Pestering . . .

No.

Pounding Cranium — no.  Wait.  Wait.  It’s here in my pocket.

**takes crumpled paper out and spreads it flat.**

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce:

Permilia Cornell

Permilia is the historian who providing me with research for the Whither sequel I’m working on right now, and she has graciously agreed to share some of the most interesting facts about family life on the frontier with us. Permelia has a Master’s Degree in Family Development, and is passionate about the history of families and their unique stories.  She is retired from The Ohio State University Extension as a Family and Consumer Sciences Educator.

Also, she’s my mom. 

So beginning next week, watch for her new blog series, Asides from Permilia.

Yay, right?

I learned to daydream. In some other blog, I will go into how this is affected my adult life negatively, and I will have the appropriate attitude of contrition. But for now, I’m talking about elementary school. While my classmates’ brains were occupied with such mundane things as… Well, I really have no idea what they were occupied with. But while they were occupied by whatever the teacher felt was important, I was rescuing kittens, living on the ocean, flying over our city with the wings I’d constructed myself out of popsicle sticks and string, or surviving on a jungle island with my pet monkey, Paul Anka.

The last day of school, second grade, one of my friends was appalled to discover that my desk was full of wadded up school papers. I remember it so clearly, her horrified little voice saying, “shame on you! Shame on you!” I’m not sure why they put me forward to third grade.

In third-grade, Mrs. Mayhew changed my life forever. She didn’t teach me not to daydream my days away. She taught me to do it better.

Mrs. Mayhew had two major impacts on me. She is at least partly responsible for me becoming a Christian. A teacher today would be fired for what she did, influencing me to go to church, but back then, in our homogenous community, it was not a big deal. I think we hadn’t even banned prayer in school yet. At any rate, I was the only child in my class who didn’t go to church regularly. Because I so adored Mrs. Mayhew, I asked to go with my grandfather, and, although my path to Christianity has been a complicated journey, I don’t believe I would have walked it without those first steps. I respect the fact that public schools are more inclusive now; I don’t think they are the appropriate venue for evangelizing classrooms full of diverse children. Just to be clear. But, thank you, Mrs. Mayhew. In another blog, maybe I’ll tell you sometime what happened next.

The second impact was to give me a permanent passion for books.

Reading until then had been something I was forced to do, something that involved drawing lines from single bold words or sentences to vividly drawn children who, strangely, always seem to have pet chickens.

Each day, after lunch, we would all sit at our desks with idle hands (amazing to me now; I don’t really do idle hands) and listen to Mrs. Mayhew read. The Cricket in Times Square, Little House in the Big Woods, Charlotte’s Web…

I don’t know if it was the way she read them. I don’t know if it was because she loves those stories so much. Maybe, it was because she loved us so much.  But I have to believe that every child who came out of her classroom that year, came out with a love of reading.

The rest is history, at least minor, inconsequential history that no one will ever care about. But for me, it’s history. Third-grade defined my future.

I entered fourth grade as a book hound. I read everything – my sister’s books about horses, my mother’s Good Housekeeping, my dad’s books about Edgar Cayce and reincarnation (yeah . . . did I mention I have a complicated faith history?).  I hid books behind geography and science textbooks during class discussions, hid out in tree branches with a beat up copy of The Boxcar Children, and fished The Jungle Book out of the bathtub more than once.

When I ran out of things to read, you guessed it. I wrote. I wrote badly, but I wrote as much as I could, creating worlds where things worked the way they were supposed to work, where the mean girl got turned into the lizard, where people were tiny and could ice skate on frozen buckets of water. I was twelve when I began to think of myself as a writer. And for all the years that have followed, as manuscripts piled up, as I wrote nonfiction to support my fiction habit, and as life has forced me to take hiatuses, I have never thought of myself any other way.

I am a writer, because I am a reader. And I am a reader, because Mrs. Mayhew, whom I loved, loved me and read to me.

I even added a little link to my blog, something like “Leo is a wonderful person, look, I even wrote a blog about him.”

Well, here’s what went down, and it’s pretty cool: After I wrote the blog, I wrote the link on a torn corner of paper and sent it with my daughter to Leo, so he could see it. He showed it to his wife, who showed it to some friends, and the thing ended up traveling to their pastor, who called the school. The principal and the school guidance counselor read the blog, planned a party, and called the newspaper:

My roots have been done since this picture.

Jewell Cardwell: Crossing guard earns mother’s gratitude – Cardwell – Ohio.com.

I need to write, so I write. I kind of hope some people will read what I write.  There are 1 million, maybe a bazillion, blogs out there, so chances are most of my blogs will have no more impact than taking up a tiny bit of virtual space on an imaginary place called the Internet. But, if one of my blogs could be read, I’m glad it was this one.

To Leo:   Mwah!

This quote is from the Jon Stewart show, which I couldn’t seem to embed, but here’s another interview:

You’re welcome. 

When I get to heaven I’m going to follow Mahalia Jackson around until she goes to Jesus and asks for a restraining order.

If missed the beginning of the Woman Transformed blogs, it’s here:

Now Lisa will tell us about what triggered her decision to take control of her health profile:

I had a wake-up call when it came to finally gaining control of my weight when I was diagnosed with uterine cancer on Christmas Eve 2007 and at the subsequent appointment with an gynecologic oncologist just over a week later. The surgeon brought to my attention the fact that performing a hysterectomy on someone of my weight and bmi was risky. He wanted to try hormone therapy first to see if that would put my condition back to hyperplasia. He told me that he was experienced in doing this surgery on people like me, but that it didn’t always go well. For example, two weeks prior to our meeting, he performed such a surgery and the lady was still in the hospital on a ventilator. In my mind, I was thinking that if this cancer was something that could be removed, I was going to do whatever it took to make that happen. (I dropped 60 pounds before the surgery).

 Strangely, I was not worried at all when I received the diagnosis. Somehow, I just knew I was going to be okay. I just didn’t realize how “okay” I would become. Since we moved to Arizona in April of 2006, I had been attending a church that had strengthened my faith. I knew God would take care of me. I actually felt a peace come over me when I heard the diagnosis.

 Is it time for you to take ownership of your weight?  Will it take a life-threatening situation like it did for Lisa?  The harsh truth is that many people, even when confronted with frightening diagnoses, can’t find their way to controlling their weight.  The harsh truth is that many of us die because we don’t know how to do what Lisa did, even when doctors spell out the threat clearly.

What will it take for us to build healthy bodies?

Let’s search ourselves for answers to the following questions:

• Is my life in imminent jeopardy because of my weight?
• Is my weight potentially shortening my life span (i.e., do life insurance companies charge me more because of that ugly number?)
• What payoff do I get from being big (does it make me feel powerful or safe)?
• What role is unhealthy food playing in my life?
• What would the ultimate wake-up call be for me?

These are big questions, not ones you can pop off in a discussion group, but to me they seem pretty fundamental.  If simple logic indicates that my weight is hurting me, why isn’t simple logic enough to make me eat less and move more?  What force is strong enough to cancel out these facts?

I hope some of you comment, because I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one grappling with this.

Lisa begins by sharing some of her history:

My weight really started getting out of control in my mid to late twenties. It seemed like I was gaining about 10 pounds a year. While that doesn’t seem like much (less than one pound a month), it added up. I realized it was getting out of control, but never felt like it was something I needed to deal with, nor did I want to make the commitment.

 My relationship with God in those years was average at best. I went to church only a couple times a year, but I believed and I prayed. I saw no connection between my relationship with food/exercise/my body, etc and my relationship with God.

 If you’re fascinated because you, like me, want to follow in Lisa’s footsteps, take a minute here to think about your own weight history.

• When did your weight start getting out of control?
• When did you actually recognize the problem?
• How did you decide to address it?  (Or did you decide to ignore it?)
• Was there a relationship between God and your weight?
• How was your relationship with God at that time?

In my next Woman Transformed blog, I’ll talk about Lisa’s wake-up call . . . and what she did about it.

In the past couple of years, though, she has achieved what I am desperately tempted to believe is impossible:  with God’s help and a lot of hard work, she took her body from a state of obesity to one of fitness.   It’s a staggering accomplishment which took an incredible amount of courage.  If you’ve never battled long-term weight issues, you might not understand why it took courage, but if you have . . . you do.

Let me introduce my dear friend, Lisa Wrobel:

Before:

After:

I know . . . .  RIGHT?!

Maybe you’re thinking, as I am:  “I wanna do that!!!”

If so, stay with me.  Lisa has been generous enough to share how she achieved this wonder, and I’ll share it with you in upcoming blogs.

This isn’t an announcement; it’s a confession.  I want to be the hero, the star, the one they rave about.  It’s a character flaw.  Now that I’m old and have calculated the statistical likelihood of becoming a princess (.00000000000000032), I am learning to value God’s approval above human glory.   Some of my shallow ambition has been crushed into submission.

Still, could I be one of those people who ignores accolades and just goes through my days doing the work God gave me?

With no glory or hope of glory?

You know . . .

One of those people who actually makes a difference?

I can reliably identify at least 80% of the faces on the cover of People  magazine, but I can tell you that the impact that they’ve had on my family’s life is zero.

Here’s an example:

My fifth grader is having a tough time right now.  Her dad has been hospitalized continually for four months and is not expected to come home.   She’s facing one of the toughest school grades for a girl (all girls in early puberty are clinically insane; see Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher), and she was put in a class with several kids who have a history of giving her a hard time, and not one close friend.  I can comfort her, but I can’t fix any of it – I couldn’t even get her moved to a different class.

And guess what?  The people with the glory, the ones we celebrate, emulate and imitate — they did nothing.  Julia Roberts didn’t comfort my kid.  Brad Pitt didn’t sit with her at lunch and Christina Aguilera didn’t ask her how her day was.   All that glory is useless when it comes to what really matters.

So let me tell you about Leo.  To the best of my knowledge, he’s never been on the cover of People.  He hasn’t posed for beach shots, been sought after for power drink endorsements or gotten drowned out by the orchestra while accepting an academy award.  He doesn’t get stalked by the paparazzi.  Crossing guards rarely do.

Leo doesn’t seek glory.  He’s too busy learning the names of every child under his protection who cross the street at his corner – including little siblings in strollers.  He’s too busy checking on my baby, and countless others, to make sure they got through their days.  He listens, he commiserates, and he’s often the first one to admire artwork and celebrate successes.  He hands out suckers and encouragement in equal measures.  He tracks the number of school days left in the year and displays it on the brim of his hat.   When our district threatened to cut the funding for most crossing guards, he wrote to the newspaper and went to battle for the safety of the kids.

My girl walks home from school most days, but if I’m looking for her, Leo can tell me whether she already crossed and how long ago.  When I had to unexpectedly send a neighbor to pick her up, I sent him to Leo to locate her.   When I was stuck at the hospital and late picking her up, Leo sat with her, and listened while she talked about her dad.  And he comforted her.

See, now I’m getting weepy, writing this.

Because, Leo also prays for my baby.

I’m too self-absorbed to know his last name or really anything about him or his family, but he prays for my baby and my whole family.   When school started back, he took the first opportunity to get an update on my husband’s health.  Of course, I ended up confiding in him myself, telling him about my worries for my girls.  And he promised to keep praying.

While celebrities are scampering after sparkling bits of accolades on strings, Leo is quietly moving continents.  My daughter is going through what will probably always be one of the toughest times in her life, but she winds up every school day by meeting briefly with the man who has nurtured, encouraged and prayed for her for over half her life.

So, local friends, if you see Leo, just give him a bit of applause from me, and maybe offer him a million dollar product endorsement.  You’ll know him by his smiling conversations with strings of kids, and the big schoolyear countdown number, displayed just above his forehead.

We recently had a party at our house to celebrate a milestone in our daughter’s life. The planning was lots of fun and we got creative with the menu and the cake. We don’t throw parties like this very often so we invited several friends and family members we only get to see occasionally — and lots of children were on the list.

I’d planted my vegetable garden weeks earlier and had already been through a “squirrel encounter” (Squirrels, in their quest to bury the peanuts my neighbor provides for them, had dug up most of my veggie starts. To say that I wasn’t happy would be an understatement…if I could’ve buried the squirrels in retaliation I just may have!).

As a result of this I decided to take a precautionary measure or two. I purchased some inexpensive, low fencing to place in front of the veggie garden hoping it would deter any wandering little people. My broom and other tools were put away and a beverage tub was placed in front of my gardening shed – if anyone wanted to sweep or get hold of my clippers they had to be strong enough to move a tub of sodas first!

The party was a success! Our daughter was happy with the food and desserts she’d picked out and thrilled to see so many loved ones. Grown-ups were being social, pictures were being taken, and kids were running around everywhere. It was perfect – well, almost.

At some point I learned that one of my pots had “tipped over”; no one was hurt and my husband had moved it out of the yard.

Much later, after a bit of detective work and an expert interrogation of my children, I learned that two children had wrapped a jump rope around the pot and had pulled it over. There was no malicious intent, just two young children, experiencing a sugar buzz and testing their muscle strength and a bit of physics. Or, at least, that was the story I managed to piece together. How it happened really doesn’t matter; the pot broke, some plants survived, and in the end the party was fun and everyone enjoyed themselves.

The survivors of the roping incident, looking sad in their "too small" temporary home.

I guess that’s the risk we gardeners take when we have visitors to our garden. The guilty party is frequently a child and, I’d like to think, is simply having so much fun they don’t stop to think about the consequences of their actions. In some cases it’s possible they haven’t been taught to be respectful of a garden area.

Over the years we’ve had children pick fruit that wasn’t ripe, flowers that were just coming into bloom, and leaves that were bright green and tender. I’ve had a parent “help” a child do “he loves me, he loves me not” with a rose still on a bush.

The "culprits"

Hebe with a hole in it from one too many games of handball...

Flying balls of all sizes have crushed some plants while keeping others “bonsai” size. And I’ve had children run through my gardening beds during rowdy games of manhunt, follow the leader, and hide & seek. The only time I’ve been really bothered is when a parent says nothing when a child is being intentionally destructive.

So what can we do other than sigh and hope the destruction isn’t too bad? Most of us love to socialize and there really aren’t too many things better than enjoying some good barbeque and a margarita on a warm summer evening in one’s own gorgeous garden. Having friends and/or family there just completes the picture!

My recent experience just reinforced what I already felt. First and foremost, if no one got hurt then all is well. Next, gardens aren’t supposed to be perfect. If they’re done right, they are a reflection of who we are, of our lifestyle, and, for me at least, they are always a work in progress.

If a child picks all your flowers maybe they’re just saving you some work deadheading. If a plant (or two or ten!) gets trampled by little feet, perhaps it’s just the chance you needed to try out that new and improved variety at your local nursery.  And if a pot gets tipped over and broken then maybe you won’t feel guilty buying that slightly expensive but gorgeous aqua blue pot you’ve been admiring…as well as the green one that looks really amazing sitting right next to it…

Have about you? Have you had unwelcome experiences with garden guests?  What techniques have you employed to “protect” your garden from guests?  Have they been successful? If inclined, share your secrets or stories as we all might benefit a bit from each other’s experiences.

A Bit About San Francisco Garden Gal:

I’m Karen, a native of the San Francisco Bay Area.  Summers here can be cool or hot, winters may be rainy or dry…it all depends on the year, or sometimes the week!  The coastal influence contributes to the lack of predictability  but on the other hand keeps things interesting making me appreciate nature’s tenacity and beauty.  I’ve been gardening since buying a house that had a backyard consisting of two sheds and some white rocks. My goal until relatively recently was to have the “perfect” yard and then sit back and enjoy it.  It’s taken many years and even more plants to realize that gardening is an endless endeavor and that many of its most exquisite shows are fleeting.  And this I’ve decided is both its frustration and its allure. I look forward to writing occasionally about whats going on gardening-wise in the Bay Area and sharing my experiences.  I’m one of Andrea’s biggest fans and excited to be contributing to my favorite garden blog!