The Crab Chronicles

For Evil to Flourish

I flinch when I turn on the news now. I flinch and I feel myself grimacing as I watch people in Israel, and Gaza, and sometimes I get big tears in my eyes. Like others around the world, I am mesmerized by what I'm seeing on the television.

It seems like something out of a horror movie, incomprehensible.

"For evil to flourish it only requires good men to do nothing." - Simon Wiesenthal

Only once in my life have I ever witnessed someone seriously hurt by other human beings and it shocked me, and there was absolutely nothing I could do.

I made two trips to Kazakhstan to adopt my son in 2007. On the first trip I went to the orphanage every day for several weeks and visited Michael and got to know him, then there was the adoption hearing on April 3, then a wait of several more weeks before everything was legally finalized. I flew home during that time, so I could work and save my leave time for when Michael got home. When I returned in early May 2007, I took a flight to Frankfurt, then another flight to Astana.

I got off the plane in Astana and had to go to the customs line and show my passport so I could get into the country. I was standing at the end of the line and I heard a noise behind me and turned around. A very large Russian man was being led over to the customs area in handcuffs. Clearly, he was a prisoner. The small Asian men who were guarding him looked like elves escorting a gorilla. When the Russian man saw a way to run out of the airport -- we were near the doors -- he bolted, but he didn't get but a few feet away before the small Kazakh guards tackled him to the ground.

For several minutes, the guards savagely beat the big man, hitting and kicking him as he screamed HELP ME HELP ME, in Russian. I had studied Russian and learned those words. I stood there frozen in horror, unable to not look. Finally, the big man fell silent. The guards finally pulled away, and I saw a huge pool of blood spilling out from the Russian man's head. A stretcher was brought in and he was carried away. The pool of blood remained.

There is a vast difference between watching a movie -- or even a documentary -- and seeing someone beaten, and watching it in real life.

I had never seen something so terrible, and it shook me up very much. I don't know what the big Russian man had done, what crime he had committed, but I know how I felt watching that beating. I felt terrified, and horrified, and I have never forgotten what I saw. I will never forget what I witnessed.

I cannot watch very violent movies, even though I know the violence is not real. I flinch. I grimace. I usually pull out my phone and stare at the screen.

I tell this story because I feel utterly helpless regarding the situation in Israel and Gaza, and that worries me.

I don't ever want to feel nothing, in the face of human suffering. If we are insensitive to horror then we lose our humanity.

I am descended from mostly British and Irish ancestors [88%, according to 23andMe] and many of my ancient ancestors were the barbarians who brought down the Roman empire.

My Scottish ancestors [there were many] were/are fierce fighters.

I descend also from a Civil War sharpshooter. I am the granddaughter of a professional soldier and the sister of an Army major.

I am not a violent person but to protect my family, particularly my children, I would call upon the spirits of my fighting ancestors and ask them to help me protect those I love. I am talking about an extreme, and unlikely situation, though. I hope and pray I will never have to defend myself or my family.

What I cannot understand is WHY. We live in an amazing age of technology unsurpassed in human history, so why are we still savagely killing each other?

I condemn anyone who would kill another human being not for self-defense or protection of family, but simply for land, or a political ideology.

The older I get the more I believe that the power and energy of human love is the most powerful energy in the world. We have to somehow harness that power to defeat hate. Hate is the ultimate Evil, the direct opposite of Love.

If we focus love and healing energies to places like the Middle East and Ukraine, where Evil is winning, I think we can change things. What else can those of us who are old and/or powerless physically actually do?

I have started to pray constantly for Love to win. I leave the "how" of that up to God.

 

The Courage to Love

Control is a funny thing. The more we try to hang onto it, to maintain it, to bend it to our will, the more we learn the price of that way of living.

I have a very close friend and a family member who are highly intelligent, creative, fascinating guys. They are also alone, and that's what they say they want, but I don't think it is, not really.

My friend Andrew (not his real name) is gay. (That's only germane because I don't want to have to switch pronouns.) Brilliant, articulate, funny, handsome, fit -- he seems to have it all. Yet, he has only had one serious relationship in his life. Years ago he was living in Europe and he met a guy and fell in love. As a result, when the guy got a job here in the states, Andrew quit his job and moved back to the states to be with his boyfriend. They set up housekeeping together and Andrew didn't find a job right away. He found himself making dinner and waiting for his guy to get home every night, but that often didn't happen. Boyfriend saw no need to call and say he was going to be late, or eat out with friends, and that infuriated Andrew. After only a few weeks, he packed his things and moved back home to live (temporarily) with his parents. When he told me about it much later I asked why he didn't just get some counseling, try to work through the issues, and Andrew -- normally a very calm, rational person -- got really upset and yelled "I was NOT going to be treated like a housewife!"

Much later, I realized the issue was that for the first time in his adult life, Andrew was in a situation he couldn't control. He couldn't force his boyfriend to be more attentive and considerate. Andrew had gambled a lot, turned his life completely upside down, and his lover wasn't appropriately grateful. That was more than twenty-five years ago and Andrew hasn't had a serious relationship since then.

My relative's situation isn't too different. Let's call him Joe. At age 25, Joe was far from home, working a job in a town where he knew nobody, and met a young lady. She was smart and articulate and she grew up not far from where he did. They got married. For the first year things were fine. Then Joe started to notice peculiar things in his wife's behavior. She would go grocery shopping every day rather than making a list and going weekly. She would feed the cat out of a crystal bowl they got for a wedding present rather than buy a cat dish. Sometimes she would stay in her pajamas all day, staring at the TV, totally non-functional. Joe had decided when he married he would never get divorced, so he just tried to ignore her weird behavior, and "walk it off" which is what guys are taught to do about pain. They weren't successful at getting pregnant but Joe's wife refused to consider infertility treatments or adoption. Finally, after 15 years of marriage, she left. Joe had tried to get her to see a psychologist, or at least go to marital counseling with him, and she refused to even consider she might be bipolar or any other serious malady, so she walked out.

That was more than twenty years ago. Joe has had a number of serious relationships since then but he refuses to consider marrying again. He told me not long ago he was planning to spend the rest of his life living alone and die alone. Complicating matters is the fact that Joe is a heavy drinker and he refuses to get sober.

I love both these guys. They have been part of my life for years. Both are handsome, brilliant, personable, kind -- everything most people look for in a partner. Yet they are both alone.

I think they are actually very fearful of love, and I've tried to analyze that, see if there were something I could say or do to get them to stop being fearful and start taking the huge risk of loving someone.

“The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It’s our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.” -- Brene Brown

Brene Brown teaches and lectures a lot about vulnerability. I have watched her TED talks several times and each time I come away with a better understanding of what it takes to really live an authentic life, to surrender control, and be brave enough to risk getting hurt.

I wish I could get Andrew and Joe to get some counseling, let a professional help them deal with the fear that is holding them back from finding a loving partner. I pray for them both, often. Being vulnerable is scary stuff. I get it. However, we are all getting older, and neither Andrew or Joe have anyone to look after them when they get old and sick -- which is inevitable, no matter how health conscious one is.

I can't spell out a neat conclusion here, but I want to point out that the "guy code" that says it's somehow unacceptable to seek professional help when you have a difficult problem, that code isn't absolute. However, it's actually quite brave to admit you can't control everything in life, and you're willing to take a risk on a relationship. Risking may mean losing, but it's the only way to [eventually] get the loving partner you seek.

I keep praying my guys will only day find their courage, and find someone to love. I love them both very much...

Check out my latest novel, The Wedding Conspiracy, on Amazon.

My Scary Weird Bucket List

There's a great movie called The Bucket List and before I saw that (years ago) I only had a vague idea of what a "bucket list" is, and although it's a terrific movie it didn't make me want to run out and write a bucket list.

Most bucket lists have things like "travel to Europe" or "skydive" or "meet the pope," etc. 

My bucket list is completely different. First of all, travel is not all it's cracked up to be. I cannot imagine anything that would entice me to sit on an airplane for hours, stuck in a big metal tube in the sky, in close proximity to a hundred strangers, exposed to their coughs and farts and sharing a tiny bathroom with all of them. BTDT when I went to Russia 4 times and Kazakhstan 2 times between 2003 and 2007. I am not scared to fly, but I hate flying because I hate crowds.

For the record, I hated crowds before Covid but I now utterly loathe crowds and I will never willingly expose myself to them. No game, concert, or church service will ever entice me to be around crowds.I am a homebody, and that's not uncommon for folks my age.

My son and I had a very late lunch yesterday at Honeybaked Ham and there were no other people in the store as customers, and just 2 guys behind the counter. It was lovely.

I will never willingly skydive. Somebody very big and strong, holding a gun, would be necessary before I would jump out of an airborne airplane and even then I would hesitate. I fear no diaper would save me from the dire consequences of that jump, because unlike lighter people my fat ass would plummet me straight to the ground long before the parachute would open. The mess would be terrible, unless I was dropped into the ocean.

No, my bucket list will likely have to wait for some scientific breakthroughs or a resurgence of elemental magic before it will ever be possible, any of it. It's below, in no particular order.

1) time travel to 1978 and leave a note for my high school self saying "give up all carbs forever and join a gym asap and workout every.single.day"

2) have a nice long lunch with Tom Hanks

3) move into my own house which has a screened-in back porch and sits on at least two acres

4) spend the day with all of my Thompson first cousins and their families, just eating and chilling out and visiting

5) spend the day with all of my Hasty first cousins and their families, just eating and chilling out and visiting

6) eat a big piece of chocolate cheesecake with no gastric consequences

7) spend a week at the beach, slightly off season like maybe in September, with my kids and my best friends, all in one big house with a pool

8) have a weekend visit with my only sibling, who hasn't visited me in years

9) time travel back to 1957, to just after my parents get married, and tell my parents to get some counseling

10) time travel back to 1970 so I can talk to my grandfather (Bob Hasty) and ask him to tell me about the scandal that cost him his major league baseball career. [I tried to write a book about it, a novel, Return to Marietta, but it didn't sell]

11) eat a nice long lunch with my favorite singer, Mary Chapin Carpenter

12) have some private lessons with the Dalai Llama on meditation and inner peace

13) write a bestselling novel

14) spend a few days in the mountains of East Tennessee during the Fall, with one of my friends and no crowds [this is the most farfetched of all my list items!]

15) travel across Canada, through the Canadian Rockies, by train

 

I just re-read my list and realized a lot of the items have to do with spending time with family and friends. I think at the end of my life that's what I will regret most, not spending more time with family and friends.

#weirdbucketlist, #postcovidbucketlist, #timetravelshouldbereal, #ihatecrowds, #canadianrockiesrock, #writinglifewoes, #regretsinlife, #timetravelisreal, #magicsolveseverything

 

Stopping a Child's Tantrum

Not long before she died my mother and I had a very illuminating talk and she reminded me of something she did when I was a small child that had lasting repercussions in my life. I was telling her about something I'd read about the best way to deal with a child who was having a meltdown, putting them into "time in" instead of "time out" and she listened very thoughtfully. "I did that with you," she remarked.

"What? I don't remember that." Then she reminded me of her tantrum strategy.

I was the baby of the entire family. All my Thompson cousins were 5-10 years older. All my Hasty cousins were 2-12 years older. Often I was the youngest child in the neighborhood.

When we lived at our wonderful old house on Heard Avenue in Augusta I was 1-5 years old. It's the first house I remember. It was built in the early 20th century and had a big front porch, with a swing. Sitting out there, watching the bees and butterflies in the flowers, was peaceful and lovely.

I always wanted to play with the bigger kids, play on an equal basis with them. My two best playmates were my brother Bruce, 2 1/2 years older than me, and my BFF and next door neighbor Joanne, about 18 months older. So often, though, I couldn't keep up with them intellectually or physically.

I would get frustrated and have screaming temper tantrums. I could throw quite a tantrum. I've always had a BIG voice, even as a little kid, not to mention a flare for the dramatic.

Mom developed a strategy born of desperation, I'm sure. She did what would now be called a "therapeutic hold" - a controversial technique but one that works.

When I launched into a tantrum, she would pick me up and go out to the front porch, getting me away from the older kids, and sit down on the porch swing. There, she would quietly hold me and swing, while rubbing my back. I can remember that very well.

I was a fighter. I always wanted to fight, and beat my enemies. [Good preparation for spending decades as a litigation paralegal, now that I think of it!] The older kids became "enemies" when they excluded me, intentionally or unintentionally. Bruce and Joanne loved me but I know at times they viewed me as a nuisance.

Anyway, when I threw a fit Mom got me away from the other kids and that was a blessing. I thought of her as a huge, strong person, and I was astonished to grow up and see she was petite [5'4] and not very strong, actually.

Once we were seated on the porch swing, I could not get down, off of her lap, until I went through several steps.

1. I had to un-clench my entire body and stop crying.
2. I had to get my breathing back to normal. Sometimes I had to endure Mom wiping off my face with a cold wet washcloth.
3. I had to listen to Mom telling me not to let the other kids bother me -- or her explanation of why the tantrum was the wrong response to whatever was bothering me.
4. I had to just sit quietly for at least 5 minutes, while Mom rocked. Sometimes we would sing, or she would sing to me.
5. I had to laugh. Mom made a sort of puppet with her hand, sticking her thumb between her index and middle finger, and did the funny voice of Thumb-bum. I had to listen to Thumb-bum tease me or say funny things until I laughed.
6. Finally, I had to promise to behave myself before I was allowed to get off her lap and go back to playing.

Now, I didn't know as a small child that my mother was unusual. I didn't know she had taken many classes in psychology, including child psychology. I didn't know that she found her two children endlessly fascinating and she studied how to help us to have as happy and stress-free a childhood as possible. I'm sure there was fierce protectiveness because she knew there would never be more children. She had wanted four kids but fibroid tumors in her ovaries made it really difficult for her to get pregnant and led to a hysterectomy when I was still small.

She was a brilliant person and I know at times she found it really difficult to be a stay at home mom, stuck in a house all day with two small children. Dad was very tight with money so there was little extra for fun activities. I feel very lucky that she was able to be at home with us, though. She essentially taught me how to calm myself down, and not let the bigger kids destroy my peace of mind.

To all you young parents out there, God Bless You. If you find yourself dealing with tantrums, try a loving "time in" plus therapeutic hold, and see how that works. It will eventually get better. If you're lucky, you might wind up with a child who can calm themselves down effectively even when you aren't with them.

#thebestwaytocalmachild, #dealingwithchildhoodtantrums, #therapeuticholds, #timeinforkids

Employment Law and Fairness

I rarely ever write about my life as a paralegal here because this is my personal space and I tend to keep my personal and professional lives separate. I knew when I started this blog that if I wrote about my paralegal jobs or cases I've worked on it would be the end of my legal career and I didn't want that. My legal career pays the bills. My writing gigs are mostly just for fun.

Plus, attorney/client privilege is a real thing. Clients should not have to worry about someone in their lawyer's office writing about them publicly, so I don't.

So this blog isn't about cases I've worked on, or attorneys I've worked for, or clients of the law firms where I've worked.

It's about fairness.

I started a new job last week working for a wonderful plaintiff's employment law firm here in Atlanta, Beal Sutherland Berlin & Brown. As I've been reading through cases and researching issues I've been reminded so many times of why employment law is my favorite area of law, and why I like it so much.

It started with my mother.

I was blessed to have a mother who was an incredible storyteller and my best friend.

Mom was born in 1933. She was a young woman in the 1950's when women were told basically that they could have a career OR a husband and children but not both. My mother was brilliant and she should not have had to make that choice. She was told so many things in her life that were blatantly unfair, and when she told me about them years later I was angry and indignant, on her behalf.

Mom started working as a sales clerk at the old Sears store in Ponce de Leon when she was 16 years old. She had to wear high heels all day and she was on her feet for her entire shift, not allowed to sit down. Years later she had a lot of circulation problems in her legs and we figured it started then. After working there for years and with a spotless performance record, she knew the store intimately. She applied for the management training program when she was almost finished with college and was told "You won't ever be admitted because you're a woman. We only train men to be managers because they have to support a family."

She thought she might like to go to law school. She made excellent grades in college and excelled at public speaking. Her uncle, a lawyer in Macon, said "There's no reason for you to go to law school. You'll just get married and quit."

Another dream was to be a professional singer and she had a wonderful voice. She sang professionally, all over Atlanta, and for the USO. When she married my dad in 1957 that ended. He didn't want her to even sing at church, because rehearsals took her away from him and later her children. Like most men of that time, Dad expected his house clean, his children behaved, and dinner on the table every night. [To be fair, though, he was a very hands-on father and they were a real team when it came to parenting.]

When she and Dad had been married a few years, she was teaching school and when she got pregnant with my brother the school forced her to quit. No visibly pregnant woman was allowed to teach in South Carolina in 1959. She was so upset she told me she cried for a week because it was the middle of the school year and she missed the children so much.

So hearing about all those experiences made me aware of the fact that women of my mother's generation often didn't get treated fairly in the workplace, or in society in general.Fortunately, things have gotten better in recent years.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the first major piece of legislation to try and make the workplace more fair for everyone. If you really want to understand it, you can go here, to the EEOC website, but the part that most interests me is this:

It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer -

(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or

(2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Mom contributed a lot to my awareness of the injustices women faced in her day -- and still face now, in some instances -- but my father also helped me to understand that employment fairness is critical. He ran the trust department of a large bank for 35 year. He championed a young black man to be the manager of one of the bank's branches in the mid 1970's when appointing a person of color to a managerial job was unheard of. Dad knew he would do a great job and he went to bat for him. Dad also hired a young woman to work in his department who was black, and until then I don't think there had ever been any non-white people in the trust department. Dad didn't judge people based on race.

When it came to race, my family was unusual. I actually wrote about that here. Unlike many southern families, you never heard the N word in my house when I was growing up. My parents made it clear we were never to use that word or we would be spanked, and I have never used it. Just in my lifetime, so many things have changed. Unlike so many people in past generations, I adopted mixed-race children. I have dear friends who are black. My children have both dated African Americans, with my blessing. My gay friends and family members can now live openly and marry their partners. Most churches in Atlanta welcome people from the LGBTQ community. The South today is not the South of generations past, thanks be to God.

Women still face employment discrimination, though, and non-white people still face employment discrimination. A recent poll found that 91% of those surveyed had faced workplace discrimination. People over 40 often face age discrimination; I have dealt with that. My son has lost out on jobs because he is an amputee. Workplace retaliation happens every day -- for example an employee files an EEOC complaint and then is quickly terminated for no good reason. Whistleblowers often lose their jobs. People who are overweight or not white still don't get hired.Women who have children don't get the same opportunities for advancement. And so on.

I hope and pray one day we will have a better world, but until that happens I feel like I fight on the side of the angels.This new job is more than just a job. What I do matters. I work for brilliant, kind, wonderful attorneys who genuinely want to help their clients. I love that.

If you've experienced discrimination -- because you're a woman, a person of color, over 40, disabled, gay or trans, or for any reason -- call an attorney in your city. You might have a case. You will never know until you explore your options.If you are in Atlanta, call Beal Sutherland Berlin & Brown. You will get a fair assessment of your case. You might even get to know me as a paralegal.

#atlantaemploymentattorneys, #atlantadiscriminationcases, #understandingyourrights, #ineedtofileaneeoccomplaint, #suinganemployer

Stories from The Past

My dad grew up in a tiny town near Augusta Georgia, Hephzibah. As a child, the word "Hephzibah" was always associated with my uncles and funny stories. The stories were simply part of my Thompson life, and I never realized how lucky I was to be related to three very smart, very funny, Southern men. My father Tony Thompson and my uncles Lewis and Bobby were what might be called "old school" today. 

I shared some memories of our family in a story published in Salvation South today, Cordelia's Giggle.

My uncles both served in World War II. Bobby was in the Navy. Lewis was in the Army and fought in the South Pacific. I was born years later. Both of the men I knew were tall, easygoing, affable, guys. It's hard to imagine them in a war, getting shot at or possibly shooting at someone else. Now my dad was a very different guy, a dynamo of energy. It wasn't hard to imagine him in a war because he loved all thing military and pushed my brother to go in the Army.

However, unlike his two brothers Dad was never in a war. I always assumed he was in the Korean War but when I was cleaning out my house to move a couple of years ago I found letters he wrote to his parents while in the Army and they were dated 1954, after Korea had ended.

Dad spent most of his mandatory military service running around Europe every time he got leave. He was stationed in Germany. The photo at left shows him and two friends on the French Riviera. The letters are hilarious, because he was so young [24] and from a tiny town, and he missed his parents a lot.

When I was a kid, I noticed that whenever Dad was with one or both of his brothers, the Hephzibah stories would often get told. Whiskey was often consumed during the telling.

The most memorable storytelling occasion happened in 1974, just after Christmas. My cousin Chris was visiting his father's family and Lewis and his family had been to Rome, Georgia to see his wife's family, and we all converged for an afternoon at an Atlanta hotel, for lunch. Below is one of the black & white photos made by my uncle Lewis that day.

I was 12 years old. All my cousins and my brother were older. It was the only time we were all together, unfortunately, because Chris lived in California and his visits were sporadic. At the time, Chris was working as a plumber or carpenter or something, but he later went on to an illustrious career as a TV and movie writer and producer. I don't know if he realized that he got a lot of his humor from the Thompson side. 

In the article I wrote about my grandmother Cordelia, I got a kick out of talking about the funny Hephzibah stories, but I wanted to also carefully explain that she raised three fine men.

Cordelia Henderson Thompson didn't have an easy life. She was an "old maid schoolteacher" about 31 years old when she met and married Grandaddy. In those days, if a woman wasn't married by age 25 she was an "old maid" and unlikely to ever marry, according to the social rules of that time. She was very smart, loved to read, and loved to make photos. Dad said she always carried her little "Brownie" camera everywhere, and because of that I have some wonderful old family photos like the one below, of Cordelia and her youngest son Tony, my dad.

She married my grandfather in 1923. He was not educated and he didn't have any money, but it was a true love match. They raised three sons during the Great Depression, watched two of them go to war, and died in the late 1950's. Thompson had been a professional soldier for many years and although he was a small man [about 5'7, 135 lbs.] he was fierce and he had a temper.

Cordelia was gentle. She was very ladylike, and proper. Although she married her opposite, she loved him very much. Mom said she used to talk about him all the time after he died, and her heartbreak was evident. They were married for 34 years, until his death from emphysema complications in 1957, a few months after my parents' marriage. 

Most of what I know about Cordelia I learned from my mother. She only knew her about 2 1/2 years but she grew to love Cordelia and happily named me after her, three years after Cordelia's death. My name, Dee, is a shortened version of her name.

Some people -- including my own cousins -- think I am really weird for finding my family so fascinating. I feel like I am lucky to be a product of two old Southern families, and stories of my ancestors fascinate me. I got that from Dad. He was always organizing family reunions, always on the hunt for old photos and memorabilia, and very reverent about family history and lore. There's nothing wrong with that.

I feel like all of us are products of the DNA of all our ancestors stretching back for generations. We may look back at them and think they lived such different lives  than we did but that's not entirely true. My grandparents lived through two World Wars and The Great Depression. Life was a lot harder in 1923 when all four of my grandparents got married, but they wanted the same things we want. Home and children were important. Faith was important. Good manners were very important. Stories were important. I am proud to be a product of all of my grandparents, the ones I knew (Bob Hasty and Wilma Butler Hasty) and the ones I didn't know, Thompson and Cordelia. I carry their genes in my body, but more importantly, I try to carry on family traditions and tell the stories, so the next generations will never forget them.

The Beauty of Vegetables

My son goes to the store for me most Fridays because he is off work and I am working. He has become a terrific shopper. The other day I asked him to pick up some tomatoes for us at Publix. I prefer the produce from a farm stand but when in a hurry we settle for Publix.

He brought home tomatoes that are deep red, all connected to a stem, and I found myself saying "Those tomatoes are beautiful!"

That phrase just popped out.

As soon as I said it I thought, that was Mom's expression. My mother regarded vegetables in a state of what she considered perfection with deep awe and reverence. She would exclaim over them the same way an art collector might get excited by seeing a painting he coveted, or the way a dancer might view another dancer's perfect pas de deux, or the way a mother might feel seeing her newborn baby for the first time.

Why?

I think it's in our blood, the love of the land and how it feeds us.

Mom's generation was only the second one off the farm. She was a teacher, then a SAHM. Her brothers were a college administrator and an automotive manager. My grandfather Hasty was raised on a farm, and his father expected him to farm, but Papa was given an opportunity to play professional baseball and he took it. However, when World War II came, Papa sought out a job where he managed farms in South Carolina, and some of Mom's earliest memories involve farm life. (Papa felt like his family would be safer on a farm way out in the country if America were to be invaded.)

In the memoir I compiled after Mom died, Singing to the Cows, there are many reminiscences about farm life:

The farm meant we lived in a pretty white frame house, with grass in the yard, and I think it was on a dirt road. We had a pretty front porch and a big screened porch out back. There were several other buildings, a huge barn, and a long tractor shed among them. There was a fence out back and sometimes an animal was brought in to eat the grass.

We had a huge barn with a fenced in lot. In fact, almost all the farm was fenced for the animals. We had three cows, two horses, and several mules. Sometimes we had little calves - I loved them. Daddy, Bobby, and Don each had a cow to milk. Don pretty much made a pet of any animal he dealt with.

In every home where we ever lived [we lived in 5 different houses when I was growing up] Mom and Dad got outside and planted flowers and vegetables, and spent a lot of time tending to everything. The yards were always barren and disappointing but by the time we left they would be transformed into lush and beautiful places. Dad would come home from working as a bank VP, put on old stained clothes, and go work in the yard, which was how he relaxed. Mom read a little magazine called Organic Gardening for years. As long as my grandmother was alive, I often heard Mom asking her advice about gardening. She always said Memaw could "winter" her outside plants and keep them going in cold weather, a skill she didn't teach Mom, for unknown reasons.

In her 50's and 60's Mom had stopped working in the yard due to arthritis but she was active in her garden club in Augusta, and kept getting re-elected to the presidency year after year because she was so excellent in that role. She always found great speakers.

My father grew up just down the road from a farm owned by his grandparents and run by his uncle Claude after his grandfather's death. As a teenager, he worked on the farm in the summers. He loved to grow tomatoes, green beans, lettuce, etc. He spent many hours hauling soil from the bank of the lake to make raised garden beds for Mom when they lived on the lake near Knoxville in the 1980's. That rich soil was fantastic for growing flowers and vegetables. Dad came from many generations of farmers too, although he and his brothers were all professional men. Each one married women who were terrific gardeners, which I think was not a coincidence!

I never had any interest in gardening until I became a mom. In fact, I was always puzzled by my parents' near obsession with growing things. When Mom and I bought our house together in 2005, though, I wanted my children to know the love of growing food and flowers. I felt compelled to garden. It was inexplicable to me at the time but now I think I understand it.

I adopted children with a deep love of fresh veggies and fruits. They spent their early years in Russia and Kazakhstan, where it was not possible to get fresh fruits and veggies in the winter. I never had to fuss at them about eating fruits and vegetables. In fact, I sometimes found them in the garden eating tomatoes, onions, and strawberries right there, and of course I didn't scold them.

For countless generations, my ancestors farmed. I think a love of gardening, the miracle of seeing a seed become a beautiful flower or a delicious vegetable or fruit, is part of my DNA. I live in an apartment now, and I miss growing things. I miss it so much I try not to even think about it. There is something magical about it. Creating your own nourishment feeds the soul as well as the body.

Below, me and Mom around 1985; my kids in the garden right after I adopted my son, and the painting was done by my uncle Lewis Thompson, of the Henderson farmhouse where his mother grew up.

 

The Legacy of Tina Turner

I remember seeing Tina Turner on the Ed Sullivan Show when I was a little girl and loving seeing her dance. She looked incredibly strong and powerful. I had no idea when she was with Ike Turner he was beating her up constantly. I was shocked to find out years later that she had to literally flee from him, in fear for her life, to get out of that marriage, as she wrote about in I,Tina.

Here's a bit of truth that makes people very uncomfortable: in the old days, which many people refer to with great fondness as "the good old days" women getting hit by their husbands or boyfriends wasn't discussed. It was considered nobody's business. The mantra "mind your own business" covered a multitude of sins, from domestic violence to child abuse, to child molestation, etc.

Tina's courage in walking away from Ike signaled a change in society, a huge shift in how women allowed themselves to be treated.

My mother told me when I was a teenager and starting to date "Never, ever let a man hit you and get away with it. If it happens once and you take it, it will happen over and over. Get away from him. If you're married, walk out, and take your children. NEVER put up with it, not for a minute."

It seemed obvious to me.

Skip ahead a few years and I am a Freshman in college. One of my friends returns from a weekend at home with a black eye where her boyfriend hit her. She was a cute little blonde, very funny and feisty. I was shocked. I told her she had to break up with that boyfriend "But he said he was sorry and it wouldn't happen again!" I got so frustrated with her. Several of us told her to break off that relationship, but I don't know if she did. I don't know what happened to her because I transferred schools.

My dad had a cousin who was a beautiful lady, very smart, a prominent businesswoman in her small hometown, and her husband beat her. She told no-one except a close friend, and that friend also had an abusive husband. The small town where they lived was [probably still is] very old-fashioned and judgmental.

What many young women don't realize nowadays is that abuse still happens, and shame and embarrassment keep many women from talking about it or doing something about it. I've told my own daughter she must never put up with abuse.

God Bless Tina Turner for taking something so personal and painful out of the shadows, and holding herself up as an example of strength. NO WOMAN should put up with abuse, not even one time.

There is a National Domestic Violence hotline and the number is 800-799-7233 -- if you are being abused, call it. There are women's shelters everywhere, and there's no shame in asking for help.

The Ancient Blogger Pioneer

Many years ago when I still had to unplug the phone to power up my computer I started this blog. I had just adopted my daughter and everyone in my large circle of family and friends wanted to know how she was doing. Instead of trying to write twenty emails a night, my computer guru friend Paul helped me set up this blog and I just emailed the password to everyone I knew and tried to write a little something every day. That was in 2005. Some of you weren't born yet.

I had a unique angle. Nobody adopts a 13 year old girl from Russia. My first experience as a mom was trying to mother a child almost as tall as me who didn't speak English. There were no guidebooks. The terror was real. Blogging helped me process it.

I digressed.

I was stunned and horrified to see that Heather Armstrong a/k/a Dooce died yesterday by suicide. I read her blog devotedly for years and admired her writing style. I haven't read her blog much in recent years because I often disagreed with her politics but occasionally I would check back in. I had no idea she battled alcoholism. I guess we never really know what someone is going through, even if they are in the public eye. I am very sad though, for her family. She left behind two daughters and a long-term boyfriend. 

She was a thin, attractive person with great mothering skills and phenomenal writing skills. She seemed to have it all, and yet we never really know how someone is feeling inside.

Blogging seems like a quaint word now, sadly.

So many bloggers I used to read don't even write anymore. Two bloggers I read faithfully, Andrea and Hallie, stopped blogging when they went through personal crises -- the breakup of Andrea's marriage in a particularly horrible way, and the death of Hallie's son by suicide. I've never met either one of them in person but I loved their blogs. Neither would call herself a writer and yet they both have boatloads of writing talent and I have always been envious.

For me, writing has never been easy. I am jealous of people who do it almost effortlessly.

I digressed.

I will pray and send healing thoughts to Heather's daughters. They are in high school, which is hard enough without losing your mom.

We are no strangers to suicide in my family. My son lost his older birth brother to suicide, when he was 6. It's very cruel to those left behind. He also lost two friends to suicide, in recent years. We have to do better at helping people get past being suicidal. As a country, we have to have better access to mental health treatment. So many of the shootings that happen are because the shooters are suicidal. Do you know how difficult it is to get psychological help? It's unaffordable unless you are wealthy. It makes me incredibly angry.

Here endeth the lesson.

#ripheatherarmstrong, #suicidesucks, #goodbyedooce, #bloggingpioneer, #mommybloggers, #suicideispreventable

How to Not Freak Out

When I was young I could go from calm to completely freaked out in a nanosecond. All my friends knew this about me. I once referred to myself as a laid back person and the friends I was with fell on the ground laughing and clutching their stomachs, howling with glee.

Well, not really. They did think I was dee-lusional, though.

I read a blog today and it reminded me of the terrible day 27 years ago when my father died, and I had to drive to Augusta where my parents lived. Talk about major freakout potential. My mom and my aunts were very worried about me driving all that way, crying. Everyone mourns differently. If I hear something very sad or upsetting [like someone has died] my reaction is to burst into tears, although I usually pull myself together as quickly as I need to, now. When Dad died, though, I was in my early 30's and still easily freaked out.

I ran back to my apartment and packed, and started driving to Augusta. It's about a 2.5 hour drive and rather boring. I tried not to cry but of course that made me really cry.

I held it together on I-285, which encircles Atlanta and is rather terrifying under the best of circumstances, but then I got onto I-20 which is a much smaller road, less traffic at midday, and just lost it. Even though my dad had been sick with cancer for months the diagnosis had come only a few weeks before he died. He was only 65, which I now think of as relatively young. I cried and cried, and drove, and I felt my dad in the car with me.

Up until that time I had honestly had my doubts about the whole afterlife concept. It seemed pretty far-fetched to me. After I lost my dad, though, I could feel his presence a lot of times, and I just knew his soul was still alive. That day in the car, that drive, changed my life forever.

I heard the other day about a cousin who has passed, and it was really sad because she was just a couple of years older than me. That's mind-boggling. Whenever I think about her, though, I try to focus on the idea that she is reunited with her parents in heaven, and out of all earthly pain and suffering. I believe that to be true.

I read a book a few years ago called Dying to Be Me, by Anita Moorjani. She had cancer years ago and clinically died, but came back to tell her story and bring comfort and enlightenment to many people, all over the world. I find NDE [near death experience] stories so compelling, because 99% of them say the same thing, that on the other side there is no judgment or punishment, only healing and love and beauty.

I have friends who are very skeptical of that. I feel sorry for them.

Anyway, back to freaking out.

I am writing a new novel and I realized the other day that when I am writing about a character I like getting freaked out I always put in that the character stops and takes deep breaths, to calm down. That's what I do! It always works. Always.

I also ask God to help me become calm and centered. Faith helps a lot.

Let's say you have no faith in God and you don't want to try meditative breathing. Another way to not freak out is to think THIS TOO SHALL PASS. Everything passes. You can let things freak you out, or realize that the only thing you can really count on in life is change.

Finally, remember that freaking out accomplishes nothing. It fills your heart and mind with negativity, and that's terrible for your emotional and even physical health.

I recently read this story about a man in New Jersey who is 109 and who still lives independently, drives, and is doing well despite his age. I love this quote from him:

“I keep positive. I never think any other way when something’s wrong,” Dransfield says.

Words to live by.