Mama Tried.

Somewhere in Kansas---Along this long road-trip of visiting people and hearing their stories, an unexpected jewel pops out. This is a woman in Kansas. Trying to figure out her life of children, grandchildren and their exes seemed too confusing to follow. So sitting at a Mexican Restaurant, I got out a napkin and told her I wanted to write out a family tree of what kid married whom and who was divorced, remarried and what grandkid went where.

The more description the better.

So we decided to use song titles as descriptions or at least titles that SHOULD be songs.

This was the girl I grew up with that was the life of any party. She lit up a room and would make any stranger laugh. She was ALWAYS up to something. Her tiny body and big laugh could disarm anyone. We had a lot of mischievous adventures together, most were never discussed with our parents until a good 20 years later. But she was THE ONE who brought me out of my shy shell at about 15.

A lifetime has gone by within very different worlds between us, but no time has gone by in our friendship.

Little did anyone know that she would bear the burden of an alcoholic husband…and years of the ridicule of small town talk.  People can be so cruel. Words can be so cutting.

But that big laugh and an overdose of optimism kept her pushing through.

So at the top of the Family Tree I wrote: “Mama Tried.”

Next, her three children: “Smarty Pants is better than no Pants at all,” “Thunder Rolls,” and “The Teddy Bear Two Step”.

Pants, Thunder and Teddy all got married.

Pants got married to “Rags to Riches” and had “Candy Store Jazz” and “The Alps Yodel”

Thunder married “Chain Gang” and had “Blind me with Blond.”

Teddy got married and had “Karate on my Heart,” but the marriage didn’t work out so he married “Young and Innocent” and had “Bull Frog Ballet,” “Kid me” and “Grateful Dead”.  

Mama had gotten a divorce but met and married “Viva Las Vegas” years later.

Vegas is fighting cancer. He is amazing.

Mama and Vegas legally adopted their grandchild Karate.

Pants and Riches, Thunder and Chain, Teddy and Innocent, try the very best they can but Mama clearly still holds it all together.

…And so it goes, life is not perfectly orchestrated and you can do everything in your power but there is a part of life that is out of your control. Children will go their own way and if you are lucky like her, they will come back around.

But look beyond the face of a Mother trying to survive all the balls thrown her way in her dodge-ball-life and you will see a “Mama” to a community. She has an important job in a field where she sees intense struggle every day. She sees death most every day. She told me stories of being in the middle of gang clashes. I found out a classmate turned to her for council with his struggle as a drug addict. She told me of several occasions where people who had treated her terrible or talked her down in that small town, had come to her work in crisis and didn't recognize her, yet she comforted them, never reminding them of who she was and went about doing her job.  

And at Thanksgiving, she opens her home to janitors and drivers to singles and those struggling. Even though she is the boss, she includes anyone that she knows does not have a place to go.  Who wouldn't want to be around her high energy and huge heart.

Last year there were over 75.

And she laughs that big laugh and waves off my compliments and says, “It’s my job. At work,  I’m Mama.”

Presidential Libraries: Eisenhower and Truman

Harry S. Truman Presidential Library

 

Abilene, Kansas and Independence, Missouri---Two more Presidential Libraries and Museums were near my path across the country so I included both on side trips. Being in these centers of information put a face on names that have become only words. Historical figures that I had no personal connection with. Walking into any Presidential Library and Museum has changed that.

 

Eisenhower 

Set in Eisenhower's boyhood home of Abilene, a small historical cow town that continues to have a charm about it. There is the "Library": where 26 million pages of historical records and papers, 335,000 still photos, 768,000 feet of original motion picture film and 68,000 artifacts. Then there is a museum: the most interesting for a visitor. But also on the grounds of this 22-acre complex that opened in 1954, is the farm home he grew up in with his parents and five brothers lived still standing on the original site.

 

Obviously, each of these museums are going to spin history in the best light possible for the president named, but history is left for what is written and what is known to be believed. HOWEVER, in these museums, it is hard to argue with a film of a president giving a speech...it is his words exactly. Or for that matter, interviews from the president and interviews with others from his staff at the time. This is the glimpse of history that will let you form your own opinions, followed by walking through a museum filled with his things and things from that time period.



 

Eisenhower's statue

Exclusive rose variety

"A people that values its privileges

above its principles soon loses both."

Dwight D. Eisenhower, first inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1953



Truman

Next was a trip to The Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, only a 20 minute drive from the Kansas suburbs of Kansas City. Independence feels like a suburb of a large city and has a grit about it.

Dedicated in 1957, the museum shows archives of the nearly eight years he led. This was the president that was in office when World War II ended, including of course, the dropping of the atomic bomb. Also the forming of the United Nations, NATO, the Marshal Plan and the beginning of the Cold War.   I loved that his story included that it was because of his crush on a women that made him want to go from a country boy to striving for success to gain her attention...which he did and Bess became his wife and love of his life.

They are both buried on the grounds of the complex.

Again, watching a 45 minute film on his life, including speeches and clips let me see for myself and have a first hand impression of the man named Harry Truman.


Just like the George W Bush Library, this has an oval office but you can not sit behind the desk like at W's.





Presidential speech with Truman's hand written edits

     "When even one American - who has done nothing wrong - is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth - then all Americans are in peril."

Harry S. Truman

Artist Thomas Hart Benton had a display at the museum at this time.

Pearl Harbor

Paper Dolls of the Truman family...





Compared to George W's tighty whities, ( http://bit.ly/10mAG9E )  these presidential undies show Truman's time period.
 Bess, however does NOT look happy about this paper doll pose either!

A tale of Three Redefining Women

Past Photo: Somewhere in Wyoming after 3 hours of driving dirt roads seeing wild horses but no other people in sight.

In different States across the USA---A woman worked at the headquarters of a huge corporation. She poured herself into her job. She traveled and saw the world. She was important.  She had friends and pets and family. She dated, came close but never married.   At work, she saw more ugly politics happening around her and decided to get out after 20+ years there.  She took a package deal. She started a business and sold. She does project work and looks for the next chapter in her life.

In another state, another woman was a VP in a Bank. She was important.  She poured herself into her job. She traveled. She created a life of friends, family and a collection of beautiful things placed in an awesome multi-level condo. She dated, came close but never married. The huge national bank was restructuring. She was offered a package and took it. She fell in love with orphanage work in Africa, but volunteering is expensive. She teamed up with a friend and started a business that has little to do with banking except for making the money to put it there. She is hoping this is her next chapter.

In yet another state, another woman poured herself into her business. She built a life out of nothing except a college education. She had friends and family and pets and sports. She dated, came close but never married. The economy changed and her business was heading on a terrible projection. She needed to sell her business. She trusted a corporate partner but it left her empty promises. She closed her business, traveled and is looking for the next chapter in life.

All three women had met 30 years earlier and worked on publishing a college yearbook: a massive one year project at the university level.  One was the editor, one the assistant editor and one a reporter.  They would go their separate ways but somehow they would go on to share a lot of similarities between them.

Reinventing yourself and changing careers has become more prevalent in an economy that has changed a lot of lives across the globe in the past five years.  On my time crewing on sailboats three years ago,  I was in the tiny island of Ithaca, Greece and a woman worried about the jewelry shop she owned with her husband. If business continued to be this bad what would they do? They were preparing “plan B.”

On the even smaller island of Trizonia, Greece a German electrical engineer had made his peace with his important position in the corporate world, bought a sail boat, sailed the world and had found his stopping place on this tiny island. Content with his small business of fixing boats that stopped in port with broken mechanical problems.

Spain, Morocco, Trinidad, St. Lucia, Dominican Republic, Panama even the Galapagos Islands I met people looking at, in the middle of, or having already changed the direction their life had been heading.

I am not the only one looking at the next chapter.

I am however, the only one with the experiences that I personally have had. This experience defines me as a separate and different individual. And so it is true for the other women in this story and many, many others that I have visited in the 9000 miles and counting that I have driven so far.

Changes have included; an out-of-state move to go into organic gardening,  learning an entirely new craft, going to nursing school at 52 years old, starting a cross-generational family business,  waiting two years for an easy retirement and then looking at what’s next, keeping a job but throwing passion into side work. The list continues. Many want to make a change and are willing to take a pay cut in order to have more job satisfaction.

I visited woman number one and two on this trip, and yes the third is me. Until I sat down with each of them I had no idea how closely aligned our lives had been. We are each very different but have so much in common.

At one woman’s home, a gorgeous English style home in an upscale neighborhood, we sat talking about the past, present and the possible future directions and options we both had. I had forgotten how hysterically dry her humor was. I wondered why I had lost touch for the past 25 years. She turned to me and said, “Do you remember what the theme of the Yearbook we published was?”

“No,” I answered.

“ ‘Redefining’,” she said with a laugh.

Gas Price: Gardner, Kansas

Berean Academy. Do you ever really leave High School?

 

Elbing, Kansas---Class Reunions. Most everyone has them. Do you choose to go?

When I left on this coast to coast road trip on April 12 I knew that a high school class reunion was in the works, but the date had not been announced. So when the email came proclaiming the date in July, I did the math. By all indications I would be in Kansas by then. Again, as in the other things that have happened on this trip, it all fell into place.

I was walking out the door and heading to my reunion when I suddenly got a sick feeling and a flash thought of not wanting to go. I told the friends that I was staying with, upper classmen from the same school, that I was a little nervous.  I didn’t know why but I just was.

Maybe all the bad hair in high school was still torturing me.

High School was a lifetime all wrapped into four years. But why are the marks of time not equal? Why does it always feel like a 25 year career is equal or less than the mere four years spent in high school? Is it just me or do others feel that these roots run deep.

So I did some research and in a New York Magazine article titled “Why You Truly Never Leave High School, new science on its corrosive, traumatizing effects” by Jenifer Senior, January 20, 2013 she writes, “Not everyone feels the sustained, melancholic presence of a high-school shadow self. There are some people who simply put in their four years, graduate, and that’s that. But for most of us adults, the adolescent years occupy a privileged place in our memories, which to some degree is even quantifiable: Give a grown adult a series of random prompts and cues, and odds are he or she will recall a disproportionate number of memories from adolescence. This phenomenon even has a name—the “reminiscence bump”—and it’s been found over and over in large population samples, with most studies suggesting that memories from the ages of 15 to 25 are most vividly retained.”

Okay, all that sounds smarter than me but it is exactly how I feel.

Now to explain, I attended Berean Academy: a very small private non-denominational Christian High School, nestled like quicksand in a heavy Mennonite community.  So besides all the jitters from the “how you turned out” aspect of life, these gatherings came with my own self-inflicted, guilt-ridden checklist. And if it didn’t come from me, I was prepared for the Mennonite mafia to push zwieback and borsht my way and evangelize me to the one, and only one, way of thinking.

But that didn't happen. In fact, at this point, the feeling of acceptance prevailed over any of my own head trips. And talking to classmates, at this point, there are plenty of ways of thinking.

The truth is, I loved my experience at Berean Academy, even though I got into a lot of trouble. Most of the trouble that some of my classmates and I got into was mainly pranks. With so many rules; dresses 3 inches above the middle of the knee, boys haircuts above the collar and the ear, chapel everyday with the dreaded girl-boy seating assignment, memorize 100 bible verses to graduate...there was a lot of room to get in trouble.   I love the religious foundation that I got, even if it gave me a few examples of what I chose not to be like and really didn’t prepare me to go outside of the immediate community...but the foundation was there.

But mostly, I love the relationships that were formed there.

There was a reason I moved as far away from Kansas as possible, it took me about five years in Florida for my subconscious to catch up with my brain: I wanted to redefine myself away from what I thought everyone thought I was---the sister of someone so much smarter and the daughter of a eccentric junkman.

Funny thing has happened on this trip and especially at the reunion. NO ONE really remembers my family as that or they do not define ME as that. And in conversations with classmates I've visited on this road trip or at the reunion, they have said things like "Well you remember my mother had mental problems", or "you remember it was because I was raised by a single parent..." No. I don't. I don't remember. I only remember them as "the funny one," "the smart one," "the athletic one," "the pretty one."

So all that time we put our "reputations" on ourselves? I could have saved a lot of time not worrying about what others thought and been a more accepting person instead of trying to be cool or funny to overcompensate with what I thought was thought.

The NEW YORK MAGAZINE article continued to say: "It turns out that just before adolescence, the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain that governs our ability to reason, grasp abstractions, control impulses, and self-­reflect—undergoes a huge flurry of activity, giving young adults the intellectual capacity to form an identity, to develop the notion of a self. Any cultural stimuli we are exposed to during puberty can, therefore, make more of an impression, because we’re now perceiving them discerningly and metacognitively as things to sweep into our self-concepts or reject. 'During times when your identity is in transition,' says Laurence Steinberg, a developmental psychologist at Temple University and perhaps the country’s foremost researcher on adolescence, 'it’s possible you store memories better than you do in times of stability'."

Graduation Night: our last prank...three girls in their swimsuits.

Years later. Same friend. Same door.

If high school is the forming of "self" some things make sense.

Our class was tiny. About 45 and there were about 35 attending the reunion counting our tradition of including anyone who moved or got kicked out during our four years because as adults, these are still important people regardless of our senior year. Our day together flew by and felt more like a sampler platter than a meal.  You just can’t get quality time with individuals when there is so much to hear.  Even though we repeat the same stories over the years, it still is never quite like hearing it from the actual participants and from all the different angles.  Plus with our memories dimming, at times it was like hearing it for the first time!

The organizers had managed to get our favorite teacher and his wife to join us from Denver. He was the teacher that had more effect on many of us by having a balance of a clear passion for teaching and an ear for listening and not leaving an impression that he was judging. In a world of holy guidance, he was the one “adult” that seemed the most human. Other favorite teachers were invited and their memories of a class riddled with trouble-makers seemed to be different or at least to them it was humorous now. Even a final confession to the past superintendent left him laughing and shaking his head saying, "no, I don't remember you causing problems."

Say what?! What seemed so huge is only in my mind? Mischief and confrontations are long forgotten with generations of others who took my place...who took our place? As much as we think we are special, we are...and we are not.

There is, and always will be a deep connection with these individuals; some that I keep up with and they know it, some that don't even know what an example or inspiration they are to me.

Our Gym. And Banquet Hall. And stage...

It’s an interesting time in life for this class. Children and grandchildren have been born. Parents have died. Marriages have failed. Marriages have grown. There have been horrible tragedies and amazing triumphs. We have lost three classmates.

I “closed down” Elbing, Kansas that night, a country town of maybe 50 homes. Several of us lingered on, talking on the sidewalk until past midnight.

Those four years were more than four years. They were four years plus 35 years of looking back at it all.   

Home on the 4th of July

A Farm Outside of Hillsboro, Kansas---Today is the Fourth of July. I think back to only three years ago when I spent this day alone on the island of Paros, Greece. No one in the Med cares. It was a busy balmy night as I walked around this island’s outdoor cafes and shops that were open and eager for any tourist euro. The sailboat I was crewing on had family fly in so I took a hotel on this island for a week to give them the space. Now here I was a lone American, missing the idea of a night of fireworks and seeing the variations of patriotic clothing the NASCAR crowd adorns this time of year where I live in Daytona Beach, Florida. I felt so far away that night. I was a long way from home.

But today, my Hyundai kicked up a billowing cloud of white dust behind it as I motored down the country road.  I pulled off the road with my vehicle now covered with the fine powder, to a farm house in the middle of…well, not much.  
 
 
 

At this farm was a gathering of several generations of a special family, childhood friends that I had grown up with in the nearby town of Newton. If I was to describe the heart and soul of the Kansas Midwest family, they would be one of my examples.

And this was a perfect evening for an old fashioned, laid back Fourth of July celebration.

Long tables and chairs were set up outside on a grassy area shaded by huge trees and overlooking several grain buildings, the stubble of a harvested field of wheat and several soy fields. After the meal known there as supper, the awaited moment arrived when the freshly churned homemade ice cream was brought out and everyone dug in, complete with homemade chocolate syrup.
After supper, a line of chairs was set up next to a silo, facing a cement slab perfect for ground zero of most of the show. Anxious to get to the fireworks, oodles of kids ran back and forth between parents getting the basics out first and gradually working their way to the heavier backyard variety.  Older kids took the larger fireworks with the smaller kids begging for the opportunity to try the good stuff.

 

The line of chairs, now occupied by the adults, served as the audience and everyone clapped wholeheartedly when things were good and outwardly criticized the make and model when a short term fizzle was all there was. “The Frog Prince” was my favorite and gave an amazing display of a variety of shooting sparks. Unfortunately I needed to leave before the grand finale: “The Bad Mother in Law” could be exploded.



Under water fire cracker!

The brother, whose farm it was, had set things up so there was a stock tank full of water and two awaiting buckets full of water standing by…which did come in handy a couple of times.  Having a perfectly good empty silo to explode things and sent rockets up was an opportunity that the older kids creatively took advantage of.

No, the fireworks did not shoot thousands of feet in the air nor was there a planned succession of order. It was the old fashioned “who goes next” back yard scurry of pops and booms, flashes and sparkles with kids, friends and parents all taking part in one way or the other. It felt very Midwest. And beyond the booms and bangs my heart was calm and peaceful.

I said goodbye and left to drive to my next friend-stay-over. As I drove, I was overwhelmed at the sight of the entire landscape exploding with color everywhere I looked. I could see across the country fields at other farm houses that were doing the same thing. Nearing my hometown, I scanned the horizon full of color.

It’s the 4^th of July and I am home.