Accept

Last night, I found myself stroking the face of a child who was miserable.

Though outwardly calm and quiet, this child is a deep thinker, an acute observer of human behavior, and a very deep feeler.  She can work herself up into a frenzied state.  Particularly at bedtime.

She was dealing with a tooth that was loose but would not come out.  She kept working on it, but, she reported, it would bleed but not budge.  "It isn't ready yet, then," I said.

This was a torment to her.  She was having trouble with it when she ate, when she talked.  It hurt all the time.  It would "move" and get in her way.

"You won't be doing those things in bed," I reasoned.  She was not consoled.

I gave her the best advice I could.  "Accept," I told her.

Her wet eyelashes flickered in my direction.

"Just accept that you will be miserable for a while.  It's better than being mad about something you can't control."

I learned this lesson a few years ago when I had a colicky baby and a husband who was working nights.  I loved that baby with all my heart, but I was desperate for my husband to come home and just take him from my arms for a few minutes.  My arms and my ears were sorely in need of a break.

But, it wasn't time yet.  The source of misery was there, but it was not yet time for the relief from it.  I had to wait.

"I guess I'll just have to be miserable for a while," I whispered, thinking not only of the moment I was in, but possibly several other evenings to follow.  Saying that actually helped relieve the intensity of my misery.  In the rational part of my brain, I knew that colic is a temporary problem.

Most problems are.

I have learned that even the most emotionally excruciating problems--ones that can go on for years with no end in sight--are often still temporary.  The biggest problem I had ten years ago has all but vanished now.

Another one or two are in its place.  But I believe with all my heart that they will be resolved someday, too.

"This is not a problem that's going to go on for years," I told her, "like mine."

She looked at me.

"It's not even going to go on for months.  Not even weeks.  This problem will end soon."

She closed her eyes again in self-pity.  It was hard for her to accept her pain even for the present moment.  She hasn't had as much practice as I have.

"Sometimes," I told her, "you think something is going to go on way too long, and then, suddenly, it's over.  Something happens that changes everything."

I stroked her soft, beautiful face some more.

She had not been willing to let me near her tooth before, but she asked me then if I could try to help her.  "Which tooth is it?" I asked.  She pointed to a perfect-looking canine.

"This one?" I asked, pushing it up and out of her mouth and handing it to her, as simply as that.

She popped it under her pillow, then leaned back on it, the strain of her ordeal showing on her exhausted face.

"It's over," I said, and she nodded.

I half-smiled, happy for her that her problem had ended, but reflecting on my own troubles.

There is a tranquility that comes with acceptance.  It seems paradoxical that accepting pain can be calming, that one can be in a state of peace while still feeling it.

But it is possible.  Freeing, even.  Instead of fighting against something you are powerless to change, embrace it.

Passing through a time of sorrow, pain, uncertainty, or loss with mindful patience is ennobling.  Enduring pain beautifies our souls.

There is always a good side to trouble, and putting one's faith in a joyful outcome strengthens character.

The examples I have used are somewhat trivial, but I believe in this principle for even the worst kinds of problems.

Illness.  It will end, one way or another.

Wanting someone or something you cannot have.  The lessons to be learned from longing are magnificent.  They can inspire us to prepare for the next opportunity, for the eventual reconciliation or realization of our hopes.  They can stretch us to work harder, be bigger, magnify our capacity, reach our potential.

Grief and want give us empathy for others.

Battling fear can build faith.

We can focus on the up-side--at least we have a job to hate, a loved one to miss, a child to raise, a house to clean.

We can take comfort in having the problem and knowing that we are doing our best with it.  At least we have what we have, at least we can test our courage, at least we can set an example for our children of how to handle disappointment.  There is always an up-side.  We need to embrace it, even though it hurts to do so.

I have learned that, even with tears streaming down my face, it is possible to sing a song that breaks my heart.

I did it for my sons at my mother's funeral.

Feeling pain means we are human.  It means we can feel, can think, can learn, can grow.

It is better to choose to handle our pain than to choose the opposite.

It is better to feel it than to bury it, run away from it, drown it in addictive behavior, deny our love and/or duty to others, act out in selfish ways that bring us even more trouble.  It is better to go through the pain than try to distract ourselves from it like children who will never learn.  It is better to accept and acknowledge our feelings than to try to deaden them with the TV or other idle time-fillers that keep us from actually living our lives, loving our loves, and learning our lessons.

Accept.  Embrace.  Get all you can out of it while it is here.  Soon, something will happen and it will end. Then, you can tuck it under your belt as a mountain conquered, and invest it under your pillow for an earned reward.

Is That Re-pose, or Repose?

I was reading something today that got me thinking.  (Always a good idea for a Monday morning.)

The article was talking about the "skill" of repose--by which the author meant being at ease in front of others.  This is not necessarily the usual meaning of the word.  It can also mean "at rest," and "freed from activity."  But what the author meant was being in a state of calm and rest, free from anxiety or nervous movements, even while being watched, or in public.

We all want to be at our best in public.  This is why mirrors, clothing, and double-mint gum were invented.

But the author had noticed that people in public often fidget with their clothing, adjust a sandal strap, fiddle with their hair, or sit up straighter when they think someone is looking.  The author wanted to gain the ability to be so comfortable in front of others that he didn't feel the need to do those things.

Like you might at home, or with someone whose love and acceptance you never question.

We should all have a few places (home) where and people (Mom) with whom we feel that comfortable.

But what if we became so comfortable with ourselves that wherever we were, or whomever we were with, we felt that repose, that ability to be at rest from self-consciousness.  What if we could make what we know of our current selves so acceptable to ourselves that we never worried? 

What if, instead of posing for others--which is really what we tend to do whether we are in front of a camera or not--we were at repose among others?

I think that would take a self-love, and a pristine self-knowledge and trust of ourselves that I agree are seldom reached. And, since none of us can be perfect, it would likely require of us a broader self-acceptance.

We often compare the worst we know about ourselves against the best we perceive in others, and that is why we are self-conscious.

But, what if what we knew about ourselves was so above reproach that we wouldn't mind others knowing it, either? What if we cleaned up our bad habits, and the messes we've left behind us?  What if we self-developed so mindfully that everything we did had a purpose of which we could be proud and comfortable?

Or, what if we took the magnifying glass off our our own warts and turned the lens to look at others?  That might be another way to avoid self-consciousness--to think of ourselves hardly at all.

Profound love of ourselves, and/or profound love of others.

Or, reverting back to an age before we knew shame.  Which some of us accidentally do, too.

'Cuz of Cousins

My teenaged daughter has become disillusioned with the artwork in her bedroom.  It's been there for years, but, suddenly, she's tired of it.

Even though she was one of the artists.

Before that room was her bedroom, it was a playroom.  And when it was a playroom, there was a day, or two, when the players in that playroom played Michelangelo.

Only with the wall, because they were short.

When we needed it to become her bedroom, we shoved her bed up against the wall and hid most of it.  She never said a word.

But now that she is contemplating having some cousins in her bedroom, she wants the room painted.

When she mentioned it, it became the four hundred eighty-sixth thing on my list of things to do before this upcoming event involving her cousins.

I sighed.  I said I understood but didn't know. . .

Then I went to bed and thought about it.

I remembered a day in my life when I was about her age and became ashamed of my bedroom.  My older sister had convinced me that we "had to" write our names on our wallpaper so that people would know we had been there.

She thought we were celebrities.

The wallpaper was old-fashioned, anyway, but her name scribbled on my wall, and my childish nickname scribbled even more wildly right under it did nothing to improve it.

A new girl moved into the neighborhood, and I wanted to take her into my room.

But, first, I wanted my room transformed.

My parents never seemed to have extra cash, and my mother was suffering from tennis elbow that summer, but Dad purchased some fake paneling, and Mom spent hours on the ladder painting the ceiling white with that very same tennis elbow.  New Priscilla curtains were bought for my window, and also a new light fixture for the ceiling.

I felt like Cinderella when the godmother came.

So, I sighed again, and we went the next day to buy paint.

While my daughter and I pored over all the available colors, my husband grew bored and went to talk to a salesperson.  By the time I joined them, I seemed to have missed some vital conversation, the gyst of which seemed to be that we should buy a whole lot of paint we didn't need and a lot of other things, too.

"It's only a bedroom," I said.  "I don't think we need two gallons."

The paint she was recommending was about three times as expensive as what I had anticipated.  Granted, it's been a lot of years since I've bought paint.

She also thought we should buy two gallons of primer.

My frugal nature reasoned that the primer would only be needed on that one corner of the room, and we most definitely did not need two gallons for that.

We ended up with two gallons of a paint-primer mix.  And a bunch of other stuff to help us apply it to the walls.

I spent the holiday applying the first coat, somewhat ruefully covering a pink-toned off-white with a blue/green-toned off-white.  At least her sister finally believed as she saw the difference that her own bedroom really was already pink.

The permanent marker seemed to be covered with each coat, but only for a few minutes.

The backwards wobbly initial and the magenta and turquoise faces peered out at me as cheerfully as ever.

I gave in to the seeming inevitability that primer would be needed, and picked some up from the store the next day.

I drove to work thinking there must be someone I knew who would know exactly--without blunder--exactly what I should use.  I couldn't afford to invest much more into this.

Bing!  I realized I had a cousin who would know exactly what to do.  I messaged him in the morning.  I checked for a response throughout the day, but didn't receive one, so I headed to the store without much wisdom.

A different salesperson talked me into purchasing the more expensive primer by assuring me confidently, "That will cover your permanent marker!" I did, however, only pick up a quart.

When I got home, I told my cousin, "Never mind," thinking my problem was solved.

Immediately, he wrote back with the answer.  It was not the product I'd picked up.

I applied my expensive primer.  Twice.  It did not cover.

When I told my husband about the product my cousin had recommended, he said, "Oh, yeah.  She (meaning the first salesperson) showed that to us."

She had shown it to him, perhaps, but I had never heard of it.

So I found myself at the store again.  I told the saleslady that her more expensive primer that she had talked me into had not worked.  Amazingly, that didn't seem to bother her at all!  I found the product my cousin recommended, and she tried to talk me into a different form of it.  But he had described it quite thoroughly, and I had what he had described in my hand.  "That won't work as well," she said.

I went back over to the shelf and found the product--a cousin to the one in my hand--that she recommended.  I stared at them both, read the labels.  I thought about praying for inspiration, but, honestly, would God care?  Would He tell me clearly enough for me to know?

I asked myself, "Whom should I trust--my cousin who knows his stuff or this lady who steered me wrong yesterday?"

THAT helped.

So I guess the moral is that when you are trying to impress cousins, you listen to cousins you trust and don't trust cousin products not recommended by your cousin.  Then, you finish your project designed to impress your daughter's cousins on the day of your own cousins' party and go and report back to your cousin your cousins-cousin-cousin story.

Is cousin even a word? Am I spelling it right?  It looks funny to me now.

Sunrise, Sunset

It was one of those hectic Sunday mornings.

I've figured out what time we need to get going in the morning, but on this morning, we didn't get going at that time.

We were running about twenty minutes behind when I told my daughters, "Hurry and get ready as fast as you can.  Don't get distracted by anything."

It was a loooooooong time before I saw either of them again, and only after repeated summons.

One daughter appeared in a lovely cream colored dress with a mauve sash and mauve rosebuds.  My favorite.  In her arm was a doll in an identical cream dress with mauve rosebuds.

I had forgotten that that dress had a doll dress that matched it.  She had not.

This daughter is too old to bring a doll to church.  Nevertheless, she was compelled to dress it, instead of herself.

Her sister, who is even older, had spent her getting-ready time finding white ballet slippers for the doll to wear on her feet as she stayed home from church.

The older kids were acting like teenagers--why should they come when called?  After all, it's their life.

Well, life is ironic.  And surreal.  We know that.

By that evening, I found myself, completely by surprise, teaching my doll-dressing daughter how to put on a bra.

One more proof that growing out of childhood is a process, not an event.

A Bright Spot in a Poor Time

Does anyone else get tired of being in a recession?

Sometimes, I think about what I would do if money were no object.  Once when we as a family were experiencing a lean time, I commented to my husband at a warehouse-type store that had a whole aisle full of fresh flowers, "Someday, when I'm rich, I want to buy myself fresh flowers every week."

I don't think I looked at him for his reaction, which I assumed it to be somewhere between a scoff and a snort.

He hasn't been a big flower-giver.  Which is fine.

I like to get flowers just like any other woman, but when the choice is between flowers for your table or milk for your table, you get the milk.

He often remembers special occasions with flowers.  Which is nice.

The funniest time he ever gave me flowers was when I had had a baby during a particularly difficult financial year.  He headed toward me with a huge bouquet in hand while saying the words, "These were really, really cheap."

It was a bit of a surreal moment, yes.  But I smiled and understood.  He wanted to please me with the flowers, but he also didn't want me to worry about him having spent money on something so frivolous when money was so tight.

In my opinion, that kind of pulling-together-as-a-team intimacy is more romantic than frivolous (and wasteful) stuff happening when it would result in pocketbook pain in other areas.

In other words, a good marriage is both the producer and a product of a household that runs smoothly.  Dramatic ups and downs are, for me, not so much fun.

I was reminded of both of those past events the other day when my husband came through the door from grocery shopping with a huge armful of gladiolas.

"Who died?" I may or may not have asked.

"They're for you," he said.  "They were cheap," he added, "but I want you to feel rich."

Legacy

The way I heard the story, seventy-six years ago today, my great-grandma was sitting at the kitchen table, eating her breakfast, when suddenly, thud!  She fell off her chair sideways and that was that.

Her father had done nearly the same thing thirty-five years earlier.  He had walked off a train in Los Angeles at Christmas time, and dropped dead.

Dropping dead is a serious matter.

I mean, people jokingly say, "Drop dead," but if you did it, I bet they would be surprised.

My grandma on the other side of the family died quietly in her chair without a peep.  My parents both expired quickly from apparent heart attacks.  Also, a sister.

People have told me that they were lucky to go that way.

It doesn't feel so good to be the one left going, "Whuuuuuu?"

If this is going to happen to me, I hope it's a long way off.  I think I wouldn't mind if I were a very old lady, and had finally written all the books I have in my head.  And published the one I've had waiting a long time. 

And if my house were clean.

I guess when I reach a certain age, I'll have to make sure before I leave the house every single time that every single dish is washed and every single paper is in order.  That my table is wiped and my floor is swept. 

I know you probably think I already do this.

But I'm not ready to die yet.  So, I leave a little something undone here and there for insurance.  Yeah, that's it.

I actually know a woman who washes all of the clothes she was wearing that day every single day of her life, because when she was at a very impressionable age, she heard stories about a woman in the neighborhood who died unexpectedly.   The gossip must have been horrible.  It seems to have scarred this woman for life.

I mean, I figure if what I wore during that week is in the hamper, who cares if it's dirty?  I don't wear enough clothes in a day to make a dark load and a light load, and I can't see lumping them all together in one load.  To me, that would be gross.

Maybe I wouldn't mind going that fast if I'd said goodbye to all my children, and I knew for sure that none of them still needed me.  Actually, this one could be pretty tricky. They may get to the point where they don't need me, but I sure can't conceive of ever being done with any of them.

On Self-efficacy

One of my associates has a favorite saying: "I give up!"  I hate it when she says that.

Recently, she had a problem with a different agency.  "There isn't anything I can do about it," she said.

"Don't say that!" I said.  "Of course you can."  We talked about how she could call or go in person and straighten out her problem.  The next day, I learned the problem had been solved.  Mentally, I gave her a high five.

More and more, I find that believing you can be effective is the biggest key to actually being effective.

At the first part of this week, I was somewhat depressed.  I had a big worry that I didn't think I could do anything about.  I included it in my prayers, of course, but really felt at a loss.  During my shower, though, I had an idea.  I do some of my best thinking in the shower.

Suddenly, I could see the big picture.  I realized what others in my organization needed as well as what I needed.  I knew what to say that would create a win-win and solve my problem.

As soon as I got to work--before I lost my nerve--I asked for a moment of my manager's time.  It was granted immediately.  I said the things I had been rehearsing, and it worked!  It really worked!  A huge load was lifted off my shoulders.

Later in the morning, I was looking at my list of contacts, which is too small, wondering how I could drum up some more business--and success--for myself.  One person had gone inactive by her own choice, and I was just waiting for a time frame to end to close her out.

Finally, something intelligent to say occurred to me, and I took a chance and called her, said my piece on her voice mail, and, voila!  She called me right back.  As we talked, it became apparent that I would easily be able to turn this "failure" into a success and create a much needed win-win situation for her as well.

I went to lunch ecstatic.

That's when I started thinking about self-efficacy.

You know the old saying attributed to Henry Ford--"Whether you think you can, or think you can't, you're right."

Honestly, the only reason my husband and I didn't solve our electricity problem sooner (see last post) was that we simply didn't think we could.  My son knew he could solve it, and it was solved much more easily than he had thought it would be.  But we waited for him to solve it, because it just never occurred to either of us to think that we had the power to solve it ourselves.

How often do we do this, really?

I was a quiet and unassuming child.  It was extremely clear to me that I was one of the little kids in my family.  Everyone else knew much more than I did, and was much taller.  They're still much taller, actually.

I remember as a toddler being taken by my parents to the old post office downtown practically every night of my life.  They owned a small business that depended heavily on receiving and sending mail.  Every night, they would take me up the stone steps of the post office, sit me on the back of the stone eagle ledge for a moment, then heave open the post office's massive doors and walk me into its cavernous hallways.  I would watch my tiny Keds walk on those marble halls.

It seemed so. . .permanent.  It seemed like it had been there forever and would be there forever, and I was just a little kid having no effect on it whatsoever.  It seemed like something Eternal.  Immovable.  Inviolable. Everlasting.

I don't actually know if it was these trips to the post office, or something--or everything--else, but it took me decades to realize that everything that has been superimposed onto nature is only there because somebody had thought it up and made it. Even the non-concrete institutions like school boards and laws had been made up by people.  I didn't get that for a long time, but peopledid all of these things.  And we're people.

I remember a couple of times when I did think I had self-efficacy.  My dad, thankfully, really maneuvered the buying of my first car for me.  But when it died and I needed to buy my second car, I went into a dealership to look at used cars knowing how much I could spend.  I test-drove a Corsica that met my specifications (it was automatic and had four doors).  My mom came along with me for the test drive.

"I'm going to buy this car, Mom," I said.  "I think this is the one."

She was politely skeptical.  They wanted about fifteen hundred more for it than I could afford.

We went back to the dealership and I told the salesman, "I want to buy this car.  This is what I can spend."

He went into an office with his manager.  Mom looked worried while I waited.  He came back out, and we signed papers.  The car was mine.

Another time, I wanted to enter a creative writing contest.  I was nearly done with my masterpiece, but I knew it still needed a lot of work.  With permission from my supervisor, I restructured my work schedule so that I would have a day off to write each week for a couple of months.

I had to mail the manuscript by midnight on the day of the contest deadline.

Everything went well until my printer broke.  Really broke.  I was devastated.

My husband helped me find a solution, and we relocated to somewhere where I could use another printer into the late hours of the night.

But I had been set back, and midnight came and went before I was finished printing.

I did not want to miss this contest.  I had structured my life around it.  I had been writing that novel for years.

I kept printing.

The stakes were high, and I felt there had to be something I could do.  I included a letter in the box explaining why I had missed the deadline to see if the contest manager would take pity on me. But I had another problem.  The results of the contest would not be available for months.  I didn't want to wonder for all those months whether or not my novel was even in the running for the contest if it wasn't. I purchased a postcard, stamped it, and addressed it to myself.  I asked the contest manager to mark a box whether, yes, I was in the contest, or no, I was not in the contest, and send it back to me.

My husband, besides being exhausted by then, seemed also somewhat skeptical.

In the wee hours of the morning, we went to a copy place to bind it.  Then we went to the post office to mail it.  It was four or five in the morning.

A few days later, I got the postcard back.  My novel was in the contest.  I later learned that, not only had I succeeded in getting my novel into the contest, it won the contest.

I wonder how often we could have something we really want, if only we wouldn't talk ourselves out of it.

Cooking Something Up with Me

So, we spent about ten months of this past year without a stove in our kitchen.

Oh, the stove was there, all right.  It just didn't work.

We have been making do with the downstairs stove, which is not as nice, and, being down the stairs and three blocks to the right, not as convenient.

Whenever we cooked, we tried to think of everything we might need from the other floor and carry it with us before we started.  But it never worked quite as well as we'd hoped.

I'd start mixing up a cake in the upstairs kitchen, and I would have to send a child down to the other kitchen for eggs, where my husband had relocated the ingredients he was most likely to use when he cooked.  No sooner would that child come up with the eggs than I would have discovered on the recipe that I also needed oil, which had also been relocated to the kitchen where my husband did most of the cooking.  So I'd send a child for the oil.  Then I'd send another child to help the child find the oil, the right oil, the oil I mean, the one I need for cake.

Then, I'd open the drawer for the rubber scraper, only to find that pretty much every utensil had been carried downstairs for possible use down there.

THIS is why we had so many children, if you really want to know.

I could have started mixing the cake downstairs, but then I would have to send children upstairs for the mixer and the cocoa.  And the sugar.  And flour.

Whenever the rest of us were doing something upstairs while my husband cooked downstairs, he started to feel like an indentured servant, relegated to the servant's quarters to slave away for our family dinner.

People, this was our life. For something like ten months.

Finally, we had the money together to buy a new stove.  We went to three stores to compare prices and features, then came back to the first one.  We made our purchase and waited two more weeks for delivery.  The morning the stove was supposed to arrive, Paul and the kids hauled dishes and utensils upstairs.

We were all excited.

Only after--of course--the delivery guys hauled out our old stove, did we discover that the new stove did not work, either.  The delivery guys had the foresight to plug it in and test it.

The clock came on, but the burners and oven did not heat up.

"This stove is defective," he announced.  "We'll send it back and order you a new one."

We wondered if we could get some kind of upgrade for our trouble.

The answer was no.

So, we waited another week for our new stove.  This time, with a big hole in our kitchen.  We couldn't even use the stove for extra counter space, as we had become accustomed, because both the old one and the new one had both been hauled away.  And I had to learn to use the alarm clock I didn't like instead of the stove timer to wake me up in the morning.  Weird, I know.  But it got me up and far away from bed.

Half of the items that had been hauled upstairs were taken back downstairs by the children who had not already been worn out by hauling items on previous trips.

Another week passed, and, at the very end of the day, here came another team of delivery men delivering an identical twin to our other new stove.

So identical that it didn't work, either.  The clock came on, but the burners and oven didn't warm up.

"It's getting warm," he announced, his hand flat on the dark burner.  I put my own hand on. Not!

The delivery guy and I looked at each other and suddenly knew that the first stove had not been defective.

"Something's wrong with your electricity," he said.  So we ran downstairs to check the breaker.  The switches for the stove were both on.  He turned them off.  They would not go back on.  He tried to push them and reported that they wouldn't go back on.  "That means something's wrong with your electricity," he said.

As we came back upstairs, I thought about the episode of my favorite television show where Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet) asks her electric man to make sure her electricity doesn't go to lower-class houses before it comes to hers.  How could something be wrong with our electricity?

I sent an email to the Home Repairs and All-purpose Fix-it Patriarch, my brother, who, unbeknownst to me, was just leaving on an out-of-country trip.

My husband and I had a couple of tentative conversations about whether the old stove we hadn't used for almost a year was even broken?  We concluded that it was.  Anything else would just be too heartbreaking to contemplate.

I had shared my stove problem with the woman I stand next to in the gym while we blow-dry our hair and put on our faces.

When I told her something was wrong with our electricity, she told me her last boyfriend had been an electrician, and it would probably cost us hundreds of dollars more to get the electricity fixed.  She also told me a horror story about an electrical problem she had just had fixed in her new house, and how much that had cost.

The next time my son visited, I told him our story.  I also told him about my sent email.

"Mom," he said, patiently.  "I have a master's degree in that."

After several more days of running the children up and down the stairs while we waited for our son to get free from some pressing personal business he had to take care of, our son came.

He pulled out our beautiful, worthless new stove and tested the electricity behind it with his thing-a-ma-jig.  "Both wires work," he announced.

We went downstairs to the breaker box.  I told him what the delivery guy had said and showed him the switches doomed to sit in the middle as they would not go on again.

I'm telling you what.  It's a good thing he has a master's degree.

He pushed the switches ALLTHEWAY to the off position and ALLTHEWAY to the on position, and, voila!

A working stove in the kitchen.

In less than a year.

Oh, Say Can You See What I Feel?

I've always wished I could sing.

If I could sing well, I would sing "The Star-spangled Banner" and try to show through my performance what it means to me.

I know that our national anthem is hard to sing--and even harder to understand, but that's partly because we only ever hear the first verse.

The first verse is a cliff-hanger.  It was never meant to be the entire song.  It only gives the exposition of the story, and it does that in a somewhat plodding way.  A man is hoping that his country's flag will still be waving at the end of a battle.

So, what?

I agree that isn't much to say in a national anthem.  That's why we need the rest of the verses.  And to find a meaning in it for ourselves.

The second verse describes his joyful discovery that the flag is still there in the morning, meaning that the war isn't lost and the new country still exists, with all its freedoms.

On the shore, dimly seen thru the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that, which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam.
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream;
'Tis the star-spangled banner!  Oh, long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Beautiful poetry.  Difficult though the anthem may be, I love its lofty words and music.  If the national anthem were too simple, perhaps, lacking majesty, it would become boring in a different way.


The anthem is meaningful to me in a very personal way.  I know it must be for a lot of people.

Anyone who has fled their home to find other refuge--or been forced to engage in battle, legal or otherwise, to defend their home--or been forced to serve in any capacity of uncompensated servitude--would find the words of the last two verses speak to them in a very meaningful way.

It has been my privilege to work with people with amazing stories of surviving, escaping, and overcoming outrageous situations.

Our laws are not perfect, but our country has freedoms and liberties, programs and processes that at least attempt to ensure freedom and safety for everyone.  

America has helped the girl who watched her uncle slam a hatchet into her mother's head because her mother refused to let him take the girl away with him. 

It has helped the toddler whose mother's handprint was etched into his face by the force of her slap.

It has helped the psychologically caged woman who wrote the name of her abuser in tiny script on her legs, just in case her body was ever left by him out in the woods.


It has helped the fourteen-year-old widow nursing her third child from an arranged marriage.


It has helped people who walked hundreds of miles to the border of the next country--and their next meal.


It has helped people who spent their whole lives in refugee camps--people so unexposed to our common luxuries that a toilet looks like a porcelain fountain for washing one's face or drinking out of, and a Lysol wipe looks like something good for cleaning your teeth. 

Those whose hearts have sunk fighting--and losing--battle after battle while searching for the courage to flee, to quit, to try a new path--whose hearts have risen again in the hope to triumph, would understand and feel, as I do, the words:

And where is that band, that so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and country shall leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Those who know what it feels like to not be free, and what it feels like to have to be brave--who have offered prayers in increasing fear and dwindling hope, holding out for some miracle they cannot envision, would, I think, stand and sing with me, our hearts soaring in the air along with the triumphant words and high notes:

Oh, thus be it ever when free men shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation!
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust!"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Because, to listen to me sing the national anthem could be a disappointment.

I can't sing.

But I can write.

And I will, in my own way, forever celebrate and defend this song as our national anthem.

The Ruler in My Home

I have a child who likes to keep rules.

More than that, he likes to make up rules.  Not just for himself, either.  "I only let you put the cup in the other cup on Fridays," he will say to me, for example.  For the most part, we tolerate it.  He is stubborn about his rules being kept.  Once he decides something is a rule, he sticks to it.  Until he changes his mind. Which may or may not ever happen.

When he was two, he disagreed with me about how his name was spelled.

"I know how to spell your name," I told him.  "I'm the one who picked it."

He didn't care.  Neither my authority as his mother nor my English degree impressed him in the slightest.

He corrected other adults on how to spell his name.  I'd pick him up from nursery, and the teachers would look at me funny.  "Do you spell his name this way?" they would ask.

"No," I would have to say.  "But he does."

"Oh!" they would say, relieved to know I was still sane.  "He was very insistent."

It's a common name, with a simple spelling.  I don't blame them for looking at me funny.

Finally, I had to pull out the big guns.  "Look," I showed him.  "This is the way your name is spelled in the Bible."

It was good to find out that he recognized SOME authority higher than himself.

So.  He can be a formidable opponent.  If I need him to accept something, I have to program him to make a new rule in his head.

One time, he fell apart because I had--heaven forbid!--cut his sandwich in half.  When I was sick of his carrying on--about two seconds into it, I said, "Look!  Now you have two sandwiches!"  He giggled, adopted this as his idea, and ate his sandwich-es. 

Saturday night, well after he'd been put to bed and I was in bed myself, he slinked into my room.  Tearfully, he came up to my side of the bed and whimpered, "The reason I am wearing these jammies is because this is the second night I was supposed to wear these jammies."  The tears came afresh.  I had gotten out a different pair for him after his bath.

He told me his sister had put this pair of Shrek pajamas under his pillow when she had helped him make his bed.  I had stupidly gotten Buzz Lightyear pajamas out of the drawer for him.  And--I think this is what made him maddest--he had actually worn them for an hour without realizing he was breaking a rule.

"That's fine," I said, wiping tears off his face.  "You can wear those a second time."

He remained unconsoled.

"You can wear the Buzz jammies tomorrow night."

He relaxed only slightly.

"I just didn't know," I went on.  "I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know!  Please forgive me!"  Or, something like that.

Then, I shared with him the horrible truth.  I know, he's pretty young for it, but, hey.  It came up.  "It really doesn't matter whether you wear your jammies for two nights or not."

He turned his head toward me without moving his face.  He was probably in shock.

"Sometimes, I wear my nightgown for one night.  Sometimes two.  Sometimes three.  It really doesn't matter."

I hugged and held him, then, to lessen the trauma of this revelation.

I wish he were such a rule-keeper in other areas.  Like, oh, minding his mother, for example.  Sitting still in church.  Picking up his toys.  Those rules apparently mean nothing to him.  Nothing.

But don't ever try to give him a cup the same color as his plate.