Living Consciously

Random thoughts on spending a few days looking after the grandchildren while their parents are on a well-deserved vacation:

A brisk 45-minute walk while pushing a 25-pound toddler in a stroller is more exercise than one might think.

Little kids have short attention spans? Don’t believe it. The attention span of a one-year-old is far greater than the attention span of an adult who really doesn’t want to play peek-a-boo, watch Barney, or fold the same piece of laundry for the fifty-eleventh time.

Kids aged eight through eleven are quite capable and competent people who can get themselves ready for school, navigate their grandmother to the library and the park, and find the Internet password and the power cord for the electric skillet.

It is possible to fit one adult, four kids, one toddler in a car seat, and two bicycles into a mini-van and still have everyone in seat belts.

Once your own kids are grown, you mercifully tend to forget that an inevitable fact of life with babies and small children is the slime factor.

A shopping cart containing a toddler, two pairs of shorts, and several shirts will fit into a small dressing room in a discount store, along with one medium-sized adult. It is even possible to shut the door and try on the clothes, then to maneuver the cart back out of the dressing room.

I knew, of course, that my grandchildren were brilliant, but one of them is even more of a genius than I had realized. In fourth grade, he has already figured out the answer to one of the enduring puzzles of Western civilization: why is the Mona Lisa smiling? His conclusion, as set out in a school assignment, was this: “Leonardo bribed her with 300 pounds of the world’s finest chocolate.” Like many inspired discoveries, this one is obvious after a great thinker has realized it. Why did no one come up with this before?

A sixteen-month-old, suspicious on the first day of this strange person in his orbit in the place of Mom and Dad, can by the second day come running up with his arms out and a grin of delight on his face. This causes a strange melting sensation in the vicinity of the heart.

If you plan to rob a bank or a store, take along a cute toddler. Everyone will smile and coo and say hi to the kid, and none of them will ever be able to identify you.

To adults, two of the most beautiful words in the English language are “bedtime” and “nap.”

And finally, one of the many pleasures of spending time with grandchildren is realizing what good parents their parents are.

Imagine being at a ski area, watching the skiers. They’re swooping down the mountainside in elegant sweeping curves, having a wonderful time.

But then add something else to the picture: off to one side, there is a person sitting on a stump, not having a wonderful time at all. That was me, on my first attempt at downhill skiing.

My husband, the only one in the family who could ski, was busy helping five kids get their boots and skis on and get started. So I headed off to the beginner’s slope by myself. I managed to get onto the tow rope, get to the top, and get off without falling. I worked my way over to the top of the run.

From the bottom it had looked like a gentle little slope. From the top, it looked like a precipice.

I froze. I didn’t know how to start down. I didn’t have a clue how to stop. I was afraid I would fall, and if I fell I was afraid I wouldn’t know how to get up. We talk about being “petrified with fear” or "paralyzed with fear." That's exactly what I was.

Eventually, I got over to one side and sat down on a tree stump. I sat there for at least an hour, watching other people skiing. Some of them did it easily, some of them fell down a lot. But they all seemed to be having fun.

Not me. All I wanted to do was quit—but I couldn’t even do that, because in order to quit I had to get down the hill, and I was too scared to get down the hill so I could quit.

Finally, after he had gotten the kids started, my husband came to my rescue. With his help, I managed to make it down the hill. With his encouragement, I even went back up and tried it again, and then again.

The next time we went skiing, I did something radical—I took a lesson. The instructor didn’t laugh at me for being scared or tell me I shouldn’t be scared. He acknowledged my fear, but he didn’t treat it as a reason for me not to learn to ski. What he said, by his actions more than his words, was, “Yep, you’re scared. Now watch me and do this.”

I was paying for the lesson, after all—so I watched him and did that. And by the end of the lesson, I was learning to ski. I knew how to stop, I could more or less make my skis go where I wanted them to go, and I knew how to get up when I fell down. I was still scared, but I was no longer petrified with fear.

By the end of the season, I was one of those people swooping down the slopes in—mostly—graceful curves. Once I overcame my fear. I had gotten up off my stump and become a skier, and I was having a wonderful time.

As I look back on that experience now, I can see there were three factors that helped me conquer the fear.

One was the fact that I could see something I wanted at the other side of the fear. As I sat there on my stump, watching other people having fun, I wanted what they had. I wanted to learn to ski so I could enjoy myself with my family.

Second, I asked for help and support. I got encouragement from my husband, and I invested in myself by taking a lesson from someone who knew what I wanted to learn.

Third, I learned to separate the fear from the goal. Instead of thinking, “I want to learn to ski, but I’m afraid,” I learned to think, “I want to learn to ski, and I’m afraid.” Simply changing one word—from “but” to “and” makes those two separate facts. Yes, I want to learn something new. Yes, I’m afraid. One doesn’t cancel out the other. I can be afraid, and I can still move forward, one small step at a time.

Those same three factors can help us conquer fear of anything that’s new and frightening—such as public speaking. Toastmasters, for example, uses all of them with great effectiveness. When we listen to more experienced members, we can see what’s on the other side of the fear of speaking in public. We get support from other members at every meeting, with encouraging evaluations, warm applause, and useful suggestions for improvement.

And finally, Toastmasters can help us separate the fear of public speaking from the goal of wanting to learn how to do it. Older members will say, “Of course you’re scared. I was, too. Almost everyone is.” Then they’ll put you on the schedule for next week, or call on you for Table Topics. Because what we’ve all learned is that speaking, like skiing and many other things, can only be learned by doing it—one small step at a time.

If you’re facing something that threatens to leave you paralyzed with fear, try using these three steps: Focus on your goal so you can clearly see what’s waiting for you on the other side of the fear. Ask for help and support. And recognize that your fear is real, but that it isn’t a reason not to take action toward your goal.

Before you know it, you’ll be swooping gracefully down your particular mountain. You may even discover it isn’t nearly as steep as it looked in the beginning. And you’ll probably be having a wonderful time.

(With this speech for the spring 2009 Toastmasters competition, I placed first in the area contest and second at the division level.)

I had tea with my grandkids this morning. Yesterday morning, I had tea with a couple of Siamese cats. The morning before that, my tea went along with a Smith family 100-mile walk. (It took three cups.)

Even though the grandchildren live some 500 miles away, they can be here for breakfast any time, thanks to this year's Mother's Day gift. It's a cup that has all their names on it under little cartoon pictures, with the heading "My Grandma Rocks." The geologist who shares my breakfast table initially read it as "My Grandma's Rocks." This was a perfectly natural mistake; in his world, everybody's grandma would have her own collection of rocks as a matter of course.

The Siamese cats, blue eyes wide open with a curiosity that matches the question-mark curves of their tails, sit on one side of a cup that was a Christmas gift from my daughter. The paw prints on the other side suggest that their sophisticated poise might give way to mischief at any moment.

The 100-mile walk cup commemorates a family challenge a few years ago to walk every day until we had each accumulated that many miles. Those of us who made the full distance or more have the cups to prove it. A guest who used that cup one day was very impressed that we had walked so far. It took me a few minutes to realize he assumed we did it all at once. I would have explained, but correcting a guest who was just starting on his first cup of coffee hardly seemed polite.

Every now and then, I think I would like to have a matched set of attractive cups instead of the eclectic collection of mugs in our cupboard. ("Eclectic" sounds so much better than "stuff that doesn't match.")

But then which cups would I get rid of? Certainly not the grandchildren. Not the cats. Not the 100-mile award. Not the cup reading, "Thank you for loving me just the way I am" that my son gave me when he was 12. Not the cartoon-decorated cup my late husband used to use in his office.

They aren't elegant. They don't match. But each one means something special to me. They are reminders of the family members they came from, small touchstones that brighten my mornings. Tea just seems to taste better out of a cup that warms the heart as well as the stomach.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! Step right up for a free demonstration of one of the most amazing inventions of the last century.

I have right here in my hand a miraculous device that is guaranteed to transform your life! This simple little gizmo will help you lose weight, get more exercise, and eat a healthier diet. It will improve your family life. It will make your children smarter. It will help you finish all those projects around the house you’ve been meaning to get to. And that’s not all; it will do wonders for your love life and help you maintain a happy marriage.

Yes, indeed—you truly can get all those benefits from this one astounding gadget. It fits easily in one hand. It’s so simple to operate that even a child can use it. And, best of all, ladies and gentlemen, you can try out this miracle device without spending a single dime! That’s right. There is absolutely no cost or obligation—because you already have one or more of these amazing little tools in your very own home.

This life-changing piece of technology is a television remote.

With just one quick motion of your thumb, you can play, rewind, change the channel, change the volume—or change your life. Each remote is equipped with a special button marked “power.” Power is precisely what it gives you, because with one click of that very button, what you can do is turn your TV set OFF. That one simple action can indeed give you all the benefits I’ve just described.

The trouble with television is that, once you begin watching a program, it sucks you in. This is the case whether it’s a high-quality drama, a vivid historical reenactment, a sitcom that makes an art form of inanity, or a documentary on the 87 kinds of spiders found in a tiny section of the Amazon rain forest.

You turn it on “just to see if there’s anything worth watching,” and you get hooked into something, and before you know it three hours have gone by and it’s bedtime. You were planning to call your sister, help your son get started on his science project, take a walk, and do a couple loads of laundry—but oh, well, it’s too late for any of that now.

A long time ago, when television was still in its youth, comedian Fred Allen said, “Television is a medium because anything well done is rare.”

It does seem only fair to point out that Fred Allen’s successful comedy career was almost entirely on radio. Nor is his clever comment entirely true. Television is a powerful medium. It can show us the intense reality of a dramatic news event, recreate history, move us, entertain us, and educate us.

It can also fill our evenings with mindless hours of mediocre entertainment. It can keep us sitting instead of doing something active—meanwhile bombarding us with commercials for high-calorie foods until we just have to go make some popcorn or grab a bag of corn chips. It can give us the illusion of spending time with people we love, when all we’re really doing is sitting together with our separate attention focused on the imaginary people on the screen instead of the real ones in the same room.

Now just in case there’s anyone reading this who might someday want to make a television movie of one of my books, let me be clear I’m not saying it’s bad to watch television. Just watch it deliberately and consciously. Decide what you want to see and make an active choice about it, instead of letting the TV set decide how you’ll spend your evening.

Remember—you’re the one who holds the miraculous device in your hand. Right there, that red button. That gives you the power. All you have to do is use it.

We are facing a crisis at our house, and I’m not sure how we’re going to get through it. Apparently, we’re about to lose all contact with the outside world. Television is going digital, and we haven’t gotten around to buying a converter box yet.

I know Congress has been busy these last couple of weeks. It must be exhausting to pass a borrowing-and-spending bill with so many zeros (by “zeros,” of course, I am referring to the billions of dollars in the package, not our esteemed representatives who voted for it) that not even the IRS has calculators that can count that high.

Still, our elected representatives took a few moments out of their busy schedules to take care of the little people. They voted to extend the deadline for switching to digital television. Some people—including, perhaps, some people so deprived that they have only one television set for an entire household—might not be ready. Maybe, even with the governmental coupon for $40 off a converter box, they might not be able to afford one. Or maybe they hadn’t heard about the February 17 deadline.

I watch about two hours of television a week, mostly PBS. And even I have heard so much about converter boxes and digital television deadlines and the need to be ready for the big technology conversion that I’m sick of it. Even I know that, despite the extension, South Dakota Public Television is going ahead with its conversion according to the original schedule.

If I know all this, any regular television watcher has to know it, too. Anyone who hasn't heard about the conversion by now must have been living in such remote isolation that they don’t have television, anyway. They probably spend all their time either hunting and fishing or raising chickens and goats and preserving the organic vegetables they grow in their own gardens, so they’ve been too busy to notice or care that Barney the purple dinosaur is going digital.

Just imagine what might happen if the digital conversion went ahead as originally scheduled and some people, deprived of what is apparently their Constitutional right to television, weren’t ready for it. Suddenly, their TV sets would sit silent and blank in their living rooms. They wouldn’t know exactly what was driving the housewives to desperation this week. They would have to look outside to check the weather. They wouldn’t know about the latest crises in the love lives of the various Britneys and Jessicas and Jennifers. They might be lost without “Lost.”

These poor suffering people might have to resort to extreme measures—like reading books, for God’s sake. Or talking to each other. Or going for walks. Or even, no matter how horribly last century it might be, Or even, no matter how horribly last century it might be, employing a different form of digital entertainment—knitting, for example. Or playing board games or cards or dominoes. They might have to endure evening after quiet evening, forced to find ways to keep themselves occupied.

Come to think of it, that sound a lot like what we do at our house all the time. Is anyone up for a trip to the library?

It’s finally happened. I’ve begun hugging trees.

It was inevitable, I suppose. I’ve always admired trees, after all. If I were the painter that my attempt at a college art major persuaded me I wasn’t, I would paint trees. There something infinitely satisfying about them, whether it’s the graceful symmetry of a young elm, the fascinating gnarl of a venerable willow, or the stark elegance of bare cottonwood branches against a winter sky.

Much as I like trees, though, I’ve never actually gone around hugging them. Smelling them, yes. There’s nothing quite like the enticing clean odor of fresh-cut wood. An apple tree or plum thicket in bloom in the spring smells better than a whole hothouse full of roses.

Trees have more subtle smells, too. On a warm summer day, the bark of a Ponderosa pine smells like vanilla. Put your face close to the trunk and inhale, and you’d swear you were in your grandmother’s kitchen helping to mix up a batch of cookies. And at certain times of the year in the Black Hills, the air even in town smells deliciously of turpentine.

So I admit to being a tree-watcher and a tree-sniffer. Not a tree-hugger, though, until this week.

We went for a hike on the first day of February, a sunny day with unseasonably warm temperatures but a brisk wind. Our route took us across a meadow and up to the top of a high ridge. The last part was a scramble rather than a hike, over steep rock ledges where juniper bushes and young pine trees clung on by their toenails. In between layers of exposed rock, the surface was a loose mix of soil and pine needles, made even more slippery by a dusting of fresh snow. Getting to the top meant anchoring ourselves carefully, one boot at a time, and pulling ourselves up by grabbing whatever plants were within reach.

About half way up, it occurred to me to wonder what in the name of common sense we were doing this for. By then, of course, it was a little late to change our minds.

The reward at the top was a level hike along the ridge top, with a spectacular view of the Black Hills to the west and the prairies to the east. Then came the hard part—going back down.

I’m not proud. I did most of it crouching or sitting, snow or not, wet jeans being preferable to sprained ankles or broken legs. I clutched at bushes. I crab-crawled down rocks. And I hugged trees—every one I could get close to. When you’re making your way down a slippery slope that you wish you hadn’t begun in the first place, there’s nothing like wrapping your arms around a good, solid tree while you negotiate that next treacherous step.

So it’s official. I’m now a tree-hugger. I just hope  my new arboreal best friends never find out about all the firewood I’ve helped cut this winter.

It’s all my sister’s fault.

When my daughter was a toddler, my sister made her a bunny towel. There are several ways to construct one of these critters, but essentially you get a bath towel and a hand towel. You make a hood out of part of the hand towel, add ears (made out of the rest of the hand towel) to it, and sew it to one long edge of the bath towel. The result is a cute hooded wrap that’s great for drying a shivering, fresh-from-the-bath little kid.

My daughter loved her bunny towel. She used it for years, until the ears tore off and the hood had holes in it and towel itself was so thin you could almost see through it. One day, helping me paint a bedroom, she realized that one of the rags we were using was the last remaining piece of her bunny towel. She was indignant. She was 26 at the time.

When the first grandkid came along, then, I had the bright idea of making him a bunny towel for his first Christmas. It was a hit, so naturally I also made one a couple of years later for his younger brother. By now a tradition had been started. When twin sisters showed up a few years later, of course they needed bunny towels as well.

This past Christmas, about the middle of December, it suddenly dawned on me that I had two new grandsons—grandsons whose mothers might well be expecting bunny towels.

I wasn’t enthusiastic. I don’t like to sew. It was too last-minute. I didn’t have time. The babies wouldn’t care. Maybe their mothers wouldn’t care. Maybe nobody really appreciated the towels anyway. Maybe I could do towels for their first birthdays instead.

Despite all this inner foot-dragging, somehow, when I was out finishing my Christmas shopping, a couple sets of towels found their way into my cart.

The next day, I hauled out the sewing machine. I laid out a hand towel on the dining room table and muttered to myself while I figured out how to come up with ears and how to shape the hood. No doubt this would have been easier with a pattern—but hey, anybody can follow directions. We true artistic, creative types prefer to start from scratch each time and make it up as we go, even if it takes us twice as long.

So I figured, and I measured, and I pinned, and I cut, and I sewed. An hour and a half later, I had two hooded towels. Each hood had a pair of terry-cloth ears that were more or less the same size and shape. They didn’t exactly look like bunnies. Puppies, maybe? Or kittens? Actually, they looked mostly like lopsided sheep.

But little guys not quite a year old probably don’t know a lopsided sheep from a bunny, anyway. And at least I upheld the tradition that I had inadvertently started.

Besides, getting started on the project made me forget that I didn’t have time and didn’t like to sew and didn’t want to make the towels in the first place. I had fun. And when the next grandkid comes along, I hope I can remember how I did it.

Some 70 or 80 students are ranged across a polished wood floor, divided by gender. Three uneven rows of guys on one side face three crooked rows of girls on the other. A physical education teacher stands in the middle, issuing instructions.

“One, two, three, start. Step, together, step, touch; step, together, step, touch.”

The rows move in awkward unison, this way, then that way. Some of the students are serious and focused, some are stiff and self-conscious, some are obviously enjoying themselves, and some are chattering to their neighbors instead of paying attention.

“Okay, at an angle. Step, together, step, touch.”

Some of the students move forward and to the right, others move backward and to the left, and others, having missed the instruction altogether, keep going from side to side. There are a few minor collisions and several near-misses.

No, this isn’t junior high basketball practice, drill team tryouts, or marching band. It’s dance class. The students are adults who are here by choice (in some cases, admittedly, their partner’s choice). They’re learning the foxtrot.

The instructor has been teaching people in Rapid City to dance for more than 25 years. His day job, teaching physical education to elementary students, has given him plenty of practice at getting large groups with short attention spans to line up and listen. He focuses on the basics, having students practice the step over and over and over, until even the most nervous beginners can do it without thinking.

Well, most of them, anyway. I danced with one man, an hour into the class, for whom the foxtrot was still a complete mystery. Maybe he’ll get it next week when we review.

All this drilling might sound incredibly boring for anyone who already knows how to dance. Yet it isn’t. I’ve known how to foxtrot ever since I learned it from my father, practicing in the dining room, when I was 12 or 13. I could do “step, together, step, touch” in my sleep—and for all I know, maybe I do. But dance lessons are still fun. Think low-impact aerobics class, only with music by George Strait and the chance to hold hands with a couple of dozen members of the opposite sex.

Obviously, I’m not the only one who feels this way. I’ve taken this dance class twice before, at least 12 years ago. Last night, I recognized probably a dozen people who were in the classes then. They’re smooth, skilled dancers, but they keep showing up—to help the beginners, to spend time with friends, to get some exercise, and to have fun. Their hair might be grayer, and a few of them move a little more slowly. Not one of them, though, is overweight.

It isn’t exactly “Dancing With the Stars.” No one is doing elaborate routines, and the costumes run more to cowboy boots and blue jeans than skimpy silk gowns and tuxes. But it’s great exercise and great fun.

Next week, the waltz.

It’s a quiet Christmas Day here at home. We had nothing planned for a holiday dinner. We had no plans for visitors. We had no gifts. We had no decorations. We had nothing particularly in mind at all, except for the minor detail that we planned to celebrate Christmas 1000 miles from here.

Our two-day driving trip to New Mexico, planned to begin early Tuesday, was interrupted before it began. My partner in crime woke up that morning so dizzy he could hardly stand up—and no, before you ask, overindulgence in eggnog or hot buttered rum or some other holiday beverage was not involved.

It was apparently an inner ear problem, possibly caused by a virus or possibly not. Or maybe it was some sort of flu. Aside from pills to help reduce the dizziness, 21st century medicine didn’t have much to offer. The doctor said it should get better in a few days. In the meantime, traveling was not a reasonable option.

This caused some disappointment and inconvenience, especially for those who were expecting us for Christmas Day. It also caused us to stop and pay attention to the things we could be thankful for. Like the bug showing up before we left instead of making its presence known somewhere along the way. Or the fact that we had already enjoyed our major Christmas celebration with relatives. Or the blessing of flexible self-employment, so moving a trip back a few days isn’t a problem.

He’s feeling much better, and we will probably set out on our trip tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. Or possibly the day after that. In the meantime, there were the two friends who came over this afternoon. They brought gifts of conversation, laughter, and wonderful leftovers from their family dinner on Christmas Eve.

No gifts? No tree? No big celebration? No problem. It’s been a good day.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Since we live at the opposite ends of two adjoining but wide states, I missed it, but last week was my grandkids’ school Christmas concert. The oldest is in band for the first time this year. His mother told me, “They played ‘Jingle Bells’ and ‘Hot Cross Buns.’”

We both laughed, remembering other elementary school band concerts, including her own. The newest students always industriously sawed and blew their way, note by careful note, through “Jingle Bells,” “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and “Hot Cross Buns.”

Not exactly the New York Philharmonic, or even the Black Hills Symphony. Still, playing recognizable songs, in unison, was a noteworthy (if you’ll pardon the expression) accomplishment for a bunch of fourth-graders just starting to learn their instruments. Besides, even Al Hirt, Yo Yo Ma, and Charlie Daniels had to start somewhere.

I always enjoyed my kids’ school programs. I wish the grandkids lived closer, so I could go to theirs. It’s great fun to watch the budding “American Idol” contestants who wave at Mom and Dad with gusto, sing with such enthusiasm that you can see their tonsils from the fifth row, and obviously love every minute on stage.

Then there are the other kids. The ones who look down at their shoes, twist their dresses or shirts in sweaty little fingers, and may or may not remember most of the words to “Jingle Bells.” Yes, it can be funny. But most of the humor disappears if you can remember how scary it can be to stand up in front of an audience when you’re a shy little kid.

My first public performance came when I was four years old. Along with several other unsuspecting preschoolers, I was given a poem—two whole lines—to memorize and recite at the school Christmas program.

As I remember it, there was a supper of some sort before the program. I remember looking up at the stage in the old Dixon town hall (an actual stage, with a curtain and everything), knowing I was going to have to get up there in front of all those people, and being absolutely petrified.

One of my fellow sufferers—er, speakers—trotted up onto the stage and rattled off his poem two or three times before the program started. Then, when it was his turn to speak during the program, he refused to budge from his safe spot in the audience. Maybe he was as scared as I was. Or maybe he figured, with some logic, that he had already done his oratorical duty for the evening.

I was amazed that he had the guts to defy the authorities and exercise his right to remain silent. It hadn’t occurred to me that non-participation was an option.

What I remember most vividly about being on stage was being shocked to hear one of the other little kids recite my poem. Here I had gone to all the trouble of memorizing my two lines, not to mention the agony of standing up to recite them—and I wasn’t even given the courtesy of being unique. I was affronted.

What I don’t remember at all is reciting my own poem. I must have done it—probably twisting my skirt in my hands and looking down at my feet, almost certainly inaudible to anyone past the first row. Or possibly I spoke up reasonably well and was audible as far back as the third row.

Either way, I suppose people in the audience thought it was cute.

To this day, I find Christmas programs more enjoyable when the littlest kids don’t have solo speaking parts, but stick with group singing. When you’re so small and the audience is so large, it feels a lot safer to be just one anonymous little voice in the chorus.