Washington D.C.| Day 1

The first and last time I visited our nation's capital was in April 1988.  And it was with this person:

That's Alison. We met in kindergarten and went to school together through 12th grade. Then we went our separate ways through college and first jobs.But then we got back together and picked right back up. We were in each other's weddings, saw each other's kids just moments after they were born, helped each other move into first (and new) homes, and have been there for each other through thick and thin, through sun and rain, through lowly lows and highest highs.


We have discussed a girls' trip for a while and finally decided we would visit D.C. Part of this decision was made after we read the book "The Nazi Officer's Wife" for our book club.  In it, the author, an Austrian Jew who survived the Holocaust, in part, by assuming a false identity, shared how she donated some personal items to the National Holocaust Museum in D.C.  "We must go," we both said in unison. And here we are.


Today was travel day.

Leaving Nashville. Note the Cumberland snaking through the top of the pic.

En route. Not sure where we were, but there's snow down there.

Final descent in Washington D.C.

We flew into Reagan and it is a really cool airport.Very retro in a cool, authentic way, not a "we spent money to make it look old" way. A sign said it was constructed in 1940 and it looks like it.

Checked into the hotel:

And then explored Old Town Alexandria (we're staying in Virginia) and enjoyed a wonderful dinner at The Majestic Cafe. The Majestic has been around a while (we have a theme going) and it was like stepping back into the past. Our waiter explained their big, neon sign is grandfathered in, but if it blows a bulb or breaks, it's game over for the nod to the past.

That's all I have for today. Tomorrow, we head to the Holocaust Museum.

          "Life is beautiful, and it begins tomorrow."

--Edith Hahn Beer, The Nazi Officer's Wife

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Waving a hair brush like a lunatic in the bathroom of a local school gymnasium this past Saturday, I said to my daughter, "I'm either going to use this to brush your hair or beat you...your choice!"  It wasn't my finest moment.

She’s 11 and in fifth grade. It's the beginning of what I call “the dark ages,” at least from personal experience. You’re trapped somewhere between child and adult and are really just trying to survive. As a mother and a fellow female (is that an oxymoron?), I feel remiss if I don’t take every opportunity to try to steer her down the wider path, the path more traveled, to help her learn from my and others’ mistakes and to shield her from some of the harder lessons. It’s a shortcoming on my part, as I know deep down, I should let her learn on her own. Hell, I’m still learning.

The morning was one of frustration and elevated tempers and all over a recreation basketball league’s photo day. Did it matter that her hair wasn’t “cute?” So what? So she doesn’t know how to fix her hair yet? Guess what? I was in my 30s before I finally started figuring things out and most some days it's still a challenge. Thirty. Why on earth would I expect her to be a prodigy at 11 when I barely have it together myself?

In that bathroom, before the pictures were taken, when it was just the two of us, I stepped back. I took a breath. I silently prayed, “a little help here?” And then I spoke from the heart. I said, “looks shouldn’t matter, but they do.” Then I softened that with, “you’re a beautiful person inside and out and anyone who truly cares for you will see that beauty.” I just wanted her to put a little effort into it. She tried, let’s say “unsuccessfully,” three times at putting her hair in a ponytail. It’s something she’s done for years now, but it’s not what I would consider a fashionable one.

Here's what I had going on at her age:

Not great and not exactly what I would call "pulled together and stylin'."

But would a little braid on the side kill you? This is the best we came up with. 

She gets the last laugh. I know this look and it says, "I wish
my vocabulary were bigger so I could call you more names."

The fly-aways and frizzes were temporarily tamed with some water from the sink. I sold part of my soul in the process of convincing her to consider a side part instead of straight down the middle. And I used the rest of my soul currency when I insisted that she allow me to at least put the band in (and twist it the proper number of times). 

As we wrapped up, got back to a good place and she prepared for this blasted photo op and then a basketball game, another teammate walked in, holding a hair brush and in tears. “Are you OK?” I asked. “Yeah,” came her reply. “My Mom just wants me to redo my hair.”

And then this happened:

Ten little women, all the same age, all in this decided “dark age” and all just trying to figure it out. And they will. If we give them the space to do so.

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.          -- Proverbs 22:6

Showing People How It's Done

Happy Valentine’s Day. Or, as the retail industry calls it, Happy “let’s end those New Year’s Resolutions Day” or “let’s make single people feel bad Day” or “let’s drive mommies nuts with the Valentines and the boxes and the glitter Day.”

My sunshine and I were not born yesterday, but we did celebrate Valentine’s Day yesterday because only dummies go out on the actual day. Trust me, we learned the hard way. See, 19 years ago, on the actual Valentine’s Day 1997, I agreed to become Mrs. Sunshine. It wasn’t easy. It included three different restaurants, a nervous Sunshine fidgeting with the ring box in his pocket all night (while the future Mrs. Sunshine - that’s me - wondered “what the heck? Is ‘jock itch’ a real thing? What about ‘pocket pool?” “Why is it so hot in here? Oh, because they’ve crammed in 50% more tables. Must be why I can’t use my elbows, too.” “Seriously…what is he doing in his pocket?!”), and an eventual proposal back at his place because the third and last restaurant was so crowded, there was no room to properly slice a steak, let alone get down on his knee.

I planned our dinner this year. Since we don’t exchange actual gifts, this was my way of saying “I love you” and “boys shouldn’t always have to plan things” and “take this one off your ‘honey do’ list so you can focus on more pressing items.” I conferred with foodie friends and food blogs and read reviews about the latest and greatest epicurean establishments in our fair city. I chose one from an elite list of restaurants we call “date night” places. You know the kind….candlelight, white tablecloths, at least one item on the menu you’re not sure how to pronounce or even what it is, and no kids menu, nary a kid in sight. 

We got gussied up. Well, as much as two 40something, decidedly unhipsters can. I’ll say, ladies, we got the longer end of the stick in this area. We can throw on a dress, a skirt or black pants and a cute top and call it a day. The right necklace, purse, and/or shoes can complete the transaction. Boys, on the other hand, must labor over questions such as “jacket?” “Tie or no tie?” “Button up and, if so, how much is it buttoned up?” There are double-digit choices of pants. The choices seem endless. The bottom line is I’m ready first, with 20 minutes to spare, and use that time deciding between boots or heels and which purse to take.

The sad fact is, we are always - always - overdressed. These moments when we’re childfree and off eating by ourselves in a nice place, after six o’clock, are few and far between. We always look nice. At least one of us usually looks cute (it’s him). And inevitably there’s always some jackass in jeans, flip flops, shorts, a hat and sometimes all four seated in my line of vision.

This happened last night. We went to a cute little French bistro. It was dimly lit, oozing a romantic vibe, the wine list was comprehensive, entrees were $30+, it was, by design, not kid friendly, and an A-list actress was seated two tables over. Then we had to look at this doofus all night:

You can’t see the full ensemble but the lower half is decked out in jeans and sockless loafers. His other three dining companions all looked presentable and dignified. The other dude at the table was wearing a crisp button down and a jacket. I wondered if, as they met for the evening, other dude was thinking “damn, I knew I didn’t have to wear this jacket?” or maybe, “hey, John McEnroe called and wants his Sunday brunch look back?”

Nashville has a vibe and it’s part of what makes our city so cool and hip. We embrace old and new money equally. At the same restaurant, heck, even at the same table, you can have the makings of a pretty good joke — a rabbi, a priest, a music industry exec, a healthcare exec, a politician and an 80’s rockstar. But there’s something, well, just disappointing, when you get rid of your kid, you get out of your yoga pants and dust off something from the “going out” collection in your closet, you pay handsomely for a nice dinner, and there’s a hoople the next table over looking like he just came from a baseball game. 

Is this the end of civilization as we know it? Is it the continued dumbing down of America? Has getting dressed up for a nice meal gone the way of thank you notes and RSVPs and other civilized manners? Was I sitting there longing for my yoga pants? You bet I was, especially after that last piece of bread. But then I looked at my sunshine and myself and thought, “no, if necessary, we will single handedly remind people how it’s done.”

Mr. and Mrs. Sunshine, showing people how it's done since 1997

Workplace Ethics

This was an interesting article:  Why “Jerks” Get Ahead

Not to get into politics here, but it was clearly written by a liberal as there were plenty mentions of Trump and Cruz, but not one of Hillary or John Mayer, for that matter, and we all know almost all celebrities are on the left.

This topic came up not long ago with little bit. Not how John Mayer is a major a-hole, but how it doesn’t always feel like the good guy wins. More often than not, it feels like the butthole wins. The snitch. The goody-two-shoes. The suck up. And all the while, the good guy is left feeling inadequate and irrelevant.

I learned early on that it wasn’t enough to be busy; you had to look busy. At my first job out of college, I worked with a horrible woman — we’ll call her “Susan” —to whom I actually owe a debt of gratitude as she wound up teaching me a valuable lesson. Have you ever worked with this type of person? Susan was completely and utterly useless. There’s a bump on a log and then there’s Susan standing there staring at the log. The rest of us would bust our humps, multi-tasking and putting out fires (once, literally), running around like crazy people, and Susan would spend 20 minutes fooling with the copier that she jammed in the first place. In between checking trays #2 and #3, she’d make a cup of coffee, walk around the office, stop at every desk and tell each person how busy she was, and then she’d head back into the work room to look at the copier some more. Somehow, at just the right moment, the boss would walk by and see a strategically placed smudge of toner on her cheek and call us all together to celebrate this hero among us who so selflessly put herself above others, risking safety and a dry cleaning bill, to keep the office running smoothly. “What would we do without her?” he’d wonder aloud, and while the entire office stood there, half rolling collective eyes and half day dreaming about life without Susan, there she stood:  triumphant and basking in the glory of avoiding yet another day of honest work.

On the rare occasions that she wasn’t able to be seen being busy by the boss, she would resort to just telling him how busy she was. It was repulsive. And he bought it. In the four years I worked with Susan, I saw her work, honest-to-goodness work, for about 45 minutes and not all in a row. Yet, she managed raises, a fancy Herman Miller chair (for her bad back), an ergonomic wrist rest and mouse pad (for all of her late hours on the computer), and, although she held an administrative position, she wormed her way into an office (with a door) on the senior executive hallway because she had to have a window to help with her Vitamin D deficiency and tendency toward Seasonal Affect Disorder (S.A.D.). Feel free to join me when I say, “puh-leese!”

But I’ll tell you this much…as much as I hated the way Susan acted, I saw that it got results. I never brought myself in any of my jobs to perfect “the Susan” and I kind of pride myself on it. For one thing, I (mostly wrongly) assumed that bosses could see through that level of disingenuous behavior but again and again in different scenarios, men and women, bought it hook, line and sinker.

I eventually came to the conclusion that if it came down to me being a successful jerk or a slightly less successful non-jerk, that I would have to opt for the latter. And that’s my version of ascending the corporate ladder.

The Lies We're Told

A friend of mine, brilliant blogger Martha [hint:  click her name back there to access her blog], recently wrote about finding some childhood toys in her parents’ attic, including some Cabbage Patch dolls (both licensed and the homemade variety). If you only read one of her blogs, read this one about how her parents met. But, if you have time for two, read this one about old toys. It made me laugh. It made me cry. It had a little romance. There’s something for everyone, I tell ya.

But it got me to thinking about my own childhood relics. I don’t have that many these days. If you know me, you know I lost just about all living proof of my existence in a house fire at my Dad’s house in 2010. If you don’t me, well, I seriously doubt you’re reading this blog as I do a pretty good job of keeping tabs on all 3 of my readers, but suffice it to say, I don’t have a lot of souvenirs from my past, at least my past prior to 2011.

I, too, had a Cabbage Patch doll. Well, I had something I was told was a Cabbage Patch doll, but it turned out the mother of one of my parents’ co-workers was whipping up fake ones in her basement and I was one of the lucky recipients. 

Enter Margaret. Margaret was approximately 24" tall, had weird yarn ringlets for hair, was wearing a white cloth diaper cover instead of bloomers, her arms were permanently stretched out in a cruxifixction pose, and she had no shoes, showing off two weird club feet. Margaret looked like a Cabbage Patch Kid in the same way an apple looks like an orange.

I don’t know if my parents thought the $30 price tag was too steep, or they wanted to avoid the in-store riots over these silly dolls, or they thought, “sweet little Valerie won’t notice the difference.” I’ll never know.  I’ll tell you what happened. I went to a slumber party.

Snotty girl:  What is that?

Little Valerie:  It’s my Cabbage Patch girl, Margaret.

Snotty:  Umm, no it’s not.

Valerie:  Yes, it is.

Snotty:  Do you have her birth certificate? (That’s going to be a “negative.”)

Valerie:  No, but she’s real and I love her.

Snotty:  Let’s see the signature on her butt. (Balls.)

Valerie:  Weren’t we going to play a game?

Then Snotty put her doll beside Margaret. It looked something like this:

Thinking about Margaret made me think about other lies my parents told me. Not big ones. Nothing involving fictional characters that break into your house in the night. No, I mean the every day variety.

Things like “you’re not fat; you’re just big boned.”

Baby Valerie, age 3 months (Yes, you read that right.)

And, that the pig tailed sailor look will never go out of style.

Kindergarten

First grade.  2nd verse, same as the 1st.

Trifecta. 2nd grade.

And in the most awkward of middle school years, “you look beautiful…keep the sailor look, lose one of the pigtails.”

5th grade

Now that I’m a parent, you wonder if I ever lie to my kid? You betcha. Like every day.

Kid:  How long before we need to leave?

Me:  Five minutes. (Actual answer:  30 minutes)

Me:  If I have to tell you to clean up one more time, I’m taking away your phone, your iPad, your game system, all the TVs in the house, your books, and all the food in the house.”

Kid:  Did you ever ________ when you were a kid?”

Me:  Uhh, who wants to play a game?” (Actually, I answer every question like this as honestly as I can.)

It’s in these lies, though, that I hope one day, my girl will see more love than lie. I assure you, when I look at Margaret today, yes, she still scares the crap out of me. I mean, she’s almost as tall as I am, but I know my mama loved me enough to commission her. And, to me, that makes Margaret priceless.

Margaret, January 21, 2016 (age: 33 years)

Get on Your Knees, As Ugly as They Are

I’ve been thinking about prayer lately and the different forms in which it manifests itself. It could be because I’ve been having talks with Little Bit about how to pray and it could be the season. It could be because my proverbial cup is (thankfully), blessedly, relatively empty right now when others around me seem to be having theirs overflowing.

It reminds me of something our pastor says from time to time:

“Folks, look around you. Right now, right here, there are three types of people and you all fit into one of these categories. You’ve either just emerged from a storm, you’re heading into a storm, or you’re smack dab in the middle of one right now.”

So true.

I’ve shared the ACTS model of prayer with my girl. It goes something like this:

A - Adoration (acknowledging God as the Creator of the Universe)

C - Confession (confessing our own sinfulness)

T - Thanksgiving (thanking God for His personal benefits to us:  forgiveness, family, material comforts)

S - Supplication (asking for what we need)

I don’t want to brag, but I’m pretty good at that last one. I took John 15:16 and ran with it — “…whatever you ask in my name, the Father will give you.” Oh, the requests He must hear!

Please let it be good news.

I’ll never drink again.

Please don’t let my wife find out.

Please be with our country, our world, our leaders.

I know, through the years, some of mine have been doozies. I once prayed, as a child, for pretty knees. There, I said it. I’m vain AND crazy. The laugh that must have gotten in Heaven. “Hey, Peter, come here. Look at this one that just came in. ‘Pretty knees.’ Ha ha ha ha  Don’t they know that’s an oxymoron? He made those suckers ugly for a reason.”

I’ve sat on the side of a bathtub, just a handful of years apart, praying over this little idol with vastly differing prayers:

I’ve prayed, for the same person, to have healing and then just a peaceful departure.

Those of you who know my resume know I’ve prayed about keeping a job and about finding a new one.

And, as I mentioned earlier, I’ve of late sent up a prayer of thanks for all the ways I’m blessed and for my empty cup. It hasn’t always been empty and I know it will fill up again, but the promise we have is that He will be there with a towel when that happens. 

Now, friends, I beg of you. When you speak to a friend in need, for Goodness sake, please don’t quote me about God’s towel. That will be just as well received and helpful as telling them, “God won’t give you more than you can handle” or “If it doesn’t kill you, it’ll make you stronger.” I don’t want to be mixed up in that business.

Story Time

If you know my Dad, you know he’s a story teller. If you’ve spent more than five minutes with my Daddy, you’ve heard a story. I’ve heard hundreds of his stories and some of them, I’ve heard a hundred times. But it’s OK, because I find them riveting and funny and touching. As he tells me these stories, he’s sharing a part of him. It’s not just living history, but it’s personal history. If I’m an extension of him, these stories are an extension of me. 

My favorites include:

• There was the time he was in the Army and stationed in France in the early 1960s and he and some buddies decided to sneak into and hang out in an abandoned WWII French bunker, complete with rations, unexploded artillery, and some 20+ year-old smokes.

• In our attic, among some of his belongings, is a beret belonging to a solider of the Armée de Terre (the French Army) in the early 1960s. He has explained that this was a souvenir from his time in France and has offered few details concerning a night of pub crawls, a drunken brawl between some American and French soldiers, a bridge, and some exchanged slurs. Politically correct? Nope. Badass? You betcha.

• “The ‘Potato’ Story.” This story is infamous in our family. It involves a family we grew up with who had several children, all boys, all fairly close in age, and about as wild and mischievous as they come. The toilet was clogged and the Mom called the plumber, who proceeded to get to work on the pot with an audience of all of these boys. He says while working, “did you all flush something down here that you shouldn’t have?” One nodded and said something that made the plumber’s hair stand up on his neck. “Kitty.”  He went to the Mom and said, “m’am…do you…ahem…did you…have a cat?” Much to his relief, she replied, “no, we don’t have a cat.” Relieved, he returned to the job and finally retrieved the source of the clog. It was then that he uttered these now famous, if not off-color, words:  “it’s a G**-damned potato!”

• The last one is about a neighbor I don’t remember and a dog I never knew and whose name Daddy doesn’t recall. For the sake of this retelling, we’re going to call the dog “Guvnah.” Across the street from the house in which I grew up lived a comely older divorcee named Cora. Now, we moved when I was nine years old and I only saw Cora a few times in those first nine years of my life, but when I think of her, I picture Anne Bancroft from The Graduate.  Cora apparently had a dog named Guvnah. Daddy came home from work one day and saw Guvnah lying in the road, struck dead. Doing the rational thing, he hid Guvnah in some bushes until Cora got home and he could break the news to her. Imagine his surprise when Cora answered his knock and there beside her stood Guvnah. Daddy then had to retrieve a dead dog from her bushes.

What I love maybe most about these stories is they give me insight and glimpses of the Dad I didn’t know. I’ve known him and am part, big or small, of the stories from the last 41 years of his life. It’s the stories from the first 32 years that he was here that interest me most. And I feel an obligation to protect these stories and pass them on.

You know, for hundreds and thousands of years, families’ and communities’ histories were passed down verbally. Your parents told stories that you then shared with your kids and those were living history lessons. Cavemen weren’t boring their kids with old home movies. “Look, kids, wanna see the trip your Mom and I took to the Tar Pits?” No, there was a long time back then when there were no physical mementos, no tangible souvenirs. We had only stories to remind us of where we’d been.

So, last week, Daddy told me this story, which I’d either forgotten or had never heard. As a bank branch manager, he was involved with the building of a new branch here in Nashville from the ground up. As the bulldozers were grading the lot, they ran into a grave. It held a simple, wooden coffin so old that it contained nothing. No creepy skeleton, no bones whatsoever, no clothes, nothing. This was not enough to derail construction and so it continued until they hit a second grave. It was then that the experts had to be called out. I’m sure there were representatives from historical societies, archaeologists, historians, forensic pathologists, and a whole host of people in hazmat suits with tiny brushes and magnifying glasses. After an intense examination of the property, they ruled that it was just the two graves, construction could continue, and that the bank merely needed to mark the two graves in some way. Since there was no way of knowing the deceased, a standard tombstone was not possible. Plus, that doesn’t really say, “come on in and open a checking account.” Instead, he explained that they put these two, small marble or granite markers in the ground to mark the spot of these two graves. Interest piqued and enthralled by this, he read my mind and said, “you want to go see them, don’t you.” Of course I did.  So we drove out there today.

As we pulled in, I asked, “does it look the same?” and he acknowledged that, despite the bank having a new name (probably one of countless in the last four decades) and the area around the bank having been over developed, the actual building and parking lot remained pretty much the same.

We got out of the car and he walked right to a small patch of grass in front of the building. And we looked. And we looked some more. And there were no little markers. We moved to another patch of grass. Nothing.

There was a bank employee out for a smoke break so he struck up a conversation with her, partly so they didn’t call the cops on us and partly to see if she happened to know about these two graves. He told her a short version of the story. She listened but offered no insight. And it occurred to me how fragile our history and our stories are. How many people are alive right now who know about these two graves. Four? Maybe five? And of these four or five, how many of them care, to be honest? I’ve found there are two types of people — the history buffs, such as myself. Those who thrive on the stories, the characters, the people, the lives. And then there’s the rest of the world. The “here and now” folks. The “are we really destined to repeat it if we don’t learn from it?” set.

And there you have it. My plea that you listen to stories when someone offers one. And that you share your own before they’re forgotten.