INSTRUCTION MANUAL FOR RAISING KIDS
Part I

If all the grandmothers of the world got together, we could write the greatest of all manuals on raising kids. And if someone were ambitious enough to make that happen, then this would be my contribution. I would insist, however, on reserving the right to an addendum if some more priceless advice comes to my mind.

Affection
Children need to be hugged at all ages. Wrap them in your arms even if they act like you have a transmittable disease or even if you feel awkward doing it. If a hug feels too intimate, at least rub their shoulders while they’re sitting down somewhere and you need to tell them something, especially if it’s something good. “I’m so proud of you for getting an A in PE (rub, rub).” Eventually, you will both be comfortable with touching. Children need it so much and so do we. According to Virginia Satir, a family therapist, “We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.”

Believe
Believe in your children and make sure they believe in themselves. My mother had a wonderful way of doing this called the TL which stands for Tell Last. If Mom had heard something nice someone had said about me she would say, “I have a TL for you!” That meant I was supposed to say something nice I had heard about her first and then she would tell me my compliment. As a child I didn’t hear as many great things about her to share, but she would always tell me my compliment anyway. I thrived on the good things others said about me that got carried to my ears by a loving mother. These positive comments added much to my belief in myself.

Choices
Give them choices but not too many. “Do you want to wear this red shirt or this blue shirt?” “Would you rather take out the garbage or vacuum the family room?” “Would you like to practice before lunch or after lunch?” Children need to feel that they have control over something.

Discipline
Ignore their bad behavior whenever possible by distracting them with other subjects or activities. But when discipline is necessary, never scold a child in front of someone else. Children are so sensitive and get embarrassed so easily. Some parents act tough just to show who is boss. Others yell for awhile without any effectiveness and think they’ve carried out their parental duty. The Prophet Eli did that in the Old Testament. He had two wayward sons and instead of insisting that they change their ways or suffer the consequences, he just verbally reprimanded them. Eli then went about his business and his sons went back to stealing the meat sacrifices and seducing the women at the gates of the temple. The Lord was not happy with Eli’s parenting methods and some pretty bad things happened to Eli which you can read about in I Samuel.

Eating
Don’t ever make children eat things they don’t like because they will most likely hate that one food forever. They should be encouraged, of course, and introduced to lots of foods so they can learn to not be picky. Good eaters are much more pleasant to have around. And don’t forget that if they don’t eat much in one meal, they will often make up for it in the next.

When he’s having a treat, be sure to tell a child at the beginning that he only gets one helping if that’s the case. Think how you are when you’re eating a fabulous piece of cheesecake or whatever seems exquisite. While you’re eating it, sometimes you’re thinking about the next delectable piece you’re definitely going to have. Your taste buds are all ready for it. You wouldn’t feel that it was fair if someone bigger and more forceful than you told you that you couldn’t have anymore. That’s how kids feel. Warn them up front, that’s all.

Go with the Flow
As you envision the outcomes of certain events, it is easy to be disappointed when things don’t turn out as you hoped they would. Children are known to mess up outcomes. But if you can be flexible enough, the endings, though different than you had supposed, can still be wonderful. Inflexible people break while flexible people bend to each occasion and enjoy the whole process whether it is going their way or not. Deleting people from your life might help but that wouldn’t be quite as satisfying in the end.

Prelude to the A-Z Manual for Raising Kids

I have written a very simplified A-Z Manual for Raising Kids. It isn’t long at all as far as manuals go, but too long to ask a faithful friend to go to my blog and read it all in one sitting. So I thought I could put it into 4 equal parts.

“Hmmmmm,” I said as I drove from Bashas to Batteries Plus. “Twenty-four letters divide neatly into four equal parts with six letters in each part.” And I went through the alphabet six letters at a time, which surprisingly was a little awkward.

I mean, I’m used to saying the alphabet not in sixes. I say, (and I quote): “A,B,C,D,E,F,G” which is a grouping of seven; then “H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P” which is a grouping of nine; then “Q, R, S”—a grouping of three; “T, U, V”—another grouping of three; and I end with a resounding “W, X, Y, and Z”—a grouping of four, unless you count “and” which makes it a grouping of five. So, anyway, when I tried to say the alphabet in sixes, I had to use my fingers on the steering wheel to make sure I counted it out right.

“A, B, C, D, E, F” would make the first blog entry. “G, H, I, J, K, L” would make the second blog entry. “M, N, O, P, Q, R” would make the third blog entry. “S, T, U, V, W, X”.……“Hold it!” I said with emphasis because, of course, Y and Z were left out. That’s because there aren’t twenty-four letters in the alphabet. There are twenty-six! My mind was doing some serious slipping, which is a little scary, especially considering the history of both my parents. (I have to keep reminding myself and my children that I graduated cum laude. They don’t believe me.) Anyway, twenty-six can’t be divided into equal parts unless you use fractions and that will hardly suit my purpose. So I will have to divide my A-Z Manual for Raising Kids blog entry into four unequal parts—or maybe three. Watch for them. Thanks for reading!!

I Am Woman---Hear Me Whimper!

“I’m sorry,” I blubber into the phone. “We did everything wrong!”

“Be calm,” says Brad, my fabulous husband of nearly thirty-nine years. (Whew, thirty-nine years is a very, very long time. That is longer than it took for me to be born, go through Emerson Elementary School, West Jr. High School, Westwood High School, get my Home Economics degree from BYU, get married and have five children!)

Brad has lived with me long enough to know not to say, “Calm down!” which tends to have the opposite effect. “Settle down!” isn’t good either. These are commands of one-up-man-ship and not words of compassion.

But I can live with “be calm”. And he says it again after I tell him the whole story. Then he gives me some helpful names and phone numbers that I shout through the car window to my sister, Maxine, who is writing them down. I am standing several feet away in a patch of snow. Maxine is sitting in my meadow-marooned Sequoia SUV with our 95 year old mother who can’t remember that we are actually her daughters. The four wheels are smothered in mud after having spun themselves into a frenzy of futility. They are making contact with nothing—not the ground nor the twigs we tried to shove behind the back wheels and in front of the front wheels. Isn’t that what the experts do when they get stuck in the mud? Maybe experts don’t ever get stuck in the mud. Lida even offered to lay down her jacket in front of the wheel for traction. But why sacrifice a good jacket to a lost cause?

Lida is our sister-in-law and another member of our stranded group. At the moment she is standing ankle deep in the sludge, video taping our predicament. She accompanies the filming with a precise narration so our families will know what happened to us in case someone finds our bones in years to come.

This day started out so agreeably. Having spent the weekend at our cabin in honor of Mom’s 95th birthday, we thought we’d go for a pleasant drive to Greer for lunch by way of Greens Peak. The road is unpaved but beautiful in its spruce and aspen glory. Since I was the driver, I felt a huge responsibility for these three cherished relatives and wanted us to have the most memorable time possible.

It definitely turned out to be memorable. I should have had a clue when we ran into—literally—several patches of snow on the dirt road. But I thought the snow problem would disappear the closer we got to Greens Peak because I envisioned the area being more open to the sun’s warmth. Surely the sun would have melted all the snow the closer we got to the “famous” mountain.

The smart thing would have been to turn around—give up. It’s not like there isn’t another way to Greer. There is. But it is on the highway through Springerville and it seemed so boring compared to this gorgeous mountain pass. Safety vs. beauty? Really, should there have even been a decision? There would be other days to drive past Greens Peak, after all, when there wouldn’t be a bit of snow. But I kept doggedly driving forward. I really don’t know what possessed me.

Finally we came to a snowdrift on the road that seemed a little too daunting. Really, the snow had to quit—maybe around the next bend. Maxine and I got out thinking we could walk through the two piles of snow that were visible down the road and then look around the curve to see if that would be the last of it. But it was too far. If we could just get past this biggest drift—it had to get better.

I had never driven in 4-wheel drive before, but this snow pile seemed to call for it. So out came the car’s manual. Everything should have a manual, don’t you think? A personal manual could say something like: “If you are driving on a mountain road and you run into some snow, do not anticipate that the road will get clearer by and by. For the sake of your lives and your sanity, turn around. Don’t be stupid!”

My brother and Lida’s husband, Ron, happened to call just then and he talked us through the 4-wheel drive operation. So with a very light peddle and some steeled nerves on my part and a great deal of patience on the part of my passengers, we made it quite nicely through what looked like the worst of the snow drifts.

As we drove on, however, the next drift looked even higher. Why not drive around the drift? What a great idea! We all thought so. This would entail driving off the road and into a meadow but we were now in 4-wheel drive and won’t 4-wheel drive, like Master Card, take you anywhere you want to go? So that’s what I did—I drove off the road onto ground that seemed quite solid. Maxine had walked around it just to try it out and it didn’t seem too muddy.

But a ½ ton vehicle proved too much for the lovely ecology and the earth seemed to collapse right when we got in the middle of the meadow. Obviously 4-wheel drive isn’t as dependable as Master Card. In dismay, I tried to back up, but that made us sink deeper. I tried to go forward. Nope. Then I stepped out into the mud and let Lida try her hand at the wheel. Still no success. That’s when we tried the sticks and contemplated using Lida’s jacket for traction. We tried pushing. Mom was sure that if we would just let her out, that she could push us forward. She was in a bad mood the rest of the trip because we insisted that she stay in the car. Actually, we locked the doors so she couldn’t get out. Talk about pushing—having Mom stuck in the mud, too, would have pushed each of us over the precipice of reason that we were barely teetering on.

Thus the frantic phone call to Brad. And now the fruitless phone calls to every number he gave me—Sheriff Brandon, the Springerville equipment yard, our cabin neighbor—none of whom answers the phone. AAA answers which is very kind of them but they quickly inform me that they will come save us only if we are 50 feet from a paved road. I don’t think we are 50 miles from a paved road. Finally the regular Sheriff’s office answers. They are very sympathetic but say we will have to call a towing company and pay to get out. Pay? For our stupid mistake? Really? There seems to be no way around it. But by now even paying a few hundred dollars sounds better than sitting here in the mud a minute longer than necessary.

So I call the Springerville Auto Wreckers Towing Company into action. Now we wait and wait and pray that the tow truck can find us with my less than stellar directions.

I am astounded at what we must look like. This is what dumb people do—end up in secluded meadows tire-high in mud. We are intelligent highly functioning human beings—well ¾ of us are and in her day Mom was very, very sharp.

An hour passes and we finally hear our heroes coming to the rescue. Ah, at last we can put our muddy blunder behind us! But no! Right at the place where the Sequoia made it through without a hitch, the tow truck flounders. Well, this is great! Now they’re going to have to send another tow truck to dislodge this tow truck and our chances of getting home any time soon are getting slim again! This is going to be very expensive.

Fortunately, like every good tow truck should, they have a wench. (I just looked up wench and that is not what they have!) They have a winch. After some minutes of winching they have freed themselves from the mud and are again focused on rescuing us. Allen, one of our two liberators, walks through the mire to hook a chain to our bumper. Slowly our car is winched backwards until we are back on the road where we belong. I gladly whip out my Visa card and pay the nominal fee of $175 and Maxine gives them a $20 tip for their kindness.

Now that we are safe and headed in the right direction—the Springerville direction—my heart is bursting with thanks.

Thanks to Allen and his partner for not sneering at us or making unkind remarks or charging us a very unreasonable amount which we would have gladly paid to get out of our predicament.

Thanks for cell phones and cell phone service and cell phone batteries that were well charged. No telling how long we would have languished there without a means of communication. We were definitely on the road less traveled.

Thanks to Brad for not saying “calm down” or the ever popular “What did you do that for? or “You’re going to ruin the car!” or “What are you? Crazy??”

Thanks for the blue sky and the gorgeous weather and for the fact that it was daytime instead of night. And thanks for the snacks Maxine happened to have in her purse.

I’m especially full of thanks to Maxine and Lida for being the best of companions. They were so congenial, finding the humor and not blaming me or repeatedly saying “What if……..” or “We should have…. .” And I’m full of thanks to them for helping me visualize all the reasons that getting stuck in the mud might turn out to be a blessing to someone. Maybe the two truck owners desperately needed one more service call to be able to pay their rent. Maybe another group will sometime be stranded in exactly our spot and because of servicing us on this day, the Springerville Auto Wreckers Towing Company will know exactly where to find them. Maybe this experience will keep us from leaving the main road in the future and getting stuck in an even worse situation. Some things you only have to learn once!

And finally, I’m thankful for an elderly mother who offered to pay for the tow truck which I will definitely take her up on when we get home. But mostly I’m full of thanks to her for being willing to push. Not able, but willing.

All in all, many lessons were learned and now that we’re on the safe side of danger and the tears have dried, I’m ready for lunch---man-sized!

AN INTEREST-ING LIFE
Elizabeth Willis Barrett April 2010

I was talking to a friend one day and she happened to mention that she couldn’t think of anything wonderful that she wanted to do. Really? I couldn’t relate to that because my interests are so varied and numerous that this life will definitely not be long enough to fit them all in. I suggested several things that she might be able to throw herself into, but she had a negative response for each one. Either she had already done that certain activity—sewing, scrapbooking, piano—or it just didn’t appeal to her at all. I even took her “interest shopping” once to see if I could get some excitement flaming in her heart for something.

She did purchase a skein of yarn, a pair of knitting needles and a book on making baby afghans, but so far she hasn’t tried to make even one stitch and that was four years ago! She’s probably very irritated with me for suggesting something that was just going to sit around making her feel guilty. If there’s one thing none of us needs, it’s more guilt.

Better than yarn and needles, I wish we could have purchased for my friend the bursting exuberance I feel for doing and learning and becoming. I’m thankful that that feeling came with me.

If time and energy were boundless, I would first work on writing. There are about five books rattling around inside my head that I wish could just be shaken out word perfect.
I hope they will one day find a place in print. Along with being a writer of books, I would like to become a great essayist and submit my work to magazines or have my own column in a newspaper.

I also want to be a photographer. Not just a point and shoot one, but a many lenses and tripod photographer that knows how to catch grandchildren at their most impish and landscapes at their most glorious. I would love to follow a great photographer around and have her teach me all her tricks. Then I’d want her to show me how to Photo Shop until all my pictures looked absolutely stunning.

I’d learn to fiddle if I had time. I love to hear great fiddle playing. I’d take in some banjo lessons, too. And I need to work a lot harder at playing the guitar so that I can play with confidence.

It would be really fun to sing in a women’s trio again—working out parts and arrangements and getting the second just right. I love to sing second. And although I can already play the piano, if there were time, I would like to work on chording and playing by ear.

My sister in law spends hours ballroom dancing. She’s lost weight and has never been more fit. Yes, ballroom dancing would be a great pastime, too, if my husband would do it with me.

If I didn’t have family responsibilities, I would join National Speakers Association and become a dynamic and well-paid public speaker. It is so satisfying to wow an audience and maybe give them something new to think about. I’d develop lots of talks for CD’s and record and sell them. Time or no time, I’m for sure going to develop a fabulous presentation to teach about drug testing and prevention. That is a much needed topic.

Being a Life Coach would be very satisfying, I think, or developing seminars especially for women. I’d love to help women find their way—after I found it myself, of course.

I really want to get a great family newsletter started, one that the kids would look forward to receiving each month. And I want to produce an annual fabulous family reunion that no family member would want to miss.

I’d like to be a good gardener—there is a lot to learn about gardening. And flowers—I’d love to spend time learning to cultivate and arrange them. I also think it would be fun to become
skilled at machine embroidering or machine quilting.

I truly wanted to learn to speak Spanish for a time and went to lots of classes for that purpose. I hope I find time to work on Spanish again. And if life were long enough, I’d like to learn to draw—especially cartoons. Then I could illustrate my own books.

When, along with all of these things, I throw in hiking, biking, family history, scrapbooking, the Silva Mind Control Method and a strong desire to organize and scrub the house from top to bottom and side to side, it doesn’t look like I’ll be needing anyone to take me “interest shopping” in this lifetime. And maybe not even in the next. I hope not.

REAL ESTATE ANYONE?
Elizabeth Willis Barrett March 20, 2010

My face is warm and my brain is fuzzy. Warm and fuzzy might be OK when you’re trying to be compassionate and loving but not now, not now! I am sitting in front of a computer at a Phoenix testing center, staring at these questions word by word, over and over—oh, the agony. Questions like:

A property appraised at $85,000—property is assessed at 65%—tax rate is $1.85 per $100 of assessed value—owner sells the property and the close of escrow is August 15—Taxes were paid for the calendar year—What will the settlement sheet show?

Even with four given choices, I can’t begin to guess the right answer. I feel my forehead beading up with pre-trickling sweat.

I thought I was prepared so why do these questions look so foreign to me? For three weeks now I have sat through 90 hours of classes while being bombarded with fact after fact. Then I spent another 30 hours reviewing, and reading and cramming details and math formulas into my overstuffed, bulging brain. Formulas like: Piggies minus BVDs equals Eggies minus Owees equals Noeees. And then, though there was simply no more room, I wedged in a few Baselines and Meridians and even jammed in a couple of water rights and appraisal approaches.

That must be the problem—everything is in my brain so tightly that there is no way for any of the answers to come out!

When I agreed to go to Real Estate School just so I could more effectively answer the phone in our new Property Management Business, I didn’t think it was going to be hard. I didn’t think I was going to have to re-evaluate my personal assessment of my own mental abilities.

The stress of the whole Real Estate thing has made me do some strange things like put eyebrow powder on my cheeks instead of my eyebrows and spray mousse on my finished instead of unfinished hair. I caught myself spelling “commercial with a “u” and I made our family get all dressed up for a reception that wasn’t until the next week. Saddest of all, when I went to write down a fabulous essay idea that had come to me, before I could grab a paper and pencil to do it with, the thought was completely gone and has not returned.

With divine intervention and some near tears, however, I passed the required school test on the first try with an exact 75%. If I had missed one more question, I’d have prolonged this ordeal for another week or two since that test must be passed before you can take the miserable test I am sitting in front of now. One lady took the school test 39 times before she could finally pass it, so I guess I should be grateful. But at the moment I am cursing the writers of the State and National tests. They had the nerve to make the questions look entirely different than the 1000 practice questions that I read through.

Ok, just one more question: A licensee may not charge for document preparation as a result of which of the following:

I can’t think. I don’t know it. My brain is too tired. Is it:

A. Rules and Regulations
B. Arizona Statutes
C. AZ Constitution Article XXVI
or
D. Law of Agency?

I have no clue. Once again it is time to guess and the best guessing letter is C. So C it is and I am out of here. Please, please, please say I don’t have to take it again.

I passed? I passed! I’m done. No more tests. Even in two years when I have to renew my license or 4 years after that when it will be time to renew again. Wow, I passed!

I hope I get good use out of this new education. Maybe it will make me a little smarter when I answer the office phones. It has definitely opened up my mind to a world of information that I never knew about and truthfully never wanted to know about. But educating one’s self can never be time wasted. And who knows, maybe when I’m through being a realtor here on earth, I can use some of this knowledge in heaven. Isn’t that about the only thing you can take with you—knowledge?

Welcome to Heaven! I’ve been assigned as your agent. Hope you had a great trip. By the way, how’s the weather down there? Oh, tsunamis. Not so good. Well, now that you’re here, it looks like you’ll need a place to stay for awhile.

We have some lovely subdivisions that you might be interested in…..Wild Blue Yonder, Happy Hunting Grounds, Greener Pastures. No, no HOA’s. I think you might find those in another eternal realm but they’re not allowed here. Are you looking for a place to accommodate your heirs as well? Oh, I see, you’ve had quite enough of them already. Well, we have some very fine non-disturbance clauses that you might want to look into.

Cloud Nine? Yes, everyone seems to want to live on Cloud Nine. It’s a beautiful place. Pretty expensive real estate though and a little over-rated in my opinion. I’m quite partial to Cloud Fifteen myself, but I’d hate to be accused of steering or redlining, if you know what I mean.

How do you qualify? Good question. Some have the misrepresentation that we work on a prior approbation basis here, which as you probably know is first in time and first in right. According to our public report, however, loan qualification is based solely on credits and debits with a little bit of negotiating. But we have the Greatest of Beneficiaries, so you will discover that you qualify for just the very place that will suit you best. Follow me. Let’s get started.

I know. Enough is enough. I’m just glad I finally have my license. I will try to use it well.

A GENTLE ROCKING
Elizabeth Willis Barrett February 8, 2010

Betsy had four words to say and they were, “I Can’t Do It!” With that she stumbled recklessly out the back door, letting the screen door bang behind her. She took giant staggering steps onto the dried winter grass as she punched her fists at the heavens. “I can’t do it!” she said again, this time in a wail directed at the innocent, unruffled blue sky.

“I can’t be everything You want me to be. Or even everything I want me to be. I’ve tried and tried and I just can’t do it. I give up! I’m done! You might as well take me now.”

The final straw—now, why do people say “the final straw”? Oh yes. It was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. What a picture! Betsy could see that illustrious camel brought down with just one more tiny strand of straw. His belly would be o tnnj’’’he ground with his four legs outstretched in all directions and his load of straw would be slipping off his back and scattering in the wind. That image might be hilarious at another time. But not now.

Betsy’s final straw had been a bowl of Frog Eye Salad—a very large glass bowl full of Frog Eye Salad that had slipped from her already busy and behind-scheduled hands. It had crashed to the kitchen floor and splattered everywhere. The making of it had taken a long time and now it lay unusable clinging to every visible kitchen surface. Instead of cleaning up the mess, all Betsy could do was run out back and scream at the heavens.

In the giant scheme of things, a destroyed kitchen was quite a little thing, but today when Betsy added everything up, the sum was failure.

For one thing, she had been late for her dentist appointment that morning because she hadn’t planned for traffic. Then after she finally got there, it took four shots and a good dose of laughing gas to settle her down so the dentist could prepare her tooth for a crown. A very expensive crown, the temporary of which was making her whole mouth hurt at the moment. She hadn’t paid the water bill so a pink slip had come in the mail with a threat to turn off the water. Embarrassing! The money was there but she couldn’t seem to get around to paying a little tiny bill that would take about five minutes. And what else?—Oh yeah! The worst part of all: her son was sleeping in his car. Crazy. He’d rather sleep in his car than live by her simple rules: no drugs and no taking money that doesn’t belong to you. And Andrea was mad at her—she didn’t know why. Something she did—hadn’t figured it out yet.

All of this she yelled at the sky until she was beginning to feel like the fat kid on the movie Goonies who confessed to everything he had ever done while his captors looked at him in wonder. And there was more.

“I’ve eaten every Almond Joy I could get my hands on today,” she bellowed, “It was a lot because no one else likes them and they come in the Hershey’s chocolate assortment and my waist is five inches thicker than it was in college.

“And I made just one New Year’s Resolution—ride my bike everyday. Easy. And I haven’t even done that. Not even once. And it’s almost March.

“Besides that, I can’t teach that Sunday School class You gave me. I try to prepare the lesson ahead of time but every week gets so busy that I’m always trying to finish up a minute before it starts every week. And do you know what—I might as well say it all—I’m not sure I like the kids in there. They don’t listen. They don’t participate. They keep texting on their phones. How would You like to teach them?

“And the baby I saw yesterday at the eye doctor’s office. I didn’t like her either. How could anybody not like a baby? Especially one you didn’t even know. I imagined what she was going to be like when she finally made it to High School and things didn’t look too promising. It was probably the dad that was holding her that made me so judgmental. But what was I doing having thoughts like that?

“And the house. Have you seen my closet? It’s jammed packed with stuff. Just stuff. I want to dig it out but something else always seems to be more important. And there are rings in the toilets but no rings in the doorbell and the cookie jar is empty but the dryer is full.”

Betsy’s ranting got down to a whimper. “I was supposed to send flowers for Anthony’s wife’s funeral and I couldn’t even do that. He’ll think we don’t care about his sorrow and it’s too late now. I didn’t go to the last five wedding receptions we were invited to either. I could have at least sent a card but I didn’t. So now when I see the brides’ mothers at Safeway or Kohl’s or somewhere, I’m going to have to act like I never got an invitation at all. I’ll have to put my face in that sincere ‘Really?’ expression that is supposed to mean: ‘I didn’t know your daughter got married. If I had known and if I had received an invitation, nothing could have kept me from it. Absolutely nothing.’

“What’s more, I can’t keep plants alive. I try to water them every week but I skip weeks here and there and I only buy pothos for crying out loud. Anybody in the world can keep pothos alive. But not me!”

And with that final confession, Betsy threw herself on the ground with her legs splayed and her arms outstretched—overburdened-camel-like—and her hands dug into the ground on both sides of her prostrate body. In her manic state she still had enough sense to hope the dog hadn’t left anything right where she had decided to throw herself down. But what did it matter? Her usefulness was gone. She howled like a mournful coyote, sick of life. Betsy knew that if she waited just a little while, the clouds would gather, a storm would cut loose and lightning would obliterate her. She could only hope.

But the only storm was the one inside her that raged and raged…….until she heard a quiet sound. It wasn’t the wind for the air was still. It wasn’t the dog—he was inside in his crate. The kids were at school and her husband was at work. She looked around to see if any neighbors were watching her which would have been very awkward. She’d have a lot of explaining to do. But she didn’t see anyone.

Again the sound came. It sounded like “Hush”.

“What?” Betsy whispered.

“Hush,” it came again.

So Betsy obeyed. She gathered her once flailing limbs and sat up, brushing the dried grass from her face and hair and taking a few wisps off her tongue. She put her full concentration into listening.

“Hush,” came the voice. “Hush…hush…hush.” Betsy closed her eyes and felt loving arms being wrapped tenderly around her. She was being held and comforted and gently rocked like a fretting child. The calming voice soothed away her fury.

“There, there, there,” it said. “Be still, be still, be still. You are so loved, so loved, so loved.”

“Ahh,” Betsy breathed, her eyes still shut.

“Shhh. Shhh. Shhh,” cooed the voice. “Everything is going to be all right, all right, all right. You are so loved, so loved, so loved. Shhh. Shhh. Shhh. Be still, be still, be still.”

Betsy swayed to the rocking and felt the love of the Great Creator surround her like a comforter, warm and soft. She sat there, sat there, sat there, loved, loved, loved.

Her eyes slowly opened to a world changed. What peace! What calm! She gradually stood up and dusted herself off—her new self, her loved self. What could matter now after the arms of Heaven had cradled her and she had heard crooning words of love? She slowly walked back inside after one more look at her place of renewal. Then she took a rag to the kitchen and started cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, serenely, serenely, serenely. And all was well, well, well.

Friends--I've Learned So Much From Them!

This life offers so many opportunities for learning if we keep our eyes open and pay a bit of attention. I’ve learned much from books and classes and newspapers and TV but I think the most important things I’ve learned, I’ve learned from friends—dear friends who don’t even know they are teaching me.

For instance, I used to pump gas into the car by holding onto the handle of the pump until I heard the click which meant it was full. For some reason I was afraid to push down the lever that lets you walk away while the gas is still pumping. Maybe I thought that it wouldn’t stop on its own and gas would gush out all over the cement and someone would come by with a match and blow us all to smithereens. But then I happened to pull up to a gas station where my friend Lynn was filling her car. She deftly pushed in the lever and stood there talking to me hands free!

“Hey, Lynn uses the lever,” I said to myself, “I guess I can, too.” And from that moment to this, I have used the lever and let the gas dispense without my hands right there to stop it. Now I can write the Visa transaction into my checkbook during those long minutes. Only, of course, if I have put my purse in a strategic place so I don’t have to climb into the car and slide across the seat which could also potentially cause a spark and blow us all to smithereens!

Another fear I have is that of turning left. Most of my fears it seems do involve cars. Just to get out of our neighborhood, I have often turned right even though my destination was to the left because the traffic was so heavy and intimidating. But when I was leaving my house with my friend Stacey who was driving us somewhere in her car, I quickly noted that she turned left onto busy Baseline—even though the road wasn’t clear for two miles in either direction. She turned left into the left turn lane. Hmmmm. I had been taught in one of my traffic school experiences that you aren’t supposed to do that. That is the left hand turn lane for the cars already on the main road. But Stacey used it to pull into traffic from our side street. Stacey isn’t the most courageous of all people so I figured that if she was brave enough to pull out into the left turn lane, then I could be, too. That maneuver has saved me many needless right hand turns and a lot of stagnant minutes waiting for traffic to die down. Thanks, Stacey!

One dear friend has taught me about the futility of anger. Long ago Jeanne decided that she didn’t like how being angry made her feel so she chose to never be mad. She’s had as much cause for great irritation as any of the rest of us, but by some brute force of will she has chosen to delete anger from her life. I haven’t incorporated that knowledge into my behavior yet, but it is something I would like to work on some day—some calm, peaceful day when no one is aggravating me.

On one un-peaceful day when I was full of aggravation toward a friend over a business deal, she taught me that our feelings about the situation didn’t have to affect our friendship. She did it with kindness and maturity. And another friend, Leslie, taught me that it was OK to give myself a birthday party. So I did and it was really fun thanks to all the dear friends who allowed me to be so self-indulging. Aging has been rather easier since then.

Along with everyday sorts of things like where to find the best bargains, how to take better pictures or what to fix for dinner day after day, I have learned from friends as they have accepted widowhood with cheerful participation or borne physical limitations with poise and determination.

I have also learned from friends the power of faith. When Fay had the heart breaking experience of delivering a full term but still-born child, I could imitate her spiritual strength when two years later our beautiful baby son only lived one day. In addition to coping skills for heartache, I have learned from friends that a forgiving heart can save families and that a listening ear is better than a psychoanalyst.

Friends have taught me about joy, encouragement, solace and understanding. They have also taught me about humility, as when one friend confided to another, “Elizabeth has a lot to learn.” Actually, she was only a semi-friend and after I’d heard that she said that, I was even ready to cross her off my semi-friend list. I was offended as we often are when someone says something true but offensive. (Of course, that was before I learned from another friend—and finally internalized—that choosing to take offense is ridiculous.)

Maybe I’ve learned the most from that friend who didn’t mind saying what she thought. I did have a lot to learn and I have lots to learn even now. It’s a good thing I still have wonderful friends to help teach me.