Where have all the buzzards gone?

     Where have all the buzzards gone? Long time passing. Where have all the buzzards gone? Long time ago...

     You may be wondering what's up with the sad Pete Seeger song. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a buzzard afficionado. I don't particularly like any of the dead-and-decaying-flesh predators. Creatures such as bottom sucking catfish and carnivorous maggots have a way of turning the stomach.  Goats I can tolerate, since they are more dumpster-divers than road-kill gourmands, but buzzards can make one a little nauseous. The image of some foul and sinister fowl dining on flesh-a-la-macadam is not an appetizing thought, but I do appreciate the cleanup job they do to keep road kill from over-running our highways. I certainly wouldn't want to be one, but I value their efforts and am mighty glad when they have finished off a lump of mashed up innards scattered across the highway. So naturally, I was distressed to discover that buzzards were falling down on the job on the backroads of South Carolina.
      It began with our regular drive down Highway Nine from Chester to Lancaster. One morning, Sissey and I  noticed a rather large and obviously dead creature lying on the edge of the road.  It appeared to be a swan, but due to it's contorted position, the exact species was hard to discern. It was brilliantly white, covered in feathers, and stiff with rigor mortis. It caught our attention because of it's size and the fact that swans are not exactly prevalent on Highway Nine. I may have been mistaken, it may have been an errant alabaster turkey escaped from some farm, but in our opinion it was a swan.  We noticed it again as we drove home that afternoon.
     The next morning, said bird was still lying deceased on the edge of the road.  And again, in the afternoon, the mound of feathers appeared undisturbed, ruffling only when caught in the draft of passing cars. For the next week, we watched that dead bird, just lying there on the roadside, intact but very, very dead. 
    Day after day, Sissey and I noted the bird's location and condition. It appeared to remain fully intact, unmoved,  and untouched. In fact, it didn't even appear to be rotting or decomposing in any way.  It just lay there, stiff and large and white and dead.
     After two weeks, that damn bird was still lying on the side of the road.  I was starting to get agitated at this point, because it seemed unnatural for that prime decaying flesh to just go to waste on the edge of the highway.  Not a single predator had nibbled or gnawed on a single feather. It didn't even appear that maggots were working from the inside to reduce the bird to a pile of fluff. It just sat there, day after day, dead, dead, dead.  It was uncanny.  It just wasn't right.
     Several days later, in the way that only happens on college campuses, the subject of maggots and buzzards came up in, of all things, geology class.  The professor had been telling the class a story of a road-kill deer her father had dragged home one day, only to discover when gutting the buck that maggots had taken up residence in the carcass well before he had claimed it. This led to a discussion of the decomposition of flesh and the creatures that thrive on rotting carcasses.
      At this point, the professor mentioned that her very favorite bird was a turkey vulture, aka buzzard. I know you may be thinking that is odd, that most people would choose something majestic like a peacock, or brilliant like a cardinal, or delicate like a hummingbird, but Ms. Martek loved the sinister and dark turkey vulture. It alarmed her that they seemed to be disappearing from the horizon. She searched for them on her daily commute from Columbia, kept her eyes glued to the skies and perused the edges of the interstate, but had not seen one buzzard in many weeks.  Not a single black wing spanned the skies. Not one scavenger scoured the highway.  Dead possums and smashed racoons, an occassional unfortunate deer, an unlucky squirrel or two....all tasty morsels left untouched on I-77 and Highway Nine, not a buzzard in sight.
      As a scientist, she was interested in why the buzzards were disappearing, where they had migrated to, what had caused their numbers to recede, when the decline began. As a commuter, I just wanted to know how that dead bird was going to get cleaned up off the road.
     We mentioned the dead swan to her and commented on the lack of buzzards disposing of the flesh. She, too, had noted the carcass and the fact that not a single vulture had arrived to begin the process of devouring the bird. We agreed to conduct a little informal field observation and note how long it took for the carcass to disappear.
      And then, one morning as we rounded the curve in the road, there they were. Surrounding the still-gleaming white feathers of the dead swan, a small group of no more than twelve black buzzards flapped and bobbed and pecked and pulled, devouring the premium-aged meat with determination.   Even as our car whizzed by, they barely moved out of it's path as they claimed their prize and scattered feathers across the tarmac. It was, I must say, a beautiful sight.
      We couldn't wait to get to school to let Ms. Martek know her birds had returned. Why it took so long for them to arrive, where they had been in the meantime, we will never know, but they had finally returned and were busy on the job.
      We still don't know why their numbers are declining, or if they are in fact disappearing, but it is obvious that turkey vultures are not as common as they were before. Is it because we are disturbing the balance of nature with our progress, our industry, our development, our claiming of the world as ours alone? Is it because we are polluting our skies and our streams and our lands with our waste and our toxins? Is it because we are disrupting the natural order of the world with our rapid pace of life, with our incessant consumption of it's resources?  I don't know.  I only know that I don't see as many buzzards as I once did, and if they leave us for good, we will miss them more than we ever thought possible. I only know that if there are no buzzards to devour the decaying flesh of the animals we have killed with our automobiles, the medians will quickly become foul cemeteries that pollute our commutes. Our scenic byways will reek of rotting carcasses and become congested with our road kill.  Not a pretty thought for our morning drive to school.  Won't go well with that cup of coffee in the console.
       Funny how important a nasty old bird becomes when it seems to be disappearing.

       When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn? 

The Love Stump

     I love college.  After our first full day of classes on Thursday, we were rewarded with a three day weekend.  The first day of school was an unremarkable event, but one that left Sissey and me with the feeling that we  needed a quick recharging before the frenetic pace of full-time academia kicked in on Monday. The reliable and time-proven solution was to head to the hills--those wonderful smokey-blue mountains of North Carolina--and escape the heat of South Carolina and the looming prospect of the sophomore year.  We threw our backpacks and duffle bags into the car, loaded up Mr. Big, threw in a stack of books and a hamper full of goodies, and set our sights on the Blue Ridge skyline.
    We arrived Thursday evening to temperatures that were twenty degrees cooler than what we had left at the base of the mountains. We were loving life in the hills, loving the lack of humidity, loving the prospect of three glorious days. I was loving the freedom from schedules and commutes, and Sissey was loving the reunion with her friend, Bonnie, who had just returned from a three month stay in the Florida Keys and was spending the weekend with us.  Life was good, and we were loving it.
     The first day was rainy and sleepy, and we spent it hunkered down under blankets on the couch. The roads were so fog-laden that even a trip down the parkway to get groceries was a risky endeavor, so we survived on Orville Redenbacher popcorn and 900 channels of satellite movies. 
     The cold front blew out during the night, and Saturday dawned brilliant and blue. We set our sights on a picnic and headed off for the woods and trails of the Moses Cone National Forest.  Settling on a table by a creek in  one of the parks, we unloaded our hamper and cooler and spread out our feast. We did a number on a bucket of extra-crispy chicken that would have made the Colonel proud and finished it off with some Ghiradelli brownies my mother had sent with us.  Something about eating in the woods by a stream made our appetites hearty and our meal even more delicious...we were loving that meal.
    After we finished our dinner, Sissey and Bonnie headed for a stroll in the woods to work off a couple of extra biscuits they had ingested.  I stayed behind to wipe up the crumbs, gather up the trash, and stash the meager remnants in the car. After finishing my chores, I planned to head down the path in search of Bonnie and Sissey.
     An elderly couple had spread out their picnic at the table next to ours. We had nodded hellos to each other upon first arriving, had spread out identical buckets of chicken, and had finished our meals at about the same time. They had lingered at their table as I packed up our basket, but as I returned from my car they got up and began to walk along the path directly in front of me.  At the creek's edge, they stopped and appeared to be gazing at the surrounding scenery.  The husband stood quietly by the side of the path, his hands tucked into his pockets, as his wife  slowly walked  along the trail.
      I could tell by the way she tarried along the edge of the creek, her disposable camera dangling in her hand, that she had something on her mind.  I stopped and knelt by the path, pretending to be interested in a cardinal flower blooming along the creekbed, trying to give them time to move ahead of me. Instead, she headed in my direction, swinging the camera by the strap attached to her wrist as she glanced back at her husband. As I watched her approach,  I suddenly understood the hidden message she was trying to send me.
     I waved hello and asked,  "Would you like for me to take a picture of the two of you?"
     The woman instantly heaved a sigh of relief and broke into a smile.
      "Oh, that would be wonderful," she replied. "Are you sure you wouldn't mind?"
     "Of course not! I'd be glad to!" I said. "How about down here by the creek with the meadow in the background?"
      The couple, clearly used to a lifetime of walking in tandem, smiled and held hands as they moved into position by the rippling stream. They struck a pose in front of Boone Fork Creek, comfortably leaning into each other, arms around each other's waist, and laughed as they said to me,
    "Today is our Fiftieth wedding anniversary!"
     It made my heart smile when I heard that.
     "Oh my! Congratulations!" I began. "That is quite an accomplishment in today's world. I'm so happy for both of you! Fifty years, how about that! That is just wonderful!!"
    I was thrilled to be part of their celebration, to be the only attendant of a couple that had been married for fifty years. They had chosen to celebrate their golden anniversary with a simple picnic along the picturesque banks of a  mountain stream, hesitant to ask a stranger to record the moment with a single picture.  It made my heart smile even more to be the one that captured that milestone in the marriage of this unknown couple; I was honored to have walked into the midst of their golden celebration and even more honored to have been asked to perform the simple task of snapping a picture. 
     I took several snapshots as the couple smiled and posed along the banks of the Boone Fork.  They had been embarrassed to impose upon my time and were oblivious to the joy I was receiving from being the only participant in their golden anniversary.  I congratulated them on their enduring marriage, commented again on the rarity of fifty year nuptials in our modern world, and handed the disposable camera back to the couple. With a smile still on my face, I ambled down the path in search of Sissey and Bonnie.
    I found them several  turns down in a mossy grove of trees and ferns.  As we sat on the stump of an old fallen tree, watching the creek as it rippled and churled over a rocky ledge, I told them about my encounter with the golden couple.  We rejoiced for them  and saluted their fifty years of love as we rested in the peaceful quiet of the forest.
       When the late afternoon sun began to dance  through the leaves of the birch and the pungent smell of galax  began to rise in the air, we  rose from our perch and headed back to the car. As we walked along the trail, we each looked for treasures Mother Nature had hidden in the woods.  I spotted mushrooms popping through the spongy floor of the forest, their red and yellow caps pushing arrogantly up through the mossy ground. Bonnie spied tough, leathery ferns sprouting agressively from the decaying humus of former vegetation.  We watched as delicate little lady bugs and graceful grandaddy longlegs teetered and swayed along the edges of the fronds.
   It was Sissey, however,  who discovered the greatest treasure of all as she wandered through the woods.  From her side of the path, she yelled out to us,  "Come over here! You have to see this!!"  Bonnie and I quickly headed to her location as she grinned and pointed to a moss-covered tree stump embedded on the forest floor.
    "Can you believe it? Look at what I found!" she laughed.

     And there it was, a perfect heart-shaped stump, covered in tender green moss, glowing in the light of the afternoon sun.  New life was sprouting from the decaying remnants of the fallen tree, as if to prove that love cannot die. It was the perfect symbol of enduring love.  It was the perfect ending to our unplanned celebration of a golden wedding anniversary, as if the forest were proclaiming that love endures all things, can be found in the strangest of  places,  and is always waiting to be discovered.
    "I found it!" she proudly declared. "I found the Love Stump!"

     It had been a lovely weekend, a lovely day, a lovely picnic, and a lovely celebration. To top it all off,  Sissey had discovered the greatest treasure of all. She had found nature's purest expression of enduring love.
     She had found the "Love Stump."

THE LOVE STUMP!

    Ah yes, life was good, and we were loving it!

Well, You Got Something

      Heading back to South Carolina on Sunday afternoon, Sissey was in a less than stellar mood. It made for a very long drive, each mile punctuated by her snippy comments and snarly remarks.  Perhaps it was because summer was drawing to an end, perhaps it was the extreme heat and smothering humidity, perhaps it was having to leave her brother and father and home behind, perhaps it was the nervous anticipation about beginning another school year, but whatever the cause, our gal was not in a good mood.
      I kept asking every couple of miles, "Sissey, what's the matter?"
      "Nothing," she would grumble.
     A few miles latter, I tried again.
     "Sissey, are you OK?"
      "Yes," she growled.
     And finally, "Do you have something wrong with you?"
       "NO!" she barked.
     "Well, you got something," I shot  back, knowing this would bring a smile.
It did, she had to laugh, as I knew she would, because that one little line contained  the gift of humor, the ability to make us smile in the most intense of situations, and the secret that could make us laugh at ourselves. It was a gift innocently given to our family by a homeless man, four little words that he hurled at my daughter one Friday morning as she served him coffee.    
    Every family needs a good motto, and we came about ours naturally. It was ascribed to us by a perfect stranger, not of our own choosing, not a saying we would have originally selected,  not necessarily a flattering description of the Daly clan, but it was an apt one at best and we were graciously claiming it as our own. Quite simply, it suited us, and we couldn't have come up with a better motto if we had paid the scribes of old Scotland to select one for us. The words that landed on our familial foreheads were so honestly hailed, so spontaneouly spoken,  that we had to name them and claim them and adopt them as our own.
    It happened one Friday morning during a school service project in the basement of a church. St. Peter's Church is an historic inner-city congregation located next to the capital of Virginia. It was dedicated in 1834, making it the first and oldest Catholic Church in Richmond. The cathedral was built on a street named Grace, which seemed to foreshadow the natural expectations that God's goodness and mercy would be bestowed upon those who knocked at His door. Over the years, the inner-city church participated in a homeless feeding program, a multi-denominational organization which provided Richmond's local homeless residents the opportunity to enjoy a free hot meal, a warm place to sit for an hour or so, some friendly conversation, and the ministrations of a multitude of cheerful volunteers.  Each church selected one day a week to host the program, with Friday being the day of honor for St. Peter's.
  Sissey attended a small private school in Richmond called Northstar Academy. The school had been created to provide a quality education for students with a wide variety of disabilities, and it provided a safe place for children whose lives were complicated with disabilities that often made them the target of bullies, teasing, ridicule, or ostracism at other schools.  We laughed when Sissey arrived home after her first day there and announced, "I love this school. Everybody there has issues and we all just talk about'em. It's no big deal!" It was a relief for her to finally be at a school where she wasn't the only one that was "different."
     Northstar Academy was dedicated to giving their students the most normal educational experience possible, even while dealing with issues as complicated as Cerebral Palsy, Fragile X Syndrome, Asperger's, Autism, Down's Syndrome.  For their very first time, these "different" kids were now playing on the basketball and soccer teams, were selected as cheerleaders, were elected Class President and Homecoming Queen, were running clubs and holding fundraisers and attending proms and making friends.  These students were not only being nurtured and loved, they were also expected to give back to the community, albeit a community that had often rejected them. It was an important part of the educational package for the students to recognize that they had the capacity and responsiblity to be contributing members of society. Community Service was a big deal, and it was required of every student before they could graduate.
      For many years, thanks in part to the guidance of the very catholic Dean of Students,  the senior class had chosen to participate in the inner-city homeless feeding program  at St. Peter's Church.  So each Friday, they loaded into the school's blue and white mini-bus and made the trek downtown.
    Upon arriving at the church, the students greeted the familiar faces of the regular homeless clientele, then donned latex gloves and hair nets and headed to their work stations.  Some served hot food from the large stainless steel servers, some rolled napkins and silverware into neat little bundles, some handed out plates or filled glasses with ice or prepared the salt and pepper shakers. Everyone had a job to do, and Sissey was the coffee girl.  Her particular chore was to sit at the coffee table and cheerfully hand out cups while also keeping  the creamer bowls filled with powdered dairy product and the sugar bowls replenished when necessary. True to her nature, she took the job seriously and was adamant that the creamer and sugar never ran low. 
    Part of the irony of cerebral palsy is that the harder you try to make your muscles complete a fine motor skill, the harder they work against you. As Sissey scooped sugar and creamer out of the plastic storage bins to fill the small bowls, her hands would tremble, part of the "palsy" that gives name to her condition. Of course, with shaking hands there also comes spillage, so part of the powder ended up on the table and not in the bowls, which was not a big deal for most of those at the homeless shelter.  It was a free meal served by volunteers, after all, and most people were just happy to be there and to have the prospect of a hot lunch.
     But oh, there always has to be one in the bunch that has to make a big deal out of everything.  One particularly scruffy fellow, perhaps a little irritable due to lack of proper nourishment, perhaps just not a pleasant person to begin with, but whatever it was that plagued him, he was not happy with our gal's performance at the coffee table. 
     He sauntered up to get his free cup of joe, watched her trembling hands scoop his requested sugar and cream into the mug, then he snarled at her," What's the matter with you? You scared or sumpin?"
    "No sir, I'm not scared," she replied with a smile.
    "Well, what's the matter with you?" he growled again. "You got a NERVE PROBLEM?"
     "No sir, " she answered. "I don't have a nerve problem."
     "Well, YOU GOT SOMETHING!" he yelled as he grabbed his coffee and stomped off.
     Oh, you just had to laugh. And she did.  By the time she arrived home from school, she could barely tell the story without laughing till tears streamed down her face. We all laughed, laughed until we cried, laughed until we almost wet our pants.  Then we had to call everyone we could think of and tell them.  What a genius of a man, an indigent from the streets of Richmond, an unknown soul we will never meet again, but the seer into the deepest part of the soul of our family.  His pronouncement of 'You got something" summed up our entire lives, our entire world for that fact.
    "Oh, mom, he was just so right," Sissey proclaimed. "We've all got something!"
     The fact that our family motto was ascribed to us in a church sort of made it holy, as if it had been bestowed upon us with God's blessing, so we embraced it heartily and happily and with great gusto. And now, barely a week goes by that something doesn't happen, or that someone in this big ole world doesn't do something, or that someone doesn't say something-- I can guarantee you  that just something will happen that makes us all stop, scratch our heads, pause for a second and then say with a great big grin, "Well, you've got something!"
    So Sissey's got something, and this week  it happens to be the "back to school blues." Tomorrow will bring issues of it's own, and she will deal with those with the same grit and determination that have gotten her this far, and when things get a little dicey, she'll just have to laugh and realize, we've ALL got something.

The Sophomore Years....

     And so, the second year begins.
     It seems impossible, but a year has passed since I first began to write about  the journey my then-nineteen-year-old daughter and I were getting ready to embark upon--a four year adventure that would be called "College". Our voyage would be more like "College with a Twist," which sounded like a pretty awesome cocktail but was actually a plan we had formulated to help Sissey navigate towards a college degree. It was going to be a rather unique experience and one heck of a ride.
    The plan was to:
A. Move to South Carolina with a mound of luggage the size of a small mountain,
B. Reside with my parents on a temporary basis while proceeding to take over the entire upstairs of their home,
C.Enroll Sissey in classes at the University of South Carolina-Lancaster and drag me along as her school- appointed scribe,
D. Matriculate as quickly as possible so we could both return to life as we formerly knew it.
     To top it all off, we brought along for the ride our teacup poodle, Mr. Big, simply because he was spoiled rotten and cried pitifully whenever we left him home. Plus, he had a really cute wardrobe that would be perfect for all campus functions and he loved car rides, school, fast food, long naps, and students of all kinds.  He absolutely had to come with us.
     We arrived in South Carolina on a typically hot and moist August evening. I quickly unloaded the car and we spent a sleepless night trying to get settled in before nervously heading out for classes the next morning. We left Mr. Big crying in my mother's lap, drenching his polo shirt with tears only a bit smaller than ours.
   We had become accustomed to travelling a different path in life ever since Sissey's premature birth twenty years ago, when she and her twin brother had decided to arrive in this world three months before their scheduled due date. She had made her debut into the world in shades of blue, all two pounds of her, a silent but wide-eyed and observant baby.  After her first gasping breath was made possible with the assistance of tubes and oxygen, after her blue blood had warmed to pink flesh, after she was safely tucked into the incubator that she would call home for the next nine weeks, after  I poked a trembling, sterile hand through the port to touch her cheek for the first time,  after her first grasp of my hand with fingers the size of toothpicks, after this rocky and tremulous start to life,  I knew we would be travelling some very exciting and unchartered paths together. I looked at that fragile wisp of life so determined to survive and vowed to take her on one heck of a trip around the globe as soon as she got out of there.
     Sissey graduated from the NICU when she topped four pounds. Having finally been released to the haven of home, she was reunited with her brother, and they slept and ate and played and  grew and began to explore the world around them. He quickly toddled off to life as he would discover it, a typical little boy delighted with dirt and bugs and trees and  sticks.  She, however, spent her toddler years not exactly toddling; instead, she crawled through life while embracing the mystery and joy and glee of each new discovery in her brand new world.  A physical disability resulting from her pre-term birth did nothing to diminish her curiosity with the world around her, a world which she was still very much enthralled with and engaged in, even though she orbited on a different path. 
     We all survived the fascinated exploration of toddlerhood, the wonder of pre-school, the wide-eyed awe of elementary school, the horribly uncomfortable world of middle school, the drama and tears and hormonal surges of high school. Finally, with two seniors in one household, we lived through two proms and two Baccaluareates and two graduations and two post-graduation festivities, surviving the year while barely clinging to our sanity. Her brother packed up and headed off to college, but suddenly, Sissey's orbit seemed to stall after she crossed the threshold of graduation and faced the rest of her life, the unknown future, the grown-up world.  Unsure which path to take next, she took a year off to work, mature, grow in confidence, plot her course, and stash away twelve paychecks with the strict frugality learned from her tight-fisted mother. The planning year passed quickly, the options were weighed,  the applications were mailed,  the decision was made, her bags were packed, and she was ready. As for me, I was still clinging to the pre-school years, thumbing through old scrapbooks, fingering remnants of years gone by, and wishing I could spin the world backwards.
     And now, college. College? College! Who knew how that venture was going to turn out! I was 27 years out of my last educational foray, Sissey hadn't cracked a book since high school graduation, and we had no idea if either one of us would be able to handle the transition to campus life. We were facing a blank canvas, an empty journal, a story waiting to be written but with the ending still unknown. It was terrifying and exciting, a sweet and salty cupcake waiting for us to take a big bite.With our bags packed and our backpacks ready, we left our Richmond world behind. We moved back to my hometown, full of anxious anticipation, unknown roads rolling out before us, nervous excitement and energy churning in our guts, both wondering what the year ahead would bring.
     Sissey's life was about to start shifting in extremes.. She was transitioning from a small, private school of just under one hundred students to a large public university of several thousand unknown faces. More than that, she was transitioning from a city of over a million residents-- a city full of malls and museums and movie theaters and monuments-- to a small rural town of several thousand families, most of whom had known each other since birth, had gone to school together since kindergarten, and whose social circles were already tightly knit and closely formed. Worse than that, there was not a single Starbucks in sight. All were daunting lifestyle changes, all were studies in opposites.  She was leaving behind  life as she knew it and was delving into a new community, a new culture, and a new campus.  I was leaving behind not only my home but also my husband, a son at UVA, my  standard poodles, my friends, my church, my community, and my social life. I was jumping head first into a world I had graduated from almost thirty years ago, and I was not getting any younger in the process.  I did not, however, feel like I was walking backwards.  This was a journey forward if ever there were one, and I was excited to see where the road would take us and how this jaunt would turn out.
     Life had been an incredible trip up to this point, full of twists and turns, joy and heartbreak, laughter and tears, full of unknowns and imponderables, impossibles and unbelieveables. It had been the best twenty year adventure I could have ever imagined, never would have asked for, and wouldn't have traded for all the diamonds in Africa. It had been a wild, roller coaster kind of ride, with us slowly ratcheting up each steep hill one clickety notch at a time, always knowing we were about to plummet over the top and couldn't turn back, screaming with delight as we gripped the bar and held on tight, finishing each ride gasping for breath and with a wind-tunnel smile plastered across our faces, vowing never to do that again. That's how life should be lived, how we had lived it so far, and the next climb up that ratchety hill would be no different. This hill was simply called College, and we were determined to finish the ride and roll into home with a Cheshire cat grin plastered on our face and a sheepskin diploma clutched in hand.
  I invited an unknown audience to share this journey with us by posting our adventures on the internet, and I have been overwhelmed by those of you who have chosen to follow our simple life. I brought my daughter into a community I had left years ago, and that same community quickly embraced her and absorbed her into their world with love and encouragement, leaving me smiling in her shadow. It's good to be home, it's good to be in college, it's good to have this time with my daughter, it's good to experience life's changes,  it's all just good.
     I hope you will stick with us as we enter the Sophomore Year, the second phase in the Home Bound College Project. Strap on your seatbelts, grab hold of the safety bar, and take a deep breath. The roller coaster ride is ready to begin, and we're not quite sure how it will end.

Ninety years strong

     What do you call a 93 year old woman who still cleans her own bathrooms, plants a massive garden, cans and freezes enough vegetables to last several winters,  provides all the maintanance and  upkeep on her own house plus her childhood home, and  hosts a family reunion each year for 80 to 100  relatives?  In this part of the cotton patch, you'd call her Aunt Virginia. You'd feel lucky to know her, you'd greatly admire her, you'd try to emulate her, and you'd have plenty of stories to tell about her. 
      Virginia Spence was a red-headed spitfire whose Irish parents immigrated to America the old-fashioned way-- legally. They worked hard to earn their American citizenship and then instilled a work ethic in their brood of twelve that would shame most modern day Americans, if shame were still a recognizable emotion. They were everyday Americans who worked tirelessly, lived honestly, served patriotically, gave selflessly, saved frugally, worshipped dutifully, loved deeply, and built America into a nation you could be proud of.
     Virginia married Henry, a Dutchman from Wisconsin,  and they settled down in the house they built on the Spence family farm. Their home was quiet and orderly until the day a noisy family with four little kids moved into the house two fields down-- kids who quickly discovered the excitement of living next door to a couple who had no children of their own. We spent every day running across those fields to bang on their screen door, hollering to ask if anybody was home, begging them to let us come in. It was a treat to enter a home where children were still a marvel, where quiet and order had never been upended by a pack of rowdy youngsters.  They let us plow through their home, run wild through their yard, explore their barns and woods and fields, climb their trees, pick their flowers, and dig in their gardens. We held screaming contests in their front yard, yelling our heads off to see who could be the loudest. We chased lightening bugs under their pecan trees and dared each other to go to the cemetery in the woods where the Spence clan rested in peace. We stomped through their cow pastures and swam in their creek. We cut every Christmas tree we ever had from the woods behind their house and built secret forts out of the old cedar branches afterwards.  We asked to eat supper with them or spend the night with them so often that they finally decided they had to either shoot us or adopt us. Thankfully for us, they decided to adopt us as their own, and the family bond was forged.
     Each summer, they dragged us across the country on vacations with them, took us camping and hiking, taught us to plant and grow our own vegetables, remembered our every birthday, celebrated every holiday with us, and loved us like we were their very own.  Aunt Virginia and Uncle Henry have been part of our family for so long now that I forget to remember when they weren't actually kin.
    Of course, they have real relatives, the blood kind that you don't get to pick but you have to put up with anyway and try to love in spite of it.  The remaining descendants of the original dozen gather yearly on the old family grounds to feast, catch up, swap photos and stories, and reminisce.  And now, it's August, and in several weeks upwards of 80 real Spence relatives will be arriving at Aunt Virginia's home for their annual family reunion and picnic.
     It's a lot of work for anyone, especially the over-ninety crowd, but she has hosted this gathering for many years, loves doing it, and goes about it with the Irish-American work ethic her parents taught her at an early age. To prepare for the influx of cousins, she and Uncle Henry engage in a pre-reunion regime that is exhausting just to describe.
      First, she cleans her own home. Top to bottom.  Spit and shine clean, the kind where you use elbow grease and can see your reflection in tabletops afterwards. Every corner is cleaned, every cobweb and dust bunny unsettled, every nook and cranny polished. Next, the Spence family home gets the same treatment. It is opened and aired from top to bottom, creaky old windows sliding up to let dusty air escape. Every bathroom is scrubbed, every bed stripped, every dish in the kitchen washed, every utensil polished, every floor waxed and buffed.  She has Uncle Henry running all over creation with a whole separate list of chores. Walls are repainted and windowpanes washed. Tables and chairs are set up on the lawn, tents are erected, grass is cut, trees and hedges are trimmed, and kitchens in both houses are stocked with casseroles and cakes and pies. This takes place every year, without skipping a single step or taking a single shortcut. It's the Irish-American way, and it's how she does things.
   At age 90, several months before the scheduled reunion,  Aunt Virginia injured her back while cleaning and needed  surgery to repair a few disintegrating vertebra. The orthopedic surgeon announced that as a general rule, he did not operate on 90 year old backs, but when he met Aunt Virginia, he had no option but to procede with surgery. His exact words were, " When I heard that a 90 year old was coming in for a consultation, I thought it would be for pain management and perhaps some therapy, but when Virginia told me what her activities were on a daily basis, I knew I had to fix that back. I couldn't let someone as active and alert as Virginia face the rest of her life in a wheelchair." She sailed through surgery, some rehab, and was back in action in time to get the spring garden planted and the house put in order before the August reunion.
   Last year, she faced a bout of cancer on her leg and developed a lesion on her toe that ate the flesh clear to the bone. She required several rounds of radiation treatments which left her a little exhausted and spending most of the day in a wheelchair. With the upcoming reunion  only weeks away, time was running short and there was much to be done. Knowing that she would not let me just show up to help, I gave her an early birthday present, one she could not refuse--the gift of cleaning her house and helping her get ready for the reunion.  One particular chore was weighing heavily on her mind.
     Being still confined to a wheelchair, Aunt Virginia had been especially worried about getting the long  hall floor polished, the one that ran smack dab through the center of her house.  I told her not to worry, I'd be glad to give it a polish. When I offered to help, I was thinking that I would squirt some Mop-n-Glo on the floor and give it a once-over with a Swifter. Not the Irish-American way, I soon learned.  First, the rugs had to be rolled up, the floor swept and vacuumed and mopped, then a coat of wax  had to be hand-applied.  I tackled all that and thought I was finished, until Aunt Virginia told me I needed to come back in three days after the wax had hardened to do the buffing. 
     Three days later, I arrived to find a monster machine waiting in the hall, big buffing pads ready to whir up and down the hardwood. It was actually kind of fun, running that stainless steel buffer up and down the hall, trying to hold on without being vibrated to death.  I visualized it as a cellulite-reducing exercise, convinced the vibrations of the machine were just melting away globs of fat as it shook every inch of my body.  I buffed that baby to a shine that would put a bowling alley to shame. Made me want to pull a Tom Cruise and glide across the floor in my socks and underwear while belting out "Old Timey Rock-n-Roll."
     And now, at age 93, while once again preparing for the upcoming August reunion, Aunt Virginia took a major tumble while cleaning the shower. She slipped on some soapy tile, knocked her head on the way down, and crushed her shoulder and elbow. It's been a bit of a set-back for her reunion regime. Black and blue, she is back again in her wheelchair, damaged arm dangling by her side, waiting for another round of visits to the orthopedic surgeon. I pray it is the same one she had before, and that he can put her back together before her company arrives.  She has things to do, mind you, and needs to get busy.
  We called to check on her this morning, and she was wheeling around the house doing some one-armed cleaning from her wheelchair. I've always been told a little hard work never killed anyone, but that has got to be painful.  I have no doubt, however,  that when the crowd rolls in for the August gathering, the house will be in perfect condition and the cupboards will be stocked, the beds will be made and the porch will be swept.
     So what do you call a 93 year old woman like that? A woman who for nine decades has never slowed down, never sat down empty-handed, never left a chore unfinished, never shirked a responsibility, never taken off for a little "me-time," never once thought she should call it quits? A woman who is ninety years strong and as alert and independent and active as an 18 year old? A woman who won't let a little thing like a few broken bones or a touch of cancer slow her down? A woman who in her nineties still plans a year ahead for the next family reunion which she will be hosting?
      I call her amazing, an inspiration, a dynamo, a role model.
      I call her Aunt Virginia.


   
      
   
    
     
    
  

Too hot to handle

     A friend sent me a message yesterday asking if I had any thoughts on the heat wave. Thoughts? After three straight days of record-breaking triple digit temperatures, I had some thoughts. Oh yeah, I had some thoughts. Firing the old cranium up to 105 degrees seems to have that effect. Just lying around thinking was about all I had energy left to do, and I had about as many thoughts on the heat wave as a rabbit had babies.
      First, I thought it was hot.  I mean H.O.T. Hot. Hot, hot, hot. Visualize hell, Hades, earth burning, molten lava, oxygen-licking white hot flames, melting flesh, smoldering embers, black ashes. Hot. Too hot to handle hot.
      Secondly,  I thought it was too hot to talk, too hot to move, too hot to cook, too hot to eat, too hot to swim, too hot to go outside, too hot to garden, too hot to shop, too hot to write, too hot to read, too hot to drive, too hot to sit,  too hot to do most anything. I felt like a slug on salt, just melting away into nothingness, leaving behind a slimy trail of what-used-to-be-me.
    Finally,  I thought it was a good time of year to hibernate, sort of like a reverse polar bear kind of thing.  Instead of crawling into an icy cave to escape the artic chill, I was going to crank the AC up to maximum potential, crawl under crisp clean sheets with a ceiling fan rotating on full blast overhead , pull a frozen ice pack over my eyes, and snooze away until remnants of some tropical storm blew a cool  trade breeze into town. I planned to put the old sweltering body on snooze-control and glide through the rest of July, ease into August, and fully wake up yawning and stretching only when September arrived with cooler temperatures and a promise of autumnal bliss.
    Night, ya'll. See you in September.
   

And then I was 49

     I'm not sure how it happened so quickly, but over the weekend, as I completed my 49th orbit around the sun, another layer of wrinkles appeared, a few more pounds hopped on board, a new creaky ache moved into my knees,  and a host of gray hairs sprouted aggressively from the cowlick on my forehead.  I woke up suddenly another year older, not that much wiser, and baffled as to how the last 49 years had slipped by in the wisp of a breath.

      Thanks to the gift of children--albeit children that are now calling themselves young adults and at the tender age of 20 have permanently left their teen years behind-- I was not allowed to discuss my imminent aging and was constantly forced all week to behave as if I were still the agile young mom they remembered from preschool. This resulted in a weekend packed with activities that would normally have killed me if I weren't so intent on trying to prove that the last 49 years had barely registered on my physical stamina meter. So I hiked, and walked, and swam in rivers, and loaded canoes into cars, and hauled fishing gear to lakes, and drove down treacherous mountain roads, and at the end of each day, I crawled into bed loaded with painkillers and slept the sleep of the living dead.

Through the mud pit

Rhododendron tunnel

     To prove that mortality was not chasing me with a vengenance as I clicked off the years, my son insisted on taking me on our annual "birthday hike" around the Boone Fork Trail.  I am convinced he truly believed that each year I was still able to complete this strenuous five mile loop around mountain streams, up rocky paths, over mud pits and creeks, and finally through cow pastures and rhodendron groves and blackberry patches and wild apple trees-- that the completion of this trail was the validation that I would be able to survive another year on Planet Earth. And so even if it were the last breath left in my body, even if I died smack dab on the middle of the Boone Fork Trail, even if they had to send a rescue team up to haul my dead body back down,  I was determined to prove to that younger version of myself that I was still capable of hefting this old bag of bones up and over boulders and through streams and over mountains and that I could in fact keep up with a twenty year old and live to see another year flash by.

      And so we set off on a clear warm day with nothing more that two bottles of water, a couple of hiking sticks, some sturdy shoes,  and a bag of peanuts.

     I tripped along the first half of the path barely breaking a sweat. It was generally flat, followed the creekbed, and even a beginning hiker could trot along without much effort.  After Mile Marker One, things began to change as we started the uphill climb.  Wide paths became narrow rocky ledges, ladders replaced tundra, and the gentle creek had turned into a roaring river gushing over boulders and spilling in waterfalls down the mountain. This is where I began to lag behind, but quickly covered my faltering pace with the help of my camera. I took pictures of everything I passed: flowers, mossy  logs, waterfalls, trees, leaves, pebbles, rocks, birds, mushrooms, human footprints, tree fungus, mud, poison ivy. Anything that I could photograph was game, as this was the only excuse I had for stopping long enough to catch my breath, take a sip of water, eat a few nuts for energy, and sneak a quick break.  After about 500 photographs, my son yelled down from the path above me, "Mom, I know what you're doing. You're taking all those pictures so you can stop and rest. Come on now, you can make it,  put the camera up and keep moving!"

At the turnstile...

Straight uphill and straight downhill

      Darnit, so now I was busted, but the guise had worked for at least three miles, and all that was left was the hill from hell, the last leg of the trail that climbed straight up before you spilled into the level and meandering cow pasture. It was the part of the trail that I dreaded the most, loved the least, and prayed I could endure. I had often wondered why everyone we passed on the trail was going the other direction, until the day a few years back when I finally  figured out it was because of this final uphill leg of the path. If we had started from the other side of the lake like most normal people, we would be hiking downhill for the majority of the distance, but my son preferred the more challenging direction of the uphill climb, and so we endured the agony of marking off the miles on an uphill plane.  He waited patiently at the top of the hill, leaning against the turnstile that marked the entrance to the cow pasture and the final leg of the trek, as I trudged slowly up, up, up, panting,dripping, gasping, but determined to succeed.  

Still alive at the halfway mark...

     And so I made it, on the occassion of my 49th birthday, a successful hiker on a five mile mountain course that proved my longevity, or so one could think, and I was proud of myself and pleased with my son for forcing me to overcome lethargy and gravity and old age by trekking up a mountain trail.  I could now rest and remember and gloat and brag about how I greeted my 49th orbit as a conqueror of rugged terrain, a true mountain gal, a survivor of the elements, a hiker of substantial proportions.

    Until the next morning, when my daughter and niece insisted we go swimming in the rockiest section of the Watauga River, right next to the jumping off rock and the swinging rope, right by the spot where you had to crawl straight down the side of the road, wriggle over rocks and poison oak, smack a few branches to scare off any sunning snakes, jump into ice cold water that took your first breath away, wade over slippery submerged rocks that could take you down quicker than black ice, then finally crawl back uphill after an exhausting plunge in the river just to reach the haven of your parked car.  All this, again, to prove that as I faced the half-century marker, as I celebrated my last year of my fourth decade, as I evaded mortality and the reality of the brevity of life, all this to prove that I was still alive and kicking, that dear old Mom still planned to be here for the long haul, God-willing and the creek don't rise.

     Next year, as I celebrate the official marker of my half-century, I shall be alone, at a spa, having a full-body massage, with heated rocks gently placed on my swelling joints, with fragrant eucalyptus oil lovingly rubbed into tender muscles, with cucumber slices resting on aching eyes, with soothing dulcimer music relaxing my soul, with a chilled glass of wine waiting by a chaise in the "quiet lounge" at the end of the day. I shall retire on a king-sized bed and wiggle my toes under 600-count Egyptian cotton sheets. I shall order breakfast in bed, a full pot of freshly ground coffee accompanied by blackberry jam and hot biscuits. And then, as I am fifty, I shall smile as I remember hiking with my son and swimming with my daughter, and I will laugh as I rest in bed.

      

Please note the changes in the summer schedule.....

Please note the following changes in the summer schedule:
Due to the fact that the college girls are on vacation,  the posting of blogs and any other correspondance during the summer months will be sporadic, sparse, and spontaneous.  We will be sleeping in late, lazing on beaches, hiking through mountains, lounging in pools and participating in other strenuous summertime activities.  This lethargic condition, for which there is no known cure, will result in the unreliable completion of all other activities until the fall schedule resumes.
In the meantime, I recommend a daily regime of cold watermelon slices, fresh tomato sandwiches, a big stack of books, a tall glass of iced tea and plenty of sunscreen.
I leave you now to go back to counting lightning bugs under a clear starry sky as the mountains sleep in the distance......

Isle of Palms

The sound of the waves as they roll on the shore

The warm southern breeze as it spills through the door

Chairs on the porch 'neath a tall palm tree

The taste and the smell of the salt and the sea.

Here is the place where my heart calms down

And the world seems to slow as it spins round and round...

A crescent moon shines it's light on the sand

As fiddlers dig down with their one little hand

Into holes they all hide as we walk in the night

Down the slow sleepy beach by the moon's soft light.

Here is the place where my heart calms down

And the world seems to slow as it spins round and round....

Another day dawns and the sun shines high

In the orb of a cloudless cerulean sky

Perched in the sand as waves kiss my feet

Watching pelicans dive to find something to eat.

Here is the place where my heart calms down

And the world seems to slow as it spins round and round....

The isle and the palms and the sand and the sea

are a sliver of life that beckons to me

to come and to spill like the waves on the sand

all the worries and cares that we can't understand.

Leave them all here where my heart calms down

As the world seems to slow as it spins round and round....

Take me back home to that sweet southern strand

When my body no longer breathes in this land

And lay me down deep 'neath a tall palm tree

And let me sleep there by the waves and the sea.

There in that place where my heart calmed down

And my soul will smile watching the world spin around.

It's time for an oil change

       America needs an oil change and it needs one in a hurry.
      The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could potentially become one of the worst disasters our country has ever faced,  a disaster of biblical proportions, and all I can hear in the back of my mind are the words  "And the first plague was a huge cloud of oil that covered the land." Heaven only knows what's coming next, but right now, that oily mess in the gulf has the potential to forever change life as it was once known on the beautiful shores of America. It's bad, it's scary, it's devastating, it's heart breaking, it's life altering.
      Americans are looking to our elected leaders for reassurance that the situation is under control and that they are going to be able to change the course of action in the gulf. We elected a President who promised change, and although I may be a little old-fashioned and believe that not all change is necessarily in our best interest, there are some changes occurring in our world right now that are downright scary. I'm not just talking about the changes in the health care, banking, and automotive industries. I'm talking about changes in the expectation of  the behavior and attitudes of our elected officials.
     There are some standards which are best left upheld. One of those standards is the expectation that our highest leaders should exhibit the highest levels of decorum, professionalism, courtesy and respect for others, especially during tough times. This is a tough time, but it was even tougher to hear our President--the leader of the free world, the elected official representing the most powerful nation on earth--appear on national television and talk about who's "a##" he needed to kick in order to resolve the oil leak in the gulf.
    Mr. President, we elected you to be the LEADER of the free world, not the BULLY of the free world.  Imagine the standard you have just set for the rest of the nation...when things go wrong, just go kick some "a##".
    We look to our elected officials to set the example of how to appropriately resolve difficult situations with integrity, honesty,  and respectful authority. How can anyone in a position of authority ever be held accountable if they are given the green light by the President of the United States to just go kick some "a##" whenever change  is needed.
   Take a look at a few possible scenarios based on the presidential model of leadership:
-- Little Johnny misbehaves on the playground, and his teacher sends a note home to his parents that  she will have to kick his "a##" if his behavior does not change
--Mr. Smith is late on a mortgage payment, and the bank sends a loan officer over to kick his "a##" in order to collect the payment
--Emmission standards on the latest automobiles do not meet government standards, so a team of inspectors are dispatched to kick some  corporate "a##"
   --Ms. Jones exceeds the speed limit on her local highway, so the patrolman pulls her over and kicks her "a##" as punishment
The list of possibilities could go on and on, but I think you get the picture.
     If one of my children had ever said they were going to kick some "a##" in order to change  a situation, I would have immediately washed their mouths out with soap and put them in time out.  Not only would that coarse language have been offensive and repulsive, but it would have been unacceptable behavior to speak of  bullying someone in order to change a situation.
     But now, thanks to our president, the example has been set that if something goes wrong, just go out and kick some "a##".
      I'm not quite sure  how that is going to change the horrible situation in the gulf, but I can assure you it will change the moral code of Americans. Not quite the change I was looking for.
      Seems like the oil spill in the gulf is not the only thing that needs to be cleaned up.
   

A Fish Tale

    To celebrate the end of Sissey's first year of college, a 4.0 cumulative GPA, (I had to throw that in, I am a mother....), Memorial Day, and several family birthdays, we gathered with family in the mountains for a weekend of fish tales, Scattegories, picnics, and the various mishaps that occur whenever a crowd gathers.   Sissey was still recovering from her glandular woes, and the chaos of having a house full of noisy cousins  plus five highly excitable dogs was just the tonic she needed to pep her up. There was enough birthday cake to ensure diabetic comas for those so inclined, and the noise level rocking from the house almost caused us to be evicted from the mountainside.

     Bro arrived at the mountain house Friday night after finishing his first two weeks at "Fish Camp," otherwise known by UVA scholars as a four week 450-level "Bio-Diversity of Fishes" biology course conducted at a remote research facility on a mountain top somewhere deep in the hills of Virginia. Bro kept insisting that it was a highly technical, advanced level class required for his biology major,  but to those of us who were of average intelligence and didn't know fish were so diverse, Bro had just arrived home from  Fish Camp, and that's all there was to it.   

THE BIG ONE!

      Full of his recent and newly acquired knowledge on the bio-diversity of fishes, Bro and his cousin, Tripp, set off for the Watauga river in search of "the big one." Loaded down with flyrods, leader lines, nymphs and Tevas, the boys headed to the hills for a day of fishing. As any experienced fisherman knows, they had to find the most remote section of the river, the best rapids, and  the sweetest spot in order to outwit those wily fish. Bro was eager to show Tripp how to spot the various spawning nests in the river and how to identify the indigenious species he had recently tagged on one of his research excursions. He was busting at the seams with all his bio-diverse fish knowledge as they set out early in the morning.   Seems like the one thing they didn't teach those boys up there at Fish Camp, however,  is how to play with all those fish while still holding on to your equipment. Bro landed the big one, an impressive record-breaking 24" rainbow trout,  a monster fish anyone would be proud of, a memorable catch that will become one of his greatest fish tales ever,  but in the process  he almost lost his flyrod, almost broke his ankle, and did manage to lose his brand new Costa Del Mar sunglasses. 

     I was excited about his catch, impressed by the trout, proud of his efforts, but a little peeved over the loss of his glasses and, like any mother,  had to find out exactly how it had happened.  I got various renditions of the fish tale, and finally,  after much hemming and hawing,  I got the true story from him of how he lost his glasses. 

      After moving up and down the river, searching for the perfect spot, the boys decided to head downstream to deeper, faster water. At the bend where the river widened and picked up speed, eddys of white water whirled and swirled among the boulders that broke up the flow of the Watauga. Tripp, a lean, long-legged, nimble 6'4"  drink of water, decided to cross over the rapid water and fish a spot on the far bank. He leapt from rock to rock , and  upon coming to a particularly deep  and fast-flowing rapid, catapulted with impeccable precision, cleared the rapid and landed on a slippery boulder with perfect balance. Bro had also spotted the sweet spot on the other side and decided to follow in Tripp's footsteps. This where the boy's story took an unfortunate turn and where I must explain the difference in the DNA structure of the two cousins. 

     Whereas Tripp was built tall and lean, geared for speed and agility, the Daly DNA was programmed for power and strength, and Bro was destined for brute force but not for leaping, running, or speed.   We have a Family Motto, "Daly's Don't Run," because it is a well-known fact that we are not fast, but we are strong. The Daly men are built compact, strong, tough, low-to-the-ground and powerful, but leaping, running, speed and agility are not  part of the genetic structure. When Bro was playing football in high school, he knew he had to knock'em down from the start, because he wasn't going to catch them later, so he mastered the talent of flattening his opponent right on the line. He had the biggest chuckle of his high school career the day he approached  his football coach  and with a dead-straight face told him he was thinking about joining the pole vaulting team.  Nothing more was said, but several days later, the coach approached his dad and said he needed to have a chat with him.  He was concerned about Bro taking up pole vaulting, he began, but that was as far as he got before Daddy Daly burst into laughter, having been in on the joke from the start.  Daly's don't leap, he assured him, and the coach breathed a huge sigh of relief when he realized Bro had no intention of trying to heft a lineman's bulk over a highly perched pole. We still chuckle about it to this day, just the image of Bro leaping through the air.....and so began Family Motto #2: Dalys Don't Leap.
   So as you can see, the fact that Bro was attempting to leap from slippery boulder to slippery boulder was probably not a great idea from the start.  He would have been much better off to have simply picked up the boulder and tossed it aside, but unfortunately, he followed his cousin and leapt.
       He almost cleared the rapid, but his foot didn't quite take hold as he landed on the slippery boulder and he plunged into a cold rush of white water. His ankle caught on a submerged rock and twisted, bringing him down into the frigid mountain stream, taking his breath away, knocking off his hat and glasses and sending his flyrod floating down river.  Fortunately, he grabbed the most important thing first  and was able to save his rod, but the glasses were lost in the ensuing struggle.
     "Bro," his sister yelled from the other side of the room after he fessed up, "YOU KNOW DALY'S DON'T LEAP! What were you thinking?"  Ahh, you can always count on family to be there to support you in your lowest moments!
        He said he tried to call me after the mishap to let me know what had happened, but I never answered my phone.   I couldn't say too much to him about his little fishing mishap, I admitted with a sheepish grin,  because I had just dropped my brand new Droid phone into a glass of sweet iced tea. It was a tad incapacitated at the moment, therefore I was unable to take his call.   (Note to self: not a good idea to place phone on car console above glass of tea while backing down a mountain.)
       I assured him, however, that I immediately placed the phone and battery in a baggie filled with Carolina long-grain rice so the starch in the rice could absorb all the moisture and return the phone to working order. And how did I know this would work? Because the last time Bro went fishing in the Watauga, he dropped his brand new cell phone into the river after he slipped while leaping from boulder to boulder. He managed to fish it out of the water, dried it out in a bag of rice and got six more months of use out of it before it died. Thus, we now have Family Motto #3: Always Travel with Rice.
      So at the end of the weekend, we sent Bro back to Fish Camp with the greatest fish tale of his life, a cheap pair of Wal-Mart glasses,  and a note to his professor to please give instructions on  how to hold on to items while playing in the creek.

      In the meantime,  I am confident that the superior quality of Carolina gold long grain rice will ensure success in the highly technical recovery procedure of my personal handheld device.
       And in a few more days, I'm calling you all to come over for fish stew, steamed rice and tall glasses of sweet iced tea.

But we're not even Jewish......

      In our family, we have a rule. You don't go to the doctor unless you are bleeding, running an unusually high fever, or near the point of death.  General malaise, aches and pains, lumps and bumps, bruises or contusions,  and any other ailments have to be endured for the duration. Not only do I believe this is character building, it is the result of learned behavior.
     This aversion to doctors and hospitals is a result of spending  the majority of my pregnancy on bedrest at St. Mary's, spending nine weeks in the NICU with two pound preemies, spending another six weeks at Children's Hospital after Sissey had surgery, then spending countless days running back and forth to the hospital for therapy. So don't come complaining of some mamby-pamby ailment and expect me to haul you to the doctor. It better be real and it better be bad, or else you're going to just have to ride it out. 
      But after Monday's little episode, I added fainting in public to the list of reasons that qualify for a trip to the doctor.
     Actually, it wasn't just the fainting that qualified Sissey for a trip to Dr. Sam's office. It was the swollen glands in her neck that had been painful for over a week, the sore throat and headache,  plus the fact that she could barely make it home from class before heading to bed each day for a four hour nap.  It just took the fainting in public to get me to pay attention to her complaints and haul her in for bloodwork and an exam.
     Dr. Sam poked and prodded and drew blood, looked her over from head to toe, peered in ears and eyes, felt for lumps and bumps, then announced that he thought she had Epstein-Barr Virus.
        I couldn't believe the diagnosis. We're not even Jewish, for heaven's sake. We're hymn singing Presbyterians.   Sissey doesn't even like bagels and lox, and I've never made a matzo ball in my life. Shouldn't she have something like John Calvin disease?
      It seems, however, that Epstein-Barr is non-discriminatory and selects it's victims without regard for race, gender, age,  physical impairment, or religious preference. It is especially fond of over-stressed and under-rested college students,is the harbinger of mononucleosis, and once it comes to call, likes to hang around for four to six weeks.  That's a little obnoxious if you ask me. A nice Presbyterian virus would know to leave after a respectable week or so.
     So I did what any good mother would do. I hauled her up to the mountains for some rest and fresh air, ordered her to bed with a big pile of movies, and did the only other thing I could think of to treat something called Epstein-Barr...
      I made a big pot of chicken soup and went shopping.