourgeois was small enough to fit in my backpack and had a voice like loose gravel. I don’t know if she smoked. I don’t remember smelling it on her, but she sure sounded like the habit. Her eyes told stories and held secrets and I loved walking into that classroom every day. I walked in daily, trailing my chorus buddy, Cathy Thursby. We were a problem. We were a problem in chorus and a bigger problem in Spanish. Mrs. Bourgeois kept those eyes on us far more than we wanted. And though we didn’t get caught for everything we committed, I’m now convinced she just got worn out and let about half of it go.

As with my 3rd grade brush with the Citizenship police, my problem in Spanish was talking. Cathy and I loved to talk. Any topic would do, as we were not picky. But our favorite topic was other students and the teacher herself. She was funny. She said funny things in two languages. We liked responding to those funnies under our breath. In English. Or Pig Latin.

“Miss White!” She would call from the front of the classroom, so loud it would sometimes be followed by a cough. One would think that the frequency with which I got in trouble would take the edge off the fear, but I never got over the panic of hearing my name pop like an expletive. My name was always followed by a punitive statement. The most common of these was a seat move. There were 3 empty desks in that classroom that she used to shift her problem children around.

“Why don’t you grace this seat with su topetazo (that was my butt) and make this your desk from now on…” she would say, pointing to my new location. I always gathered my things with an air of shame and moved away, leaving my cohort behind. Soon into the year, I learned that Mrs. Bourgeois was a tad soft on her enforcement of “from now on.” The next day, I would return to my old desk in front of Cathy and no one would say a word about it. I fancied that she forgot. But as I’m solidly standing in middle age now, I’m certain she forgot nothing. She knew I snuck back to my roots. And she just let me do it, because she was a little bit awesome that way.

When Cathy and I weren’t having terribly conspicuous secret conversations about inappropriate gossip, we were writing those conversations down. Note writing was a religion in high school. We were very religious. One day, Mrs. Bourgeois was on fire about something, telling animated stories about pet squirrels that she raised to adulthood. I was amused enough to put some commentary into a note, along with a rather unflattering picture of this beloved teacher. I was putting the finishing touches on my picture in gloppy ball point ink when I heard that name again.

“MISS WHITE!” Oh, sweet Davy Crockett. Busted. I looked up from my sure downfall. “I think you’re working on something I’d like to see.” Oh goodness me. Oh no.

“No, Senora, I’m not,” I said politely, trying to throw some Spanish in for grace.

“Oh, I think you are,” she said again, smiling with every wrinkle in her face. “I know I want to see it. I think the class might want to see it too.” She paused and addressed the class. “Class? Would you like me to read what Miss White has been working on so diligently?” Well, of course they said yes. Every person in that room was rooting for a bloodbath. I was shaking my head no. This time, my confidence was gone. I was cornered. Miss Thursby couldn’t save me. Mrs. Bourgeois was sharpening her sword. It was over.

“OK, class she doesn’t seem to want to share her work today. So Miss White, you have two options. One is, pass the note and we have a class read-along. The other is, you eat it.”

“Eat it?” I asked. “Like, swallow it?” I asked, stalling.

“That’s the typical result of eating something,” she answered.

I looked at my picture. And my commentary. And back at her. There was only one viable option. I crumpled up the note, inwardly grieving that Miss Thursby would never see such a glorious and artistic display of wit and whimsy, and shoved it into my mouth.

“All the way in,” she said, enjoying the show. I pushed until the sharp corners poked past the roof of my mouth and I gagged, chewing as I went.

I chewed. And I chewed. And I chewed. I was drooling blue Bic like a dog on his deathbed. Mrs. Bourgeois crossed her arms and sighed with the satisfaction of a champion.

There were still 15 minutes left in that period. 15 minutes to eat note. Parts of the note disintegrated and made their way down to my stomach. Parts of it just stayed in my mouth until I could spit into a bathroom trashcan after the bell rang. But the words of that note hung deep in my consciousness for years. 30 years.

I hadn’t thought about it much until my brother called last week to tell me he had been reading the Tallahassee obituaries and Jo Bourgeois had passed this life on January 4. Never mind that my brother reads obituaries from other towns. That’s another post for another day. When he sent me the link, I sat down from what I was doing and read the life story of this woman that had the number of every student that walked through her door. This woman who could wield words like weapons but was as warm as a patch of sunlight on the June grass. This woman who literally made me eat my words. I felt a tinge of sadness. Followed by a surge of happiness. Which ended in my pulling out a piece of notebook paper and writing a quick note in blue ballpoint pen.

“Dear Mrs. Bourgeois,

Thank you. I’m sorry. Rest in peace, mi Maestra.

Love,

Miss White”

Good teachers teach. Great teachers transform.
~Queen Rania of Jordan

Teachers are the launching pad for every other career in the world. I don’t think I realized until recently how extraordinary that is. Every person goes through the third grade, and Civics, and Algebra I. I may never hire a lawyer (joke’s on you, I have a lawyer RIGHT NOW  in place to rescue an unnamed person from having points on their license). I may never cross paths with an actuary or use a massage therapist. But I’ve had teachers. Lots of them.

I was raised in the public schools in Tallahassee, Florida. If you add up the 13 years of primary/secondary/high and then 4 years of college, I found myself in the classrooms of roughly 60+ teachers. Of those 60+ teachers, I can remember the teachings, the voices, the mannerisms, and the quirks of maybe 20. Of those 20, I would say 10 were great. And of those 10, a very small handful changed my life.

It’s not a small thing to change a life.

Susan Upchurch was my 3rd grade teacher at Kate Sullivan Elementary. I loved her. She was young, blonde, single, and excited about her job. I sat at a black-topped, 2-person table with Gabe Whatshisname. Gabe was my friend. He was everybody’s friend. He was the kind of kid that showed up on picture day wearing his cub scout uniform. The most notable thing about my uniform wearing, friendly tablemate was that he was a talker. I was a friendly kid, too, and it would be rude not to speak when spoken to. So when Gabe spoke to me, I spoke back. That’s what you do. Gabe did what Gabe had to do. I did what I had to do. And Ms. Upchurch did what she had to do. Which was to give Gabe and me each an “N” in citizenship on our report cards for the first 9 weeks. An N in citizenship? I was a model citizen. A friendly citizen, even. A slightly social citizen.

N is the 14th letter of the alphabet, the third in the LMNO series, and necessary for spelling all kinds of really neat words like Nefarious and Nincompoop and Nap. But an N was not to be seen in any column of any report card of any person that lived in my house. For any reason. Ever.

My mother was livid. And when my mother got livid, she could be quite scary. I think Ms. Upchurch got an earful of why I didn’t deserve that N, why it was all Gabe’s fault, and where I would and would not be sitting in that classroom from then on.

I moved seats the very next day. I don’t remember who my new seatmate was. I do remember missing Gabe (what WAS his last name?) and his gregarious spirit. I also remember that I didn’t talk so much after that.

None of that impacted me in 3rd grade all that much. I continued to love the classroom, the kids, and the teacher.

But one day, I remember loving the work. That day is a full color, 8×10 glossy memory for me.
That day, from the front of that small, square room with the brown indoor/outdoor carpet, Ms. Upchurch opened a brand new door and stepped aside so we could catch a glimpse of a universe that was completely unfamiliar and 100% glorious to me. She taught us creative writing. I’d always been a reader, but had never given a thought to the authors that labored over the books I got lost in. But that day, following her lesson on creative writing, she gave an assignment. Write a story. Illustrate it if you want to, but not if you don’t.

Write a story. Wield words. Create. Mmm. Yes, please.

I did write a story. I think it was pretty dumb. So dumb my mother, who saved everything, who saved even my 3rd grade class picture, did not save it. But the story itself was not important. That lesson changed me. She changed me.

I walked up the street from the bus stop that afternoon, thinking about my story with every step. I thought about settings and characters and really dumb plot developments. When I walked through the back door of my house, my mom was in the kitchen. I hopped up onto the counter next to the kitchen sink while she poured me some Koolaid and asked me about my day.

“I know what I want to be when I grow up now,” I said. My mother looked over in surprise.

“Oh, yeah? What’s that?” she asked.

“I want to be a writer,” I said.

“Huh,” she said. “Alright then. You can.”

I don’t know what I expected her to say. I don’t know that anyone believed me entirely. And I’m sure everyone expected me to change my mind a few hundred times. But I didn’t. Not once. I never wavered. I took every lit class I could get my hands on. I got a degree in English with emphasis on Creative Writing. And I tried to find jobs that involved writing, even if it wasn’t writing fiction. Words were, and still are, my jam.

Ms. Upchurch unwittingly set me on a path I’m still tripping along today. If it hadn’t been her, would it have been someone else? Mr. Beurkley in 4th grade or Mrs. Turner in 5th? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. All I know is, it was her. She set me there. She opened the gate. She lit the match.

I wish I had told her while I had the chance. She died of cancer many, many years ago, still a relatively young woman. I hope someone along the way told her that she was a game changer. A life transformer. A light.

I hope all teachers know this. I hope my kids’ teachers know this. And if I don’t tell them–if I get too busy, or preoccupied, or forgetful, or lazy, or timid–I hope they’ll somehow know. They need to know.

Ms. Upchurch is long gone from my life, but her light did not snuff out. Because she passed the flame to a weird little kid with hair like chewed up steel wool. That kid peeked into a universe she presented and tiptoed through the door with streaks of light trailing behind her.

Thank you, Susan Upchurch Wager, and all great teachers, everywhere.

Today is the first day I have struggled with my self-imposed writing schedule. After 18 blog posts, I finally reached a point where I don’t feel like I have anything useful or interesting to say. That won’t stop me. But it probably should.

On Saturday, I found myself at Disney Springs with my daughter, her friend, and my friend. If you have no idea what Disney Springs is, it’s basically a big Disney outdoor mall. There are shops, restaurants, and entertainment. We found our way there fine. We walked in from the parking lot fine, too. But that’s where fine ended. There was a Directory within 15 paces of the first entrance into the place. We stood there at the large electronic blueprint of the mall and tried to find a place to eat. A Disney employee, Joe from San Jose, saw that we looked lost so he walked over to help us. We wanted a burger. He recommended Deluxe Burger.

“Great!” I said, “Where is that?” Joe’s expression darkened a little and he leaned over our shoulders to look at the directory.

“I’m not sure,” he answered. He then proceeded to give us some directions. Apparently this was not his regular post.

His directions were bad.

We stopped at two different directories between Joe from San Jose and our eventual and somewhat accidental arrival at Deluxe Burger. I’m happy to report that my burger was well worth our wandering. When we finished eating, my daughter’s friend wanted to go into Alex and Ani. So again, we found ourselves at another directory. Each time we stopped at a new directory, our location would be marked by a large dot with “YOU ARE HERE” next to it. You would think that would be helpful. Somehow it wasn’t. I mean, how do they know which direction I’m pointing? Am I facing the directory staring at it when it says “YOU ARE HERE?” Or am I facing away from it about to walk away? Am I leaning left or leaning right? Because it makes a difference, people.

It is impossible at this point to tell you how far we walked or how many directories we consulted before finding Alex and Ani on Saturday. When we did find it, I turned ever so slightly to my left and was standing at Deluxe Burger. In case you are slower than I am, which isn’t likely, that means that we were a hopscotch game away from Alex and Ani when we walked out of Deluxe Burger. We literally could have thumped a pebble with our non-dominant hand and hit the front door of the place. But we walked a good mile to get there.

This made me think about my life just a little bit and the wheels I sometimes spin. Here’s the best I have today:

1. It’s important to know where you are before you can get where you’re going.
2. If you get lost, ask for help from someone who knows (aka, not Joe from San Jose).
3. Do not be afraid to ask and keep asking. We are here to help each other.
4. If you find yourself on the other end of things, and you have the map or the answer or the money or the time, look for someone wandering or struggling and help them. You have something that somebody else needs, guaranteed.
5. Just keep walking. There are only so many wrong turns you can make before you eventually make the right one.

She was cold. And doesn’t like cameras. But she liked Deluxe Burger. It’s all joy…

The closer I get to setting a 5:45 alarm and everything that goes along with sending kids to school again, the more short of breath I seem to become. I dread jumping back into the fray. The last two weeks have been lovely. In preparation for the fray, I was reading an article about how to deescalate and defuse situations when the routine and the busyness cause moments of stress and chaos. I was nodding inside my own head. How badly I need the reminder. I’m many things. But a deescalator is not something I’ve ever been labeled. I’m more of a…reactor. Some might say an OVERREACTOR. An ignitor. A catastrophizer. Whatever.

I almost can’t help myself. I’m way outnumbered. I’m old. I’m Type A. And I’m scared of chaos. Also I’m outnumbered. Did I already mention that? So the moment something begins, whether it’s a spat between children, an I-can’t-find-my-belt, an alarm that didn’t go off, a lunch that was forgotten, or wrong-side-of-the-bed tone of voice, I go into Smackdown Mode. I’m gonna squelch it. Fix it. Kill it. Stop it. Conquer it.

But I don’t. Because I stink at that. Mostly I just pump air at the flames and then shed silent tears as I watch those flames destroy everything I love.

The problem is, sometimes a thing can’t be fixed. Sometimes it doesn’t need to be. That’s what I struggle to remember. Maybe it’s an allergy attack that has to be lived with because there’s a big test 2nd period. That allergy attack can’t be fixed quickly. And neither can the emotions that often go along with it. But what would happen if I took a deep breath, let the kid spew a little venom about the gene pool he inherited and then tell him I love him, I’m going to pray for him all day, and it’s going to be ok. I wonder how it might go then. If only there were a way to find out.

Peace. Deescalation. Empathy. Stability. Huh.

I wanted to compile some information from other sources and write a how not to stress about stress kind of blog post. No one needs that more than I do. But I can’t put my heart into it because there are much bigger weights in the world than anything I’ve ever had to face. Things unfolding right now that just make back to school seem silly.

I had a mouth full of Qdoba at lunch today when I saw a friend’s facebook post that her niece had died following a lifelong battle with Loeys-Dietz syndrome. The worst part of that is that lifelong was only 9 years. Scout McCauley died last night following an aortic dissection that her body just couldn’t recover from. She was 9. And amazing. And beautiful. And poetic. And valiant. And very, very brave. Her family is also all of those things. They have faced grave circumstances for 9 years. But they faced them with Scout and because of Scout. Now they are walking an unimaginable road, without Scout. How do you do that? How does anyone do that? I really can’t wrap my head or heart around that one. Another friend posted a tribute to Scout with the following quote:

“I wanted you to see what real courage is… It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird

So I can’t really make myself think about school uniforms and alarms tonight. Tonight I’m thinking about Scout. And I’m praying for Scout’s family. And I’m thinking about the definition of true courage. I’m in awe of people who possess it.

Tuesday is the day my kids go back to school. Much of the nation goes back tomorrow. If that’s your circumstance and if things blow up around you, take a deep breath, fix what you can, hug what you can’t, and even if you are licked before you begin, begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

Rest in Jesus, Scout. Thanks for showing us the way home.

If you’d like to donate to the McCauley family, you can do so here.

https://www.gofundme.com/the-mccauley-family?member=1441220&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fb_tco_campmgmtbnr_w

This morning, I woke up rather leisurely in a queen sized bed in a hotel with my daughter, her friend, and my friend. I knew what today was, but it still surprised me to open Facebook and see it there. Good Morning, Missy, today is Ann Dawson White’s Birthday. Let her know you are thinking of her.

Sigh.

Well, ok. I mean, it is her birthday. And she’s not here.

But it isn’t the first birthday we’ve done without her. And it isn’t the worst one, either. Her last one on Earth, almost a full year before she died, was the worst one for me.

On January 5, 2017, my mother was holed up in John Knox Village rehab, after a hospital stay next door. John Knox is probably a very nice place to live on the assisted side. But the rehab side is a dump. So I was already a little depressed that my mom had to be in that place. The floors and walls had a gray cast to them, like the color of germs. People lined the narrow hallway who seemed to be clinging to life in the harshest of ways. She shared a room with somebody in worse shape than she was.

My mom was in that place for well over a week. She was in there on her 74th birthday. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that she didn’t care. She didn’t care where she was. And she didn’t care that it was her birthday.

I came as early that day as I could get there. When I arrived, she looked at me slowly and spoke in response to me.

“Happy Birthday, Mom,” I said, sitting down on the edge of a chair near her bed. She didn’t smile or say thank you, so I kept talking. “You’ve been getting a ton of birthday messages on Facebook. You want me to read you some?”

“Yes,” she answered flatly. So I began.

“Happy Birthday, Ann! We have shared many birthdays as special friends. May the trend continue!”

“Happy, happy birthday, dear, sweet Ann! I hope you are feeling better quickly! Miss you.”

“Happy Birthday, dreadnaught friend!”

“Happy Birthday to a very sweet lady! I hope you have a wonderful day!”

“Happy, happy birthday to an amazing woman and such an inspiration to myself and my boys!”

I stopped every now and then and looked at her. She was looking off to the right, toward the curtain barrier between her bed and her neighbor’s. Was she listening? Could she hear me? She wasn’t digesting the messages. There were 80 of them.

“Mom, you got 80 messages for your birthday,” I said.

I wanted her to care. I needed her to still care. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. That was the hardest birthday for me. The following year, on what would have been her 75th, I was able to rejoice that her spirit was no longer trapped in the prison of her very sick mind and body. The same way I can rejoice today.

The last birthday I remember really celebrating was her 70th. 2013. The entire family came out to our farmhouse and ate with us around the dining room table. Mom wasn’t totally herself, as we’d already begun to notice her slipping bit by small bit. But she was mostly herself. Smiling. Laughing at the right moments. Poking fun at herself. We had made a pretty big deal out of her because it was a milestone birthday. When she walked out my front door that night to go home, I knew she was happy. I knew she was properly loved. And I knew that she knew it too.

Facebook told me to let her know I was thinking of her today. Of course I am. I’m thinking of her laughter, which almost always caused a total face collapse. I’m thinking of her fierceness and how many times she went to bat for me. I’m thinking of her pride in me… afro and bad outfits me… buck tooth me… tube socks and canvas sneakers me. And I’m thinking that she spent 74 birthdays getting herself ready to stand in front of God, and helping me get ready, too. There is no question that I’m thinking of her. Of the her she was before disease. The real her.

Happy Birthday, Mom. I’m thinking of you. And I didn’t need Facebook to tell me that. Silly Facebook.

You know what’s a real sleep ruiner? 32 ounces of water imbibed at 10:30. I needed the water. But then I got to rethink that decision every hour for the rest of the night.

So I’ve been thinking about that whole discipline thing as it relates to the changes I’ve wanted to make for about 10 years now. Since Jenna. Oh, Jenna.

I figured out that, for me, the key is discipline. And the key to discipline is controlled and habitual. And the keys to controlled and habitual are–some other stuff.

I really don’t want to go all self-helpy, because I’m the farthest thing from a life coach and we’ve already established that it’s been more than a decade since I completed a New Year’s Resolution. I’m not qualified. You shouldn’t listen to me. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to keep talking. Because I’m thinking it onto paper. If you keep reading, that’s your choice. Your time.

I’m going to split my goals into the following bite-sized pieces:

1. I’m setting attainable goals for me, for now. I’m not going to set a goal of running a 10k. I dropped out of a 5k in November. Gretchen Rubin tells me to “lower the bar.” Be realistic. Don’t kill the goal before it even gets going good. Voltaire said, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
2. I’m setting measurable goals. How else can I know if I’ve met them? Saying I want to lose weight is worthless unless I can identify how much weight, per week, and by what method. Saying I wanted to write more didn’t work, until I decided that meant I would write Monday-Friday and post a blog per day. So far so good on that one.
3. I’m making daily deposits into many different accounts. One load of laundry a day. 20 minutes of reading my Bible a day. 20 minutes of exercise a day. A blog post per day. No more Smarties (taking a moment to let my eyes fill with sugar-free tears…) on any day.
4. I’m cutting what doesn’t fit (That originally came out ‘I’m cutting Wyatt Durant Fur’ on my phone). Currently the biggest time sucker I can cut completely is TV. I mean, I watch ALL the Hallmark Christmas movies and we all know if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen 24 others with an identical formula. There’s 48 hours I could get back right there. After Hallmark comes reading fiction. But let’s not talk crazy…

Controlled and Habitual needed some detail. I’ve got a few things in place. It’s attainable. It’s measurable. The rest is up to me.

I can only hope the rewards will be greater than the withdrawal I’ll be feeling when my Smarties and the Hallmark winter movies start singing their siren song, softly and sweetly in a strain only a hearing aid can hear…

Everyone loves a clean slate.

A new year.

A brand new white board. A fresh sheet of paper. An empty journal soon to be filled with the brilliant ideas in your head. A new workout program. Resolutions.

New. Fresh. Clean. Shiny.

But then.

Not new things happen.

Not fresh things show up.

The unclean invites itself.

You misspell a word on page 2 of the journal. In INK.

You skip two days of the new workout because your thighs were screaming horrible things at you. But they scream more and louder when you go back.

You can see the last two weeks of white board markings and can’t get that shiny new finish back no matter how much spray you use.

It’s old now.

Spoiled.

Ruined.

Eh. It’s easier to quit than fail.

Pretend you never started.

I’ve done that. Been doing that for years, actually.

I’ve tried picking a word of the year. 2016 was “intentional.” I intentionally did not make it to February. 2017 was “change.” I wrote down in a journal, “Nothing changes if nothing changes.” Wow. Deep. And nothing changed. Because nothing changed. 2018 was the hardest year of my life, with more conflict and change than I’ve ever experienced. As much as I didn’t work toward a New Year’s resolution or set specific goals this year, I did work and my regrets are fewer than usual. The hard stuff kept me on my knees, which is the safest and best place I could be.

But something hit me the day after Thanksgiving just a few short weeks ago. In the unlikely and uninspiring setting of a laundry room, I leaned over a dryer and read a Sean Dietrich blog post (www.seanofthesouth.com) from start to finish. It made me cry. It was simple, poignant, and powerful. The next day, I read another. And the day after that, another. I loved reading. He kept writing. That’s when it occurred to me that he writes every day. New material. From January 2018 until that moment in November, I had written 3 times. I wanted to write. I needed to write. But I wasn’t writing.

Inspired by the simple and consistent words of a man I’ve never met, I decided that if he could, so could I. At least on a Monday-Friday basis. Monday-Friday means 5 posts a week. That’s a specific goal that is 1,000,000 times more than I’ve been writing. How would I make that happen? What magic could I tap into to pull it off?

That’s when it hit me. Magic isn’t how things happen. Inspiration isn’t the source of great ideas and fancy words. It’s time. It’s effort. It’s determination.

It’s DISCIPLINE. Training myself to do something in a controlled and habitual way. (Thanks, internet.) Controlled and habitual. Ok then. I can develop the discipline to write daily. To do anything daily.

And out popped the word for 2019: discipline. In 2016, I tried to be intentional without any discipline. In 2017, I tried to change without applying discipline. In 2019, I’m going to develop discipline. To read. To write. To get healthy. To study. To whatever. Put in the time and the energy every day for whatever I’m working toward. 20 minutes here. An hour there. It’s a focus not so much on the outcome as it is on the process. For any goal I set, there has to be a controlled and habitual in place to accomplish it. In order to get something done, I must do. Well, then.

It is the simplest of all plans. So simple it’s almost guaranteed to fail. But let’s not talk about failure. That’s so negative.

So pessimistic.

So unnecessary.

So February.

Happy 2019, friends.