Living Consciously

Taking regular walks is a habit that pays off in many ways: increased fitness, weight control, better health, serenity—and sometimes even cold, hard cash.

A friend of mine who is a habitual walker keeps one eye on the ground in search of stray coins. He maintains that walking early or late in the day is best for this, as the slanting sunlight reflects off the coins and makes them easier to spot. (Of course, the light also reflects off of little spots of tar, drops of oil, broken bits of plastic, and discarded wads of chewing gum, so it’s a good idea to look before you grab.)

Two or three found pennies makes a successful walk, a nickel is great, a dime is better, and the occasional quarter is a bonanza. In this way, he accumulates enough for a cup of coffee, oh, maybe every three or four months.

It’s too bad he wasn’t along when my two granddaughters and I went for a walk in an unfamiliar neighborhood a couple of days before Halloween. For an entire block, the sidewalk was decorated with scattered coins, probably three or four dollars’ worth altogether. There they were, shining in the morning sun—which also highlighted the generous globs of glue or silicone with which they were securely attached to the concrete. We couldn’t figure out whether this was supposed to be a Halloween trick or somebody’s idea of performance art, but we chose not to expend the effort and fingernail damage to pry loose any of the frozen assets.

Out walking one morning this week, I was marching along at my usual pace, thinking my usual great thoughts, when I glanced down at the gutter and spotted a ten-dollar bill. As I picked it up, my mind flashed back some 20 years, to a time when extra ten-dollar bills were a scarce commodity. We were out hiking one day, and since I had a cold, the pockets of my jeans were filling up with used tissues and cough-drop wrappers. When we passed a garbage can, I took the opportunity to empty my pockets of trash—and also, accidentally, of cash.

The ten dollars in my pocket that I inadvertently threw away was a substantial part of the weekly budget. It took me a long time to forgive myself for that bit of carelessness.

The other morning, picking up someone else’s lost ten-dollar bill, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the person who lost it needed it as much as we had needed that long-ago ten dollars. I certainly didn’t need it now, and taking it didn’t quite feel right. I briefly considered leaving it where it had fallen in case its owner came looking for it. But the chances of that happening were slim, since the bill was damp and had obviously been lying in the gutter at least since the day before. The next person who happened along wouldn’t necessarily need it, either. And leaving it there to blow away or wash down the storm drain wouldn’t do any good for anybody.

So I stuck it in my pocket. Later that day, I stuffed it into a red kettle under the appreciative eyes of a Salvation Army bell ringer.

What goes around, comes around. Sometimes it just takes a couple of decades.

It takes 22 minutes to drive from our house to the airport. Given the right incentive, however, you can make it in 12.

This fact was established through first-hand experience and observation between 5:17 a.m. and 5:29 a.m. on a recent Monday morning.

With all the security regulations currently in place (“Sorry, ma’am, but that bottle of contact lens solution is over three ounces. You’ll have to put it in your checked bag.”), even our small airport requires passengers to arrive at least an hour ahead of scheduled flights. A 6:00 a.m. departure, then, means getting to the airport by 5:00 a.m., which means setting the alarm for 4:15 a.m. in order to leave the house by 4:30 or 4:35 a.m.

But when I opened my eyes that Monday morning—without having heard an alarm—the sky seemed lighter than it should have been. I turned over and squinted at the inch-high red letters on the digital clock. Even without my classes, I could read them if I leaned over far enough. It was 5:12.

Expletives were said. (Only a couple; there was no time to waste on them.) Clothes were thrown on. Shaving and toothbrushing were skipped. By the time we started backing out of the garage, the clock in the car said 5:17.

Fortunately, no early walkers were out on our neighborhood’s curved, hilly, no-sidewalk streets. Fortunately, the paper carrier saw us coming in plenty of time to swing her car back into her own lane. Fortunately, there’s little traffic on the new bypass road before 5:30 on a Monday morning. Fortunately, the five miles of road construction on the airport road was free of both traffic and construction workers.

As for red lights, all I’m going to say is that we were lucky. Of course, sometimes it’s necessary to make your own luck.

Eventually, we careened around the last curve and screeched to a halt in front of the terminal. My spouse leaped out, grabbed his suitcase and his computer out of the back, and dashed toward the nearest door. I drove around the loop and parked in the hourly parking lot, then followed him inside, fully expecting to hear that he had missed the flight and we’d be heading home.

As the revolving door spit me out into the terminal, I heard my name from on high. No, it wasn’t a direct message from the Almighty (Had said Almighty been inclined to deliver any personal messages that morning, a wakeup call at 4:20 would have been helpful.) It was my spouse at the top of the escalator, already checked in and ready to go through security. No wonder it only took a few minutes; there was no line, since all the other passengers had finished checking in half an hour ago.

The time was 5:37 a.m.

The departures screen showed the flight leaving on time, at 6:08. That goodness for that extra eight minutes.

After waiting until it was clear that the traveler would get through security in time to actually board the plane, I headed home. I observed all the speed limits and waited obediently at all the red lights. It took me 22 minutes. I didn’t need any tea for breakfast; the adrenaline rush was more than sufficient to get me through the morning.

One morning this week, a 6:20 a.m. flight gave us a chance to try again. This time, we set two alarms, for 4:45 and 4:47. This time, we made sure they were set for a.m. instead of p.m. The first one went off as scheduled, and we got up calmly, without a single expletive and with plenty of time for brushing teeth and putting clothes on right-side out.

We left the house at 5:17. We drove to the airport, not even having our blood pressure raised by the semi ahead of us that relentlessly maintained the speed limit all the way through the deserted construction zone. We pulled up in front of the terminal at 5:39.

I dropped the passenger off, kissed him goodbye, and drove home in a relaxed and deliberate manner. No panic; no drama; no adrenaline rush.

It took me three cups of tea to get energized for the day.

Despite being a college student during the Age of Aquarius, I was never a hippie. I was too shy to be a protester, thought drugs were stupid, and wouldn’t have known a pot plant from a begonia.

I loved the bellbottoms and the long hair, though. And I have to admit I did play the guitar (badly) and sing folk songs (equally badly). One of those songs was “Little Boxes,” that condemnation of the sameness and dreariness of middle-class suburban life written by Malvina Reynolds and sung by Pete Seeger. It added to our dictionaries the term “ticky tacky” for those houses that “all look just the same.”

Not long ago I visited a couple members of my family who have just become first-time homeowners. Their house is on the fringes of a fast-growing city, in a new suburban development. One morning I went for a walk through their neighborhood.

I walked past house after house, each built from one of four basic designs with only small variations. Each one sat on its own tiny lot with its own narrow front yard and miniature back yard, elbow-to-elbow with its neighbors on either side. I hadn’t gone more than a couple of blocks before “Little Boxes” started up in my head.

Today’s cookie-cutter houses, of course, require considerably more dough than the “little boxes” of the 1960’s. Malvina would have trouble writing this song today. Somehow, “little McMansions” just doesn’t have the same dramatic impact.

By the end of my walk, I had come to two conclusions. Thirty minutes of multiple choruses of “they all look just the same” is more than enough. And, with all due respect to Malvina and Pete, “Little Boxes” is a lie.

For one thing, with a closer look, it’s obvious that each of these houses, superficially so much like its neighbors, reflects the lives and personalities of its owners. Each one holds a unique family—from newlyweds like my kids to retirees, with every kind of family variation in between.

True, from the outside, their lives may well appear as similar as their houses—commuting to work farther than they would like in city traffic, coming home, cooking on the grill in their tiny back yards, taking kids to soccer games and ballet lessons and tae kwan doe.

But the lives lived out in these suburban tracts are just as unique, just as creative, just as full of love and joy and pain and satisfaction as lives lived anywhere else. That’s true whether you live in a high-rise apartment building in Ankara, in a gated hilltop mansion, on a beach in the South Seas, on a South Dakota ranch, or in a conventional suburban house just like thousands of others.

You don’t have to hike through Nepal or live off the grid or become an artist to march to the beat of your own drummer. You can build your own rich, full life anywhere. You can even, as a maturing former non-hippie, play folk songs (badly) on the piano in your own ordinary middle-class living room.

A term that shows up now and then in news articles about development in the Black Hills is “urban-wildlife interface.” No, that’s not the name of a rock band. It’s bureaucratese for “build a house in the woods and you’ll have critters in your yard.” Or actually, around here, it means, “live anywhere in town and you’ll have critters in your yard.”

This year’s drought-breaking rains have produced abnormally lush vegetation, which means the “urban” part of the “urban-wildlife interface” is doing its best to keep the lawn mowed, while the “wildlife” part is thriving on all that food.

In our yard, all this abundance means you can hardly go up to the street to get the morning paper without tripping over two or three bunnies. The cottontails have been reproducing like—well, you know what. They seem to be thriving, despite the pair of foxes that have taken up residence in the nearby gully.

Yesterday morning I left the garage door open while I watered some plants, and when I came back around the corner a few minutes later, a couple of adolescent bunnies were playing under my car. When they saw me coming, they scampered out of the garage and into the grass, and I swear they were giggling. Maybe, being teenage guys, they were just checking out the motor. Or maybe they wanted to see whether I had left the keys in the ignition, in case they wanted to sneak off later to drive down to the convenience store for illicit cigarettes and a six-pack of cheap beer.

This is the fun part of the “urban-wildlife interface.” If I were a more serious gardener, or if there were a few more bunnies, I’m sure I would regard them less as entertainment and more as pests.

But urban or not, we are sometimes reminded that this isn’t the Disney version of the outdoors. Like the time earlier this summer when we ran over a nest of cottontails with the lawn mower. Two (hopefully uninjured) palm-sized youngsters darted across the driveway to shelter, a third crouched in trembling terror in the grass until it was picked up and deposited under the safety of the steps, and an unfortunate fourth was left as nothing but bloody scraps of fur.

Then there was the fawn we saw in the back yard last evening. It was just a few feet from the patio doors, eyes wide and fan-like ears swiveling as it tried to make sense of the fawn it could see reflected in the glass. Although it looked healthy and was browsing its way through the grass and shrubs near the door, its coat was rough with burrs, and it kept balancing on three finger-thin legs in order to scratch with a dainty hoof. Still dappled with spots, it was obviously too young to be wandering around alone.

Yet, during the half-hour or so the fawn spent in the back yard, no mom showed up. Either the fawn was disobeying orders to stay put, or its mother had been hit by a car or grabbed by a mountain lion for last night’s dinner. Either way, the little guy’s odds of survival aren’t good. And if it is an orphan, realistically there’s nothing we can, or probably should, do about it.

That Mother Nature. She isn’t always a sweet little lady. As living in the “urban-wildlife interface” can demonstrate, sometimes she’s a tough old broad.

I’m not a dedicated landscaper or lawn manicurist. Far from it. I think the whole “water the grass so it will grow better so you can mow it more often” process lacks a certain logic.

But I hate thistles. When they invade the lawn or creep into the garden or establish themselves in sneaky clumps behind the wood pile, I take it as a personal affront.

So last week I declared war on thistles. Armed with a hoe, a dull butcher knife, and a sturdy pair of leather gloves, I sallied forth to battle the invading hordes.

First I took the hoe to the bunch of thistles at the edge of the driveway that had managed to survive almost to maturity by cleverly camouflaging themselves in a patch of tall grass. Then I moved on to the sneaky little thistles hiding behind the bushes at the front of the house. I stabbed the dirt around them with my knife to loosen it, then tore them out of the ground one at a time with my gloved hands. I moved along behind the bushes, crouched, knife at the ready, alert for even the smallest and most innocent-appearing baby thistle.

Once those had been annihilated, I marched across the front yard, hoe in one hand and knife in the other. My target was the edge of the slope marking the beginning of the area we leave to grow wild. I had spotted a row of the enemy there, hiding in the grass. I hacked away with my hoe, intent on ridding the yard of pestilential plants.

As I wreaked devastation along the row of thistles, I happened to look up for a moment. And for the first time, I noticed the flowers. Pale pinkish-violet coneflowers. Yellow clover. Delicate pink wild roses. At least two more varieties of yellow flowers and three of purple that I had no idea of the names of.

The unmowed half of the front yard was a lush garden of wildflowers among the abundant grass. I had been so focused on the thistles that I hadn’t even seen the flowers.

Well, I’m smart enough to recognize a heavy-handed metaphor when it whacks me upside the head. So I chuckled at myself for a minute while I stood there and admired the flowers. Then, my senses soothed and my spirit refreshed, I put down my hoe.

I grabbed the knife instead. With renewed vigor, I attacked the last bunch of thistles. After all, if I want to keep enjoying the flowers, I’d better not let the thistles crowd them out.

The Fourth of July is a time for fireworks, flag-waving, parades, and patriotic oratory that tends to quote heavily from Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. We are reminded of the freedoms we enjoy in the country and the sacrifices that have been made in support of those freedoms.

There’s not a thing in the world wrong with that. A periodic dose of old-fashioned patriotic rhetoric is an important reminder of the principles upon which this nation was founded.

But let’s go back for a minute to that uncomfortable little word “sacrifice.” It’s often paired with “service.” Almost always, in Fourth of July speeches, those two words refer to military service. And, certainly, both veterans and current members of the military deserve our respect and our gratitude.

They aren’t, however, the only ones. On July 3, the leading article in our local newspaper pointed out that six of the seven current members of the school board gained their positions by default. When they were elected, no one ran against them.

This probably shouldn’t be surprising. Serving on a school board may well be one of the most thankless forms of public service in the country. Members of the public pretty much ignore what you do until there’s a problem. We’re facing one of those problems in our school district right now, in the form of a major budget cut. At such a time, the phone calls start, and the online comments, and the letters to the editor, many featuring words like “idiots” and “irresponsible.” After all, everybody went to school, which makes everybody an expert, and everybody has an opinion, frequently critical.

As we celebrate our Independence Day, the speakers and writers who evoke noble principles and stirring ideals remind us of the “why” that is the foundation of our country. The “how” that keeps that foundation solid relies on the people who show up on a daily basis to do the work. This is patriotism with its sleeves rolled up.

People like those who serve on school boards. Also city councils, zoning boards, township boards, homeowners associations, and fire districts. Not to mention poll workers, volunteer fire fighters, members of search and rescue squads, members of service clubs, volunteers who serve their communities in countless ways, those who write thought-provoking and informed letters to the editor, and people who pick up trash along the sidewalks on their daily walks.

Patriotism doesn’t always mean being willing to die for your country. Sometimes it means being willing to wrestle with budgets and sit through endless meetings. So this Fourth of July, when you think about freedom and patriotism and service, please wave your flag a time or two in appreciation of the unsung everyday heroes who do exactly that.

One of Rapid City’s attractions, for both residents and tourists, is Storybook Island. Which isn’t an island, really, but a park/playground for children. They can play in, on, and around structures like Peter’s Pumpkin, the Crooked Little Man’s house, Winnie the Pooh’s house, and Cinderella’s coach. They can pretend to drive a real locomotive and a real fire truck. They can ride on a real miniature train.

And they can go to the theatre. Live theatre, where they are encouraged to participate on cue, cheering on the heroes and reprimanding the villains—who by the end of the show usually turn out to be not so very bad, really. This is theatre for three- and four-year-olds, after all, who ought not to be scared right out of their little plastic sandals. And who, preferably, ought to learn at a little something about counting or working together or the value of saying “please.”

To illustrate: in this year’s version of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” Jack doesn’t steal the gold and the golden egg-laying hen and the magic harp. No, the giant’s wife gives him those things, because she’s tired of all those surplus golden eggs cluttering up the place. Besides, she wants her husband to retire from gianting.

Age-appropriate revisions and all, the shows are great fun. The plays are enjoyable enough, certainly. But the real entertainment comes from watching the little kids watch the plays.

Today, for example, during “Sleeping Beauty,” the kids in the audience were asked to remind the prince that he dared not eat or drink anything on his way to the enchanted castle. The fairy godmother told the children, “Say ‘don’t drink it’ three times.”

Following her lead, they shouted, “Don’t drink it! Don’t drink it! Don’t drink it!”

Except for one literal-minded little guy behind me, who dutifully shouted, “Don’t drink it three times!”

Then there was the little boy sitting in front of me, who accepted the actors’ invitation to come up on stage and dance at the end of the play. He came back to his preschool group and asked, “Was I great?” Another little boy told him in awe, “I saw you. You were right next to the King!”

When you’re three, the King up on stage in his crown and his velvet cape isn’t an eighteen-year-old kid whose crown is way too big and whose tennis shoes show underneath his cape. No, he’s The King. When you’re three, children’s theatre is still magic.

For those of us who are much older than three, it’s magic, too. True, we notice that the King wears tennis shoes and the fairy’s wig keeps slipping and this week’s Sleeping Beauty looks suspiciously like last week’s Jack in the Beanstalk. But we notice the magic, as well. For us, the magic comes from watching all those delighted little kids who still believe in make-believe.

There’s nothing like spending a few hours in a hospital emergency room for putting things into the proper perspective.

My daughter woke up early the other Sunday morning with severe abdominal pain. It matched all the descriptions she found on the Internet of appendicitis, and it kept getting worse. That’s how we ended up spending much of Sunday afternoon and evening in the emergency room.

Given a choice, Sunday afternoon at 3:30 is probably a better time for an ER visit than, say, 11:30 on Saturday night. Even so, as we started across the sidewalk to the door, my daughter said, “Look out, Mom, don’t step there—that’s blood.”

Once we had checked in at the desk, we discovered the probable source of the blood. A gangly teenage boy holding a red-spattered towel to his forehead was describing to the admissions clerk how his skateboard had flipped out from under him.

Then two young women, obviously sisters, came in with a little boy of about three. The mother and aunt were upset; the little boy looked fearful and had obviously been crying. We heard his mother tell the nurse, “He stuck a rock up his nose, and we can’t get it out.”

Of course it wasn’t funny. Not really. Besides, laughing at traumatized toddlers is something one simply doesn’t do. But I couldn’t help murmuring to my daughter, “See? Things could always be worse; at least you don't have a rock up your nose,” and she started to giggle but had to stop because it made her belly hurt.

Just as everyone ahead of us had been taken inside and my daughter’s turn was coming up, in through the front door came an elderly man in a cowboy hat, supported by his wife and a younger woman who was probably their daughter. My daughter told me, “I won’t be going next after all; that looks like a heart attack.”

And indeed, at the magic words, “chest pain,” the need for preliminary paperwork instantly vanished, and he was in a wheelchair and through the double doors. We didn’t mind waiting a bit longer, either. We’re still grateful that my father—another elderly man in a cowboy hat—received the same kind of life-saving attention for his heart attack a few years ago.

Then it was my daughter’s turn, and we spent the next three hours in a chilly examining room where she was poked, was prodded, had blood drawn and an IV started, did not throw up, and ultimately found out that her temperature and white blood count were both normal.

Along the way, we also learned what to do for a small child with small objects in his nose—cover the unoccupied nostril and blow into the other one to make him sneeze. The nurse who told us this had personal as well as professional experience. “Oh, yeah,” she said, “My son did that all the time. Rocks, bead, sunflower seeds—you name it, it went up his nose.”

Eventually, the doctor told us the test results were inconclusive. This didn’t mean she did not have appendicitis. But even if it was her appendix, it wasn’t going to do anything dramatic like burst in the next couple of days. Surgery was not immediately called for. He recommended going home and waiting. If she got worse, she should come back.

That was reassuring—sort of. Until, as we were leaving, the doctor passed us in the hall and said cheerfully, “See you in 24 hours.”

She got worse. She went back. Twenty-four hours later, she had traded her appendix for three little incisions. They’re the most expensive body piercings she has ever had.

I hate picking out Mother’s Day cards. Oh, not because I don’t love my mother. I do. I also like my mother, respect her, admire her, and enjoy her company (except maybe when she beats me by more than 50 points at Scrabble). I’m deeply grateful that she’s a part of my life. But it’s still hard to find a card that suits her.

Mother’s Day cards are generally divided into two styles. First there are the neutral ones, those with the carefully worded, noncommittal greetings. They’re generic enough for almost anyone. You might send them to your mother-in-law, or your neighbor, or your aunt—or your mother, if the two of you didn’t get along very well. Those don’t exactly convey the loving message I’d like to send.

Then there are the other cards—the soppy, sentimental ones. These must be produced by writers who are trained by attending a boot camp for greeting card writers. They spend six weeks locked in windowless rooms, where they are required for 15 hours a day to read and reread Little Women and the more sentimental novels of Charles Dickens. Only then are they considered qualified to write Mother’s Day verses.

The problem with these cards is that they aren’t written to or about real people. They try to invoke an idealized version of “Mother” who is endlessly patient, kind, understanding, loving, dedicated, noble, and self-sacrificing. This mythical creature is a mishmash of June Cleaver, Ma Ingalls, and the Virgin Mary, with touches of Florence Nightingale and Lassie thrown in for good measure.

Real mothers aren’t like that. Nor, in my opinion, should they be. Still, I love my mother, and I’d like to send her a suitable card. If I could find one, these are some of the things it might say:

For my mother—

• Whose walls are decorated, not only with her own beautiful quilted creations, but also with antlers of her own deer.

• Who patiently spent long-ago summer evenings helping small daughters fish when she surely would rather have been left in peace to tend her own line.

• Who taught me that preparing a meal for 25 or 30 people doesn’t have to be a big deal.

• Who took loving care of her own elderly mother and mother-in-law.

• Who taught me that, in times of crisis, sentiment might be noble but practical action is a lot more help.

• Who taught me that half the fun of playing Scrabble comes from knowing the meaning of the words you use—but there’s still nothing quite like using the “Q” on a triple word score.

• Who taught me that being an adult means showing up, day in and day out, and doing what needs to be done.

I love you, and I’m proud to be your daughter. Happy Mother’s Day.

It was a long, hard trip, but he’s here. Kaden Richard, born at 6:33 Saturday morning, March 15.

At first glance, that seems like a more civilized hour than his cousin’s middle-of-the-night, who-needs-to-wait-for-the-midwife arrival in January.

Well, not exactly. Everyone involved, especially the principals, would have been just as pleased to have Kaden show up a few hours sooner. His arrival took a long time. A contributing factor may have been the fact that he weighed ten and a half pounds. To quote the proud but exhausted new mother a few hours after his arrival: “That was sooooo much work!”

Welcome, Kaden “not-so-little” Richard. It’s wonderful to have you in the family. True, your size was the first thing we all noticed, but after we’ve exclaimed over that we can move on to more important things. Like what color your eyes are really going to be, and whether you have your grandfather’s long, narrow feet, and if you’ll have your mother’s luminous smile, and whether you’ll go to sleep best when you’re rocked or walked or patted on the back. And most of all, who you are going to be. We’re eager to get to know you.

By the way, when you get older, don’t let your mom get away with any guilt trips of the “I was in labor with you for 26 hours” kind. Yes, your birth was an incredible amount of work. But she thinks you’re worth it. She told me so herself.