Mental illness did not destroy our bond – Part 3

As I continued to engage in this conversation about my life with a sister living with a mental illness, I was reminded that my understanding was limited with regard to the science of mental illness. My perspective always came from the point of view of a family member forced to play a real-time game that melded elements of a game of chance, a brain teaser, a history lesson, and a comedy show. It became clear to me later in life that the practice of interacting with my sister and my family like an agent on a secret spy mission or a high roller at a craps table was not normal, but necessary.

My decisions and choices in this high stakes game either promoted a manageable outcome and existence or resulted in an emotionally charged, verbally explosive mean-spirited rant. I never received any rush from games of chance and maybe that is because I grew up gambling on my sister’s temperament on a momentary basis. What I did learn, however, from watching those who were often successful gamblers is that there is a science to what appears to be a game of chance. There are numbers and data that drive the machine. The trick for me became one of focus like the effort it took to watch the objects of the illusions of a magician or the ball under the moving cups on the table of a street hustler. I learned to compartmentalize my emotional self and my scientific self so that I could be the master player my family needed in order to for us to be included in the masterful exhibition of a mental health challenge lived out in front of us each day.

My sister was a genius with what I believed was a photographic memory. Clearly from the standpoint of intelligence quotients we were not evenly matched. However, I worked hard because I had to work hard at almost everything and my work ethic and my competitive drive paid great dividends in this not-so-fun game I never volunteered to play. It was my experience that a family selected to participate in this mental health challenge must recognize the need to separate from the bright lights, the music, and the emotion of the game and designate a scout whose job it was to gather information and maintain data for the team.

One of the elements of my sister’s diagnosis was manipulation. She was a master manipulator. The fact that she was dang near a genius enhanced her capacity to direct the outcomes of her situations and her communications with her subjects. In addition, she studied issues related to the emotionally disturbed in college so she knew the science of mental illness, the terminology and how to produce expected outcomes in interactions and conversations with my family and friends and with the mental health professionals with whom we associated. Again, we found ourselves outmatched. We were living the crash course in mental health for dummies with her as the facilitator. Believe me that was not the optimal learning environment or strategy. Initially, I felt overwhelmed and confused because everything seemed to go her way all of the time. Everybody reacted to what they heard from her and what they saw in her behavior based in their guilt, pity, and fear. Most of the time there seemed to be no logic or consistency in the decisions when she was involved. So, I decided to indulge her genius and to lift her intellect onto the highest platform in an effort to affirm her and to encourage her to teach me. I didn’t really care to know it all. I just needed to know “just enough to make me dangerous,” as my daddy would say. She had too much control and our reliance on her decision making as a family unit would likely leave us busted – financially, socially and emotionally.

As much as I respected my sister’s intellect, I respected her skills as a thespian. I smile now because in retrospect I can see that there was beauty in the lyrical compositions she orchestrated that always led to an end that favored her. She was a college educated, beautiful young woman who had traveled abroad and been exposed to the arts and the sciences. Being separated from her now by distance and time has enabled me to learn more from our journey. I have learned to appreciate the challenges and complexities of what I used to simply describe as dysfunctional. I used to say that in the midst of all that seemed chaotic and crazy was some truth. I still believe that to be the case in situations whether it’s a mental health issue or just life in general.

When I operated in the role of investigative specialist, I could decipher coded language and decisive moves authored by my sister. Her moves were often more challenging than a find the word search and her strength was in her genius which led me to the conclusion that the beauty of her game was the game. Like one who rhythmically solves crossword puzzles, there was a euphoric energy that rose within me when I began to collect pieces of the puzzle that could level the playing field with my sister. One irony of gaining some level of understanding was that we had a wicked, twisted connection that separated us from everyone else in the house. I understood her in a way that nobody else in the house could because they were too emotionally driven or because it took too much energy and she knew it. Her behaviors with most people reminded me of the two-year-old phase of resistance and pushback known to break the will of the exhausted adult being begging for compliance and acceptance of the boundaries.

As the youngest family member, I had time and the feisty, mouthy edge of the frustrated sibling to stay the course in the figurative chess match with my sister and she knew that too. Most of the time she resented my consistency and the fact that I had learned to confront and often outsmart those voices that guided her behaviors. As I reflect on some of the experiences with her, I realize she respected my game as much as I respected her game. I am reminded of athletes and teams like my Crimson Tide football team and Peyton Manning speaking about upcoming matchups in a way that shows that they respect the competitor’s level of competence and mastery of the game. Listening to the athletes talk about wanting to match up against the best sounded rather cliché to me until now. I honestly think that at some level my sister enjoyed the game. I believe it entertained her and satisfied her need for mental exercises. The more I write about this the more fascinated I become about how simplistic such a complex journey with mental illness can be made to appear. Is a master manipulator driven by the love of the game or by the end product?

Throughout my childhood, I believed her sole motivation was the deliverable. I believed my sister enjoyed the fruits and deliverables of her game, but that foxy grin of hers and that memorable chuckle told a different story. It is clear to me now that her motivation and satisfaction were rooted in playing the game itself and that she respected me because I took the time to compete and proved to be strong competitor. I have often wondered why I received phone calls over the years from people delivering messages for me to call my sister. The callers have said that she needed to speak to me, in particular. Now, I am thankful that I took the time to keep writing about my family’s mental health journey because I have written myself into a tear filled warm moment of bonding with my sister. I bet she thought I got it a long time ago because I continued to engage myself in her game and spend time decoding her riddles. This exploration into our relationship has taken my attention from the noisy crowd and bright lights to a narrowed sightline that allowed me to focus on the special bond I have always had with my sister. Knowing that the big sister I remembered before the break still loved me after the break makes life better. As weird as it may sound, today I understand that my sister was communicating her love for me and her need to bond with me through some rather unprecedented methods of communication. I guess it was better to figure out this relationship riddle after an almost forty year journey than to have never known how hard my sister worked to bond with me and show me that she loved me. I dedicate this moment to my sister, with love.

Lola’s Easter Princess

Last Sunday was Easter Sunday and somewhere in a town in America there were well-rehearsed Easter speeches and resurrection reenactments being performed. I am sure there were well-dressed children in pastel colored clothing too. I can envision girls in dresses with lace and ruffles and boys in suits with knotted ties. Last Sunday morning, church choirs likely sang traditional resurrection hymns. In my childhood church, Old Ship A.M.E. Zion, the cathedral choir, of which my mother was a member, always wore white robes Easter Sunday and the choir always sang “At the Cross” and “He arose.” Although my mother prided herself in wearing a crisply ironed choir robe in the Easter Sunday morning processional, she believed it was imperative that she, her children, and her grandchildren were properly attired for Easter Sunday. I always felt bad that her fancy spring Easter ensemble would be covered by the coveted choir robe. I was certain that all of the women in the choir had gone through great lengths to ensure that their Easter suits and dresses were perfect for such a special occasion. As I have said before, my mother was not an advocate of purchasing endless numbers of trendy garments for me. However, I could predict with absolute certainty at least four times a year that her shopping would focus on me – my birthday, back-to-school season, Christmas, and Easter.

As much as Easter shopping thrilled my mother, I didn’t always share her positive sentiments. In my younger years, she seemed focused on her visions and ideals of a girl “perfectly” attired for an Easter Sunday morning. While I loved the idea of me-focused shopping days, I had very little input in the targeted mission planned and navigated by Lola. Lola’s plan of action would produce a young princess adorned in a pastel colored dress that was at least knee length with either lace, ribbon, shiny buttons or the thing that frightened me the most (but made her rejoice) – that scratchy, itchy mess that made the skirt of the dress poof out in rounded perfection on a glorious Easter morn. It only took one time for me to wear one of those princess dresses to empower me to speak against that fashion statement for the rest of my life. Only an imagined princess in a fairy tale would find it charming or fanciful to itch for hours and be distracted from normal childhood priorities trying to figure out how to sit without crumpling your poufy princess dress. That scratchy tulle made the skirt so wide that I took up enough space for two kids in the Easter Sunday school speech line up. I hope she got a picture of me that Easter Sunday morning because I never remember allowing her to convince me to subject myself to be a vicarious vessel of her childhood dream again.

In addition to the itchy dress, she impressed upon me that patent leather was classic and necessary in a girl’s wardrobe. Lola would be ecstatic now to know that I learned the lesson of patent leather and applied it consistently over the years. My wardrobe has consistently included a patent leather bag or shoes most of my life. My daughter has wondered for years why I gravitate to the patent leather. Well, finally, I have the answer: Lola scarred me for life with the annual shopping experience at The Name Dropper shoe store.

We went to The Name Dropper every year for Easter shoes and the nice lady would bring boxes and boxes of varied styles of patent leather shoes for our inspection and sampling. The shoes were always first on the Easter ensemble checklist because I had the narrowest feet known to mankind. The challenge of fitting a child with an extremely narrow foot became super frustrating for the lady with the encouraging smile because I also owned the world’s flattest feet. Lola was a master planner when it came to the Easter outfit and like any master project manager she knew she had to be mindful of the strengths and unique characteristics of the human capital – me. If she didn’t get on the challenge of the long, narrow, flat feet early, her princess vision would be shoeless and happily barefoot. Montgomery was one of the larger cities in Alabama, but the patent leather shoe market was limited. We had to get to The Name Dropper first to claim my shoes. Most often I would have some version of a black patent shoe, but the year that my mother produced her princess vision, the nice lady presented a pair of white patent leather shoes in my size. I can only imagine the elation and celebration that must have created a spectacle of lights and an offering of angelic vocals in Mama’s head when she saw those shoes. Her soul undoubtedly rested in the amazing grace of the shoe gods.

My Easter shoes were intended to be worn until the next Easter unless my foot got longer or the weather too cold for the spring time shoe. I remember always feeling a sense of relief when we claimed my Easter shoes because I knew that my outfit would build around the shoes. I quickly learned that I would not only protest wearing a dress with itchy, scratchy netting, but I would guide Mama away from white patent leather shoes too. Wearing the white shoes, like the poufy dress, exposed me for who I really was or better yet who I was not. Wearing white patent leather shoes and a poufy dress may have invited compliments suitable for a princess, but clearly I lacked the capacity to sit like a princess, walk like a princess, or pretend like a princess that I just loved, loved playing the role of the Easter princess. In addition, the black scuff marks on the toe boxes of the white patent leather further separated me from the ranks of the dainty, delicate princess types. Not even professionally styled locks, clingy tights, white gloves and a cute woven purse made me believe that I was royalty.

My mother probably wished that I enjoyed dressing up as much as she enjoyed dressing and presenting me. Disappointing Mama wasn’t my objective, but I am sure that she was disappointed at some level. I am grateful that Mama permitted me to stand against living out someone else’s vision of me. Mama listened to my opinions on style and comfort after the “perfect” Easter outfit. Fortunately for me, Mama embraced my ideas and encouraged me to use my voice to express my opinions on fashion and holiday observance standards. Thankfully, Mama did not view my speech as an act of rebellion. She supported my expressions by assisting me in finding appropriate and suitable outfits that we both liked for many future Easter Sundays. And most importantly, she still considered me her princess.

Things I wish we had known when mental illness found us – Part 2

When I made the decision to write the first blog post about my experiences dealing with mental illness, I thought that single blog post would be the alpha and the omega – my beginning and my end. I also thought that I would be able to maintain my plan to post one new blog entry every Sunday morning. Well, while writing about my family and mental health, I remembered the multi-faceted and multi-layered complex nature of mental illness. That fact, along with the critical need of villagers in crisis, mandated more sharing of my story. It dictated an urgent requirement to deliver help to an audience in need. Writing about mental illness was helping me and the pinned up desire to help others pressed to be unleashed from my heart and my soul. I aimed to enable myself and empower others to find a way to unravel the tangled web of emotions, events, and diagnoses that define mental illness. Hence, that blog was my alpha and there will likely be many more before I write the omega.

I have read and reread my blog in an effort to decide just how many topics of discussion existed in the alpha post. It was interesting to examine how I dealt with the varied topics related to my sister’s mental illness for many years, but how sharing the story with the world stirred up some old, quieted emotions. Sharing, with my outside voice, made me cry, but not in a pitiful, sorrowful way. I cried tears of remorse and compassion for my sister and other families of those with a mental health diagnosis who found themselves, like my family, hijacked by an unexpected assailant preying on the unarmed, the unprepared, and the often unevenly matched. Mental illness swarms the innocent victims, families, friends, and loved ones without warning and steals their present moments of calm replacing them with extreme, undefinable and unimaginable chaos. Mental illness forces the subjects to ponder their past and how their decisions and habits “caused” their present condition while planting seeds of fear of the future. My experience was watching the instantaneous evaluation of not only my sister’s psyche, but also her social practices, her childhood behaviors, her history of injuries and/or trauma, her friendships, her career and educational pursuits, and her family. In sorting out my sister’s illness and trying to help determine the how and the why, the family went through a strip search of a sort, individually and collectively.

Now as I look at this situation through more mature lenses, I see that the challenge was how to explore every aspect of my sister’s life without judgment, guilt, shame, regret, or abrupt adjustments that might cause the unit to derail. The challenge was how to prevent isolation of the individuals and how to encourage open dialogue among people who were all in shock by the sudden onset of the break. As a child in the midst of this type of chaos, I found myself often the most capable and clear voice. That truth frustrated me for years, but now I believe it was our truth because my thoughts and understanding were not tainted by life experiences. I didn’t know enough to be afraid of anything I heard about experiences of others or the possibilities presented by health care professionals. I didn’t have the fear of failing my child if I made the wrong decision related to her care or the guilt or fear that something I said or did in the past “caused” the illness and therefore the break. My thoughts were pure and solely based in my journey from the tremors to the quake. There was something about not feeling responsible that made me the perfect authority to speak directly to that voice within her when I felt a tremor. Surviving those hours in the house, as I held on for dear life, empowered me to stand up to the voices that now found residency in my house through her. I was empowered to stand whenever those voices frightened my older family members or manipulated them with guilt or pain.

I know that my comments make me sound like a very strong and mature eleven-year-old kid. I was mature for my age; however, the truth was some of my strength and need to speak emerged from a place of anger and resentment. I was angry that my childhood was gone and that I had become like “Cinderella” (or at least that’s how I felt). Instantly, I was tasked with ALL of the chores because any other option that included asking or demanding my sister perform a chore might “put too much pressure on her” and cause another break. My parents dared not ask her to empty her ashtrays or wash her dirty dishes or take her shoes to her room or clean the tub after her baths and most certainly there would be no ask for her to help me cut the grass. This approach by my parents only fed my sister’s huge ego that thrived on attention and submission of others to her will. As a result, she began to believe that I was born, not to assist, but to serve. She figured out quickly that she could tattle on me and receive pity from Mama and Daddy to will the results she wanted. To me she was a master puppeteer. My husband once called her “a master chess player.” These types of manipulative calls coupled with the empathetic responses by my parents motivated the “baby sister” to begin the process of sorting out the line that separated the mental illness symptoms from the innate personality traits of my sister.

It seemed that I was often the only one in the house who could exercise objectivity and clarity of thought where she was concerned. Again, my innocence and the natural bend of the sibling rivalry made me perfect for the role. I can remember my mother becoming especially aggravated with me for forcing some issues with my sister and not just “keeping peace.” I remember once when Mama told me to clean up the den and I decided to deliver all of the dirty dishes left in the den by my sister as well as the ashtray filled to the brim with butts from the Virginia Slim Menthol’s she smoked to her bedroom dresser. She plead with my mother to make me take the dishes to the kitchen and empty the ashtray. I refused. It seemed like a minor request to my mom, but it was my belief that she could have walked each item to kitchen every time walked to the kitchen to grab another treat or drink just as easily as I could have walked ALL of them there at one time. I am not sure to this day who actually got those dirty dishes to the kitchen and I honestly cared less who emptied the ashtray since I was allergic to nicotine and cigarette smoke. Although the health care providers were rarely speaking to me directly during my childhood, I listened as my parents recapped and debriefed after their sessions with therapists and social workers. I heard them say that they had been advised to “set firm boundaries for her”, “give her responsibilities,” make her “accountable” for those responsibilities, for herself and her decisions. Discussions about my resistance always included me reminding my parents about the advice of the professionals and of course it was my position that my juvenile and arguably rebellious behaviors supported those recommendations.

My personal experiences have shown that like a child in early stages of development, families at the birth of a mental health crisis are in the infancy of a developmental process with no foreseeable end date. Each family member must trust the village of health professionals like the toddler trusting the grown ups guiding their first steps with outstretched arms. I think the challenge for those learning to live with this new diagnosis is that the health professionals are strangers, not loving, familiar faces like those in the toddler analogy. Thus, the unit, individually or collectively, resists the advice of those with more expertise in the field. They sometimes begin a series of experimental efforts based in emotion, instinct, and sometimes religious practices that can hinder or interfere with the medical treatments and counseling already implemented. In my opinion, every person or family in a mental health crisis needs the supervision of trained health care providers. It is also my opinion that it is equally important for the family to have access to that health care team. Within the family unit or non-medial support team, there must be at least one objective voice willing to be the project manager of what I will call “the tough love team.” I was the project manager of the tough love team for my family starting at age eleven and I continued to serve in that capacity for the next three decades. If you are that person for your family, you, like I, probably expect to be the target of your mentally ill family member’s rants and venting. I hope that you will find, as I did, that the village will respect your role and your consistency. Respect, in this context, feels more like a remarkably heavy load weighing down your body. You will be surprised about the challenges of the co-dependency relationships that also form and add to the already heavy load. It doesn’t feel as honorable or heroic as it sounds, but your role is valuable and necessary. The village and the person battling the illness will call upon you to bring calm and order to the chaos more often than you can imagine or desire. Be strong. Be consistent. Be informed. Take deep breaths often. Have a short memory in the management of the rants and manic behaviors. Forgive the targeted behaviors and manipulative actions while remaining objective in the decisions you will make aimed to keep your loved one healthy and safe. Finally, I recommend that you build a good relationship with at least one mental health care provider who can support your efforts to support their plan of care for the person you are working so hard to help discover how to manage and master the illness.

Find people and practices to encourage yourself in this process of caring for and supporting your loved one. Find positive, healthy ways to empower yourself to stay the course. Surround yourself with folks who can enlighten you about how to support your loved one and how to maintain your own emotional, physical, and mental stability. I lived in the shadows of my sister’s illness for most of my life. My life as a SisterintheShadow of mental illness is no more and I pray that my decision to speak about my experiences with my outside voice will encourage, empower, and enlighten someone else in the shadows of a mental health challenge.

When mental illness found us – Part 1

Since my book was published in September 2015, some people have read the introduction and asked when I would write more about growing up with a family member living with a mental illness. I assured them that I would write about it at some point, but I needed to sort out how to do that in a respectful way. While I recognized that my experiences had the potential to offer support and encouragement to other families and friends struggling to support someone in a mental health crisis, I hesitated to speak because my words had the power to portray my sister negatively. Even though my experiences with her have frustrated me beyond belief at times and made me sob in the shower and cry out to God about my anger for being the one with the mission of being her first call, I did not want other people to judge her, be afraid of her, or call her “crazy.” She did not choose this station in life and I don’t think anyone would choose to live a battle for mental stability every day. It was a daily struggle for me so I know it must have been a daily battle for her too.

She was the middle child and I was her “baby sister.” She was eleven years older than me and I trusted her with my innocence and my life. And by life, I mean that I entrusted her to keep me safe, to guide my decisions, and set the example of the direction of my life. To the world outside of my house, I appeared to be the spoiled baby of the family who lived a life of privilege. I learned to resent my sister because her illness changed our family dynamic forever in December 1977 and very few people knew the impact that living that life had on the baby in the family.

My sister had her first break of many one evening in December 1977 just before Christmas break. (In 1977, it was still called Christmas beak and not winter break.) The morning began with the normal anticipation of the end-of-term holiday programming at school: my safety patrol was having a Christmas party in the lunchroom after school and Autaugaville Elementary School was having the annual Christmas program. As usual, my parents, who worked at the school left money for my sister and me to pick up our dinner on our way to the program which was being held in a rural town about thirty miles from our house. Although I awoke excited and the plan seemed to be set for a very festive day, something felt odd and weird to me. As I walked out of my room and past my sister’s door, I realized her lights had seemingly been on the whole night and the same Natalie Cole album that I heard when I went on a middle-of-the-night bathroom trip was still playing. That was odd and not her normal behavior. I think that my young mind just thought she was being a strange, eccentric big sister. It never occurred to me to tell my parents that her behavior had been a bit out of character over the three prior weeks too. I am not certain why I never told anyone that my sister had become a predictor of future events. For example, she told me that I would break my new watch and when I dropped it running to the car one morning and it broke she said, “See, I told you so.” I did not recognize or understand the building of her psychotic break was rooted in paranoia also evidenced when she gave me “secret” advice not to drink the milk at school because people were trying to poison me to “get to her” because “they” knew how much she loved me. Days later, she sternly directed me not to eat food at school because “they” were trying to kill me. Without question and with the innocent and reliant trust of a “baby sister,” I obeyed and never told my parents. Well, at least I didn’t tell until after the diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia found a home at our address that late night in Decemeber 1977.

My sister and I never made it to the Christmas program because the break happened at our house. We never ate dinner at all because the break happened. Those hours alone in my house with my older sister, who I idolized and trusted with my life, brought fear, confusion, and anxiety riddled with mental and verbal pleas for help. Living those moments with my sister ironically established a bond that linked me to her mental and emotional health for the rest of our lives. I witnessed what felt like the aftermath of a natural disaster. It began with subtle tremors and rose to the clamor and violent shaking of the fault line that served as a catalyst for the overwhelming tidal wave of a Tsunami. Subsequently, she relied on me to deliver the love of a parent, the supportive prayers of the clergy, the comfort and care of first responders, and the feisty, resistance only present in a healthy sibling rivalry. Instantly, my life changed. Perception by those outside of my house did not match my reality. I became the baby with an amazing responsibility to provide support and guidance for the family and be the informant the mental health providers needed to sort out the complexities of my sister’s new diagnosis.

In writing this blog post, I realize there is so much more to tell. The brain is such a complex and intricately designed organ and my sister was and is a complex human. She was and remains a funny person who could have worked as a stand up comic. She was so smart that she could have been a successful doctor. She was so artistic that she made clothes, painted portraits, and offered up her singing voice to all who would listen. She was such an extrovert that she convinced disc jockey’s to give her shout out’s almost daily on the local radio station. Yet, she had the ability to escape to an isolated place where she could use her college course curricula and other readings to try to understand the voices that lived within her and she never divulged her scientific, self-study to us until after the break. Unfortunately, her mental illness operated like a magician melding her positive attributes, character traits and known talents with her insecurities, resentments, and short comings producing a magical potion that engulfed her every fiber presenting her to me as an emotionally challenged person who faced social, medical, financial, and relational problems the rest of her life. My family and others worked as often as she would allow us to find the place where she felt peace and control of her world.

While my post is not a complete story, I hope that it addresses what my eleven-year-old self experienced: loneliness, pain, and hopelessness. Shortly after the break, my mother told me that I should write about what I was feeling if I couldn’t talk about it. At that time, there was no discussion about counseling for children. It wasn’t popular or recommended, as I recall. I began journaling because of mental illness and it seems that I will continue to journal because of it. Writing has always been a good thing for me – my catharsis and my quiet place. If you or someone you know survived an encounter with mental illness, I hope that my post will help you believe what I found to be true in life with my sister: There is a nugget of truth and goodness even in the situations that looked really crazy to me. I hope that my decision to use my outside voice on this subject will encourage, empower, and enlighten others.

The beauty in the ask

My daddy used to tell me to ask for the things I wanted or needed. He would say that, “You should ask because you have a fifty percent chance of getting what you want. And if you don’t get what you want, you are no worse off than before you asked.” He was a smart man.

I have learned that I have less difficulty asking for things when the result of the ask translates to something beneficial to other folks in my village. In addition, I have found that people tend to respond with positivity and generosity when they realize that my energies are focused on uplifting others and enhancing the community. My history of asking people to participate in village building with me has demonstrated to them that I own the fact that I don’t know everything and that I value the fact that they are masters of something that I have not mastered. Honestly, I don’t really care to know everything. Why you ask? Because it is really not that important to me that I know the details of every imaginable thing. Who has the mental capacity or the physical strength for that?

I recognized years ago that the foundation of a prosperous community rested in the human capital within the community. Prosperous communities have consistently demonstrated an appreciation for the special talents and unique abilities of each member. Because I always want my community at home, in the neighborhood, and at work to be prosperous, I work to identify the areas of expertise and giftedness of those around me. Then, I dream and envision ways that I can encourage, empower, and enlighten those around me knowing that these outcomes will enhance the community as a whole. Often my visions of greatness can’t and won’t be realized without the input and contributions of others. I must boldly state the objectives and goals to people equipped to help me attain the deliverables. Some have called me a master connector of people and ideas or said I was good at networking. I call myself an excellent village builder with an appreciation of the diversity of cultures, skill sets, personalities, interests, and uniquenesses that surrounds me.

As a village builder, I have learned that the teachings of my parents, Charles and Lola, apply and rule. My father once told me, “Baby, you might not change the world, but you can make a difference in the place where you find yourself.” My mother always told me, “Leave it better than you found it.” With the help of the creative, driven, generous specialists in my villages, I seek to accomplish two goals:

To impact somebody’s world in a positive way every day and
To leave each situation better than how I found it.

Most people welcome opportunities to live their gifts and talents loudly to the glory of a goal that serves to plant seeds of greatness, cultivate greatness, or celebrate the plentiful harvest that represents hard work and sacrifice. Finally, I love the collective eagerness of individuals to promote and encourage my excitement about inspiring the dreams, needs, or goals of others incapable of accomplishing the same alone or without the input and support of a supportive village. I absolutely love being the writer and conductor of a symphony created by villagers eager to live their passions loud enough that they create a memorable melody resounding with hope and prosperity for others in our space.

The art of packing

As I consider spending part of spring break traveling with my grown children, I had reflections of times when I prepared for travel with them when they were young children. Traveling with young children often proved to be quite the adventure. And when the person in charge of packing the family for the trips was me, a self-diagnosed type A person with an obsessive compulsive disorder, there were certainly added stressors related to planning the details of the trip coupled with my attempts to prepare for every possible situation. The “what if’s” consumed my thoughts and directed the packing for myself and the rest of the travel party. In my opinion, my relationship with the “what if’s,” made me the better travel coordinator of the adults in the house.

The young ones needed so much gear – the stroller, the diapers, the medication, the wipes, the clothes, the toys, treats, food, and of course a book. I don’t recall receiving much adult input about the packing when the kids were babies. However, as they got older, the voices of guidance about the process of planning and packing got louder: “Are you sure we will need that?” and “Why so many changes of clothes in the carry on for such a short flight?” and “They are old enough to help with that.” It’s a good thing that thought bubbles are invisible because mine read, “Yada, yada, yada. I got this already!”

One time we were traveling with our kids and the reason for the change of clothes became apparent. The other grown up on the trip decided that it was not necessary for him to have a change of clothes in the carry on bag so I followed instructions and took his change of clothing our of the carry on bag and I packed it in the suitcase we planned to check. During a layover at an airport, the only person without a change of clothes took the baby for a diaper change. This person who does not believe in buying novelty items at high prices in airports came back to the waiting area shaking his head, modeling a t-shirt with the smiling face of a popular mouse from a theme park in Florida. If I hadn’t been laughing so hard, I probably would have said, “I told you so.” I must admit that I did enjoy the teaching moment.

At about age three, I started inviting my children to collect the things they wanted to take with them for a stay away from home. Then, we would sort through the often large collection of valuables to get to the most special possessions that would make the packing list. When they were five or six years old, I would give them the kid friendly suitcase and instruct them to pack the bag for the trip. We would discuss where we were going, the length of the stay, the weather during our stay, and the kinds of things we would be doing while were were away from home. After the kids announced that they were finished packing, I would return to their rooms to inspect the bags and make recommendations.

Once, my son proudly announced that he was all packed and ready for travel. I knew that he was done because his suitcase was zipped closed and standing near the door of his bedroom ready to be carried to the car. With an outward display of excitement and an internal nervous anticipation, I unzipped the bag. Upon inspection, I found the usual suspects – the favorite toys, the favorite shoes, the favorite shirt, and the favorite book. It became obvious that his packing list did not include things I believed important for overnight stays away from home like underwear, socks, changes of clothes for each day of the trip, a hair brush, toothpaste and a tooth brush.

I think that I sometimes forgot that every moment around young people had the opportunity to be a teaching moment. My children were learning about packing and preparing for travel by living through each travel experience with me, their type A mama. My kids are now skilled travelers who can roll items and then pack lightly and efficiently. With all of the teaching and excellent instruction given to my kids, my bag is likely to be the most difficult to zip and the heaviest. Unfortunately for me, the lessons I lived out in front of them also conditioned them to expect that they could travel lighter when they travel with me because I would have the “what if’s” for me and for them covered.

The music within us

Today, my message is short and sweet: Find ways to enjoy your time with the children who grace your space. I have always loved music and dancing. I find myself dancing at random moments to really awesome beats. Sometimes when I hear a song that moves me I even sing along (even if I don’t know all of the words). When I was growing up, my family loved music and dancing was a natural progression.

When I was a child, my brother had a band called the I-85 Express. I am not sure how it happened that our garage became their rehearsal hall, but it was for a period of time. They would rehearse all of the latest music from the R&B (rhythm and blues) charts and often some songs that were on the pop chart. As I recall, the guys would arrive at our house in the evening and spend at least a two or three hours arranging music and rehearsing their parts. I looked forward to these weekly jam sessions in the garage. I always appreciated my brother’s ability to create the melodies I heard on the radio. He was gifted with amazingly soothing and mellow vocals. He also played the saxophone, the keyboards, the guitar and the flute. He was a band director so he had some level of skill on most instruments, but those were the ones I remember him playing. I remember one night in particular they needed a female vocalist to sing a part and he let me join the band’s rehearsal. I wish that I could remember the song, but it escapes me now. However, I still smile when I think about that memory and my brothers chuckle and smile as he encouraged me to step out of a safe zone and try something new. He allowed me for a moment to join in what brought him enormous joy, peace and pleasure. For a brief moment, I became a member of the I-85 Express. My brother was seventeen years older than me so I was much too young to go to the places where they played their gigs and they stayed up and out way past my bed time. But, I have never forgotten my brother’s invitation that allowed me a glimpse into the wonder of his world. It was fun and exciting and memorable.

My father also loved music and at random times he and my mother would dance. I have always thought that the dances of their day were cool. The energetic bounce of the jitterbug and the sultry slow drag always stopped me in my tracks so that I could watch them take in the sounds and block out the rest of the world to see each other. It was always a magical, beautiful moment. When my mother was not around and my dad’s favorite dance music would come on, he would use those opportunities to dance with me. I can remember my mother walking in on one of my dance lessons and stopping to offer an encouraging smile. Now, that they are both gone, this memory is even more special.

My sister was eleven years older than me and didn’t really invite me into her space that often. She treated me like an annoying little sister and maybe because I did take many opportunities to be just that. Honestly, I took pride in my ability to annoy her. I also took full advantage of my ability to gather intel for my parents whether they asked for it or not and tell on her every time I could. So, her keeping me at bay was probably to her advantage most of the time. My sister struggled with mental illness from the time I was eleven, but music was always a constant. I think it calmed her and gave her an escape from her monsters. I didn’t understand that then, but I learned later that she needed music. Now, there is music therapy and the studies about the impact of music on people from the fetal stage through senior years. I am not sure if she read that someplace or if she just knew what it did for her. My sister had an awesome music collection that included every album of every artist or group on the R&B and pop charts. She listened to music and sang constantly. My problem with her in my latter teen years was that she thought that everyone wanted to hear her tunes ALL of the time and she would play her music while I tried to watch television or study or visit with friends or talk on the phone and dare me to tell. By now, it was known that music calmed the beast so she used her music to soothe and control. Needless to say, I learned a lot of the popular hits and furthered my appreciation for all genres of music.

My childhood memories influenced my parenting. I encouraged my kids to learn to play instruments and join the middle school bands. We endured the learning of the oboe, the viola, the piano, all of the percussion instruments. We sang in the car, in the grocery store, and any other place we felt the spirit move. When my kids were very young, we would stop in our tracks and dance to the music playing over the speakers in the stores. I love those memories of dancing with them in places not designed to be dance floors. I hope that I taught them to laugh and to embrace spontaneity. I hope they learned that they should have the freedom to live out loud and make life fun. I realize now that my parents raised three artists and raising artists means the square pegs probably won’t fit in the round holes. Music became a method of expression, connection and instruction for my family and I passed that on to my children. Because it is Black History Month I am reminded of the role of music through slavery and the Civil Rights Movement to teach and deliver messages of freedom and deliverance. My children had the gift of being raised by an artist and I pray that my efforts to gift them my uniquenesses at unique moments will bless them for the rest of their lives. I hope that more people will see the value of the arts like music and dance and encourage their children to create diversely populated music libraries and raise up a legacy of folks who love music and who will allow music to infiltrate their spaces and their spirits.

Hey Ma, Can you help me with this family tree project for school?

As I was thinking about Black History Month, the infamous family tree assignment crossed my mind. The family tree project frustrated me when I was in grade school and it frustrated me when my children came home trying to figure out the names of the family members to write on each limb the photocopied tree. I was always frustrated because many of the kids in my class who were not African American boasted proudly about their family lineage and they could trace their families back many generations. They would say thing like, “My family is from Ireland” or “My family is Scottish.” On the other hand, African American students were not able to trace their families back beyond two or three generations because the histories of slaves was not valued and documented or as in the case of my family the white men who willed themselves into my family tree remained anonymous. As a result, there was a incorrect presumption that all of our ancestors were from some part of Africa and people seemed to be alright with that presumption. It was confusing to me as a child and my confusion was compounded and layered as my children were each asked to complete the same exercise that never seemed to produce the same excitement that our childhood peers experienced after completing this project.

Despite the confusion and frustration, we always did our best to complete the family tree assignment. However, we couldn’t manufacture information we didn’t have available to us so our trees never had as much detail as the majority of the students in our classes. Every time the assignment was given, I would be a part of a conversation with the my parents and elders of the family about our family history. Aunts and uncles would report their limited information about the family history. While this began with some frustration, I recognized that even this project afforded the family a cool experience. The fun thing about this exercise was that we would always learn some interesting family trivia or a cool story about a family member.

As I recall, it was during one of these research calls that we learned that one of my mom’s sisters accepted a bet to bury live baby chicks in the backyard. After a gasp and a comment that revealed our shock, we were quickly told that the baby chicks were unearthed and saved because their parents came home and one of the kids who promised not to tell reneged on the promise and told. There were ten children in my mom’s family so I imagined five or six kids running around in the backyard when Mama Love and Grandaddy Jodie got home. My mom and her siblings were probably playing and daring each other to complete tasks like kids might do now when someone had the bright idea to dare my aunt to bury the chicks. I laugh now when I think about how my aunts, uncles and my mom who as children standing around trying to look like everything was normal when their parents got home with looks of guilt and nervousness on their faces and in their body language.

When my daughter was in middle school and working on the tree project, we called one of my mom’s sisters to pick her brain about our family history. This aunt told us stories about her school days. She said that she had to learn and recite the Gettysburg address. I made both my kids get on telephone extensions to listen to this story after I realized that my aunt, who I believe was in her seventies at time, could still recite the Gettysburg address. She recited the address for my kids and then went on to recite her high school graduation speech. She said that every student had to recite a speech at graduation.

It was during one of these research expeditions that we learned that the girls in my mom’s family had a reputation for being good cooks. My mom had older sisters who were older and more seasoned cooks. A woman in the community sometimes hired my mom’s sisters to help her clean her house. Often they would cook while they were at the house cleaning. After my mom became an teenager, the woman hired her to work around her house and because the older girls cooked, the lady decided to ask my mom to bake her a cake. My mom said that she figured it couldn’t been that hard to make a cake so she collected all of the known ingredients and proceeded to mix the batter with nervous anticipation about the outcome. Mama reported being nervous because it was her first solo attempt to bake a cake and the poor lady had no idea. My mom’s smile and her laughing eyes were followed by a gut wrenching laughter that left her sitting in the chair having to recompose herself in order to finish the story. As she chuckled there was a rhythmic rise and fall of her shoulders. All she could remember was that the lady learned a valuable lesson that day. Mama said, “I used up all of that lady’s baking supplies – her flour and sugar and butter and eggs.” Mama kept laughing and shaking her head as she recalled the fear about whether the cake was going to rise or not after she put it in the oven. She also wondered when the lady would discover that she was experimenting with the costly ingredients. Well, time did reveal all in this case and Mama learned a valuable lesson about disclosure before experimenting. It turns out that the lady gave her some pointers on baking and paid her for her day of work.

While the family tree project did not produce the expected results, it did enable us to document stories that might never have been told. This blog entry reminds me of the importance of documenting our special family moments. As older family members have died in the last couple of years, I have cherished the memories we shared. Moreover, I realized that we need to find ways to preserve the memories and experiences we share with the folks we care about the most. With the invention of the phone camera, many memories are memorialized through pictures, but I recommend that you write the stories that that are associated with the events because one day your family may want to know the story behind the smiles and laughter.

The Winning Ticket

I have spent some time reading my old journals and I am really surprised about a few recurring themes: communication, anxiety about life, my security and how each of those relates to my faith and peace of mind. It seemed that I was really concerned about how to communicate these concerns to the people in my life who might be able to provide guidance or “fix” them for me.

The date of this journal entry places this emotional encounter shortly after my mother had the stroke and my job of being my mother’s caretaker began. In retrospect, I can see that not only did I have anxiety and fear about making important decisions for my mother, but the responsibility weighed on me in a way I didn’t expect it to manifest itself. I felt fear about becoming destitute and abused as an old woman if I didn’t have caretakers or resources. My contact with mama’s nursing home coupled with the realization that friends and family (whose input I considered when I made many of the decisions about her care) would not be the presence I hoped they would be instilled these fears and others. I began to worry about whether the decision to stay home for so many years to care for children would negatively impact me financially when I was old like my mother. In my heart, I knew that I made the right decision to be available to my children, but this new awareness made me question all of my choices up to that moment. My mother had been saving and planning for her elder care for a number of years. I didn’t give much attention to her plans because I just didn’t want to deal with the thought of her aging and deteriorating to a point where she couldn’t provide me the nurturing and guidance that I had grown to expect from her. As I spoke to the long term care team, her medical insurance provider, her retirement system representatives, and the bankers, I realized that by pooling her resources I could afford the best care scenario possible for her in her hometown. It was great for her, but it made me worry about what aging would look like for me.

According to my journal entry, I made a decision that reliance on a divine power would be the only hope for me and the only way I could manage my mother’s care. In reading the entry, I saw that I did most of the wrestling with these thoughts about my fears and anxieties internally. For some reason, most likely the pride rooted in my ability to handle my new role on my own, I excluded other people from the opportunity to evaluate my plan in detail and peruse the addendum attached to the plan which I will call my emotional appendix.

The introspective look into my approach to challenging events revealed that during that time of challenge there were people waiting for me to ask them to carry me because they either believed I expected their assistance or because they just didn’t believe I was strong enough for the task. I found that I didn’t feel that I could completely rely on any one person during that time in my life. It was difficult for me to discuss what I was feeling for a number of reasons. It was painful to see my mother suffering. I didn’t really think anyone else could fix the problem because there was no way to undo my mother’s illness. There was no way to make time slow down for me or to make it move in reverse. And my mother gave me a charge: “I know you will be the one to take care of me.” So, I went about managing my emotions and the situation to the best of my ability even though I knew that my methodology was confusing to most.

My dad used to say that I was “a good girl” with “peculiar ways” and I mentioned that in this journal entry. I am sure that those around me felt my dad’s sentiments about me during that period of my life and that must be the reason that I mentioned his opinion in the journal entry. While my dad had his opinion, I preferred to say that I was not “peculiar,” but complex. Fortunately, I put things on pause long enough to try to understand my complexities in the midst of the challenge. Additionally, I worked to decipher the responses I was receiving from those around me who wanted to ease my pain and reduce my stress level. I decided that it must be easier to deal with a peculiar person than a complex being because the village was struggling with me. Haha. Because I was raised by a coach and spent most of my adult life around coaches, I noticed that I explained my findings in sports terms in this journal entry. It is pretty cool that the Super Bowl is today and I happened upon this journal entry laced with football references.

I found that people love what things and situations look like on paper like coaches and fans love to talk about their perfect “Super Bowl” roster when the regular season opens. Then, the lights come on and the ink comes to life trailing in unscripted patterns across the page. If they were coaching the game, the might see the need for adjustments and proceed to make the changes without hesitation. However, people who wanted to help me in my challenge struggled with applying the scientific rules of a game to my challenging situation. Rather, they focus on a euphoric vision of my life that depicted me living a satisfied, stress-free life. The attempt to force me into the perfect, euphoric vision of a life free of anxiety, stress, and worry created relationship drama at home and in other circles. When the ink came to life, emotions, opinions, personality uniquenesses, and individuality were awakened much like the real time game predicament of a quarterback who goes under center and sees a defensive shift just prior to the snap of the ball. In an attempt to recreate a perfect offensive formation, the quarterback begins to shout out the necessary adjustments. Sometimes his offensive teammates can hear and sometimes the signals are lost in the noise. Lost in the noise is where I found myself. I had lots of quarterbacks and coaches in my life, but honestly they were not shouting signals that I could hear or understand over the noise. The communication was lost.

The communication failure led to feelings that others wanted to control me – my thinking, my emotions, my laughter, my freedom, and my peace. My failure to filter out the noise resulted in isolation, frustration, and sometimes agitation on my part and on the part of the friend or family member trying to help me. They felt like the fans at the game who swear that they know more than the coaches and who would certainly have chosen a different lane if they had been running the ball. In my head, everyone was a Monday morning quarterback who had no clue about the opponent I faced or the game plan I had chosen.

Since I wrote that journal entry four years ago, I have learned to be conscious of moments of extreme challenge and the emotions that are my normal in those moments. I learned to listen to the advice of others and ponder their statements before I reply or act. Moreover, I learned to remind these life coaches that no game is played to perfection and the expectation of perfection during play in my life is an unrealistic and unattainable goal. Penalties and mistakes in football lead to negative yardage and present evidence of mental lapses and poor judgment. I learned that while I live life setbacks may occur and the coaching for me to be perfectly secure, stable, and collected all of the time added emotional weight to the situation. Even that type of concern and weight felt like someone trying to control my emotional decisions. I learned that the “fix” for my fears, anxieties, and worries was not in botched communications with those who tried to help. I began to practice what I had heard for years in sports: Develop a short memory, mistakes in life are expected, block out the noise, speak clearly and in a language that my villagers understand, dust myself off, and get back in the game. When I can implement that game plan I am always winning!

Yosemite!

Yosemite National Park

When my kids were younger, they got really excited any time we decided to take a road trip. After a decision to take a road trip, I began the process of preparing us for the drive. I researched the route, being mindful of the places we could stop for food and gas. I mapped the course, including the estimated travel time, to ensure that I had enough snacks and activities for the duration of the ride. Before the invention of portable electronic devices and vehicles with built-in video capabilities, we packed books, games, and a small television that had a VHS tape player. I even had a music playlist for the car, including music I purchased that was kid and car ride friendly. Our playlist were first housed on cassette tapes, then on CD’s, and then on flash drives. I always had enough movies and activities to keep the kids busy during the course of the ride and those same provisions came in handy at the destination to entertain them during idle times. Now cell phones absorb most of their time and energy during the car rides whether they are texting, tweeting, snapping, or shopping for new shoes. Sometimes it seems their only concern is agreeing on what percentage of battery life means you get to use one of the chargers in the car. When they are not asleep, they spend their time playing backseat DJ’s. The invention of bluetooth means they can link their own playlists to the car and really practice their DJ skills. (This wasn’t supposed to be a blog about technology, but I am realizing how much technology has changed the family travel game.)

With that as a backdrop, let’s turn to the day someone with a lively, enthusiastic tone announced, “We are going to Yosemite!” The young adults looked up at the excited one from their devices and replied, “Really?!” and “Well, ok, why?” Honestly, I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of a family trip to Yosemite, but I supported the idea because 1. I respect natural wonders and 2. I wanted to support the family member whose bucket list included a trip to Yosemite National Park. I wanted to “see” Yosemite National Park, but my want did not rise to the excited anticipation expressed by the family member with the bucket list wish. So, I tried to offer encouragement by saying how cool it would be to see the park, but those dang cell phones and that internet provided the young ones with access to the park in seconds and they were both looking at me like they knew the only reason this was happening was because I wanted to support the excited one’s bucket list wish. Despite the side eyes and sighs, I put on the mama, planner hat and thought, “Well, ok then. Let’s do this.”

The dreamer in the house with the Yosemite National Park fantasy was not a planner. Therefore, it was up to me to figure out how to make this dream a reality. I took to the internet and I did a little research about the park. My research was primarily related to lodging since I knew that this adventure would require at least a night’s stay somewhere and I knew where we were not sleeping – in the car or outside. My investigation into lodging at Yosemite revealed that the park offered a variety of options for lodging from plush hotels to outdoor camping. Well, I quickly ruled out anything that did not include running water, electricity, beds, and onsite dining. Once I limited the search to hotels with the desired amenities, there were no rooms at any hotel in the park for the weekend we planned to visit. In fact, there were no hotel rooms in the park for months after our planned visit. Who knew that there were people who actually planned visits to the park more than six months prior to their visits? I couldn’t imagine that people loved the outdoors that much.

We moved from the south to the west coast about three years ago. It seemed that the people in this western town looked forward to any chance to go camping or hiking. I was accustomed to people going to the beach or enjoying a boat ride or a fishing excursion during holiday weekends, but in this part of the country folks pack it up and take to nature for their breaks. For some reason, somebody thought that we family members who loved portable electronics and hotels with beds, electricity, and running water would run enthusiastically toward the park. I will just say that we all gave it a gallant effort. We packed an overnight bag, pulled out a cooler, bought some snacks, collected our chargers, and loaded the car for the trip.

The drive down was beautiful. We drove through some small towns and took in picturesque views. My neighbor suggested the route and she told me what a great experience it would be for us. She also agreed to Swaggy-sit while we were away. She is the forever optimist and she loves the outdoors so she helped talk up the wondrous adventure we were embarking upon. I laughed and accepted her advice about the trip. I felt certain she kept talking because she knew I had those young adults to convince that this was a grand idea. Her laughing eyes and her snickering told me that her empathy was blended with some amusement at the forced excitement of most of the folks in my house.

If you have ever been around people who care about you and you have asked them to do something that only you are excited about, you can respond in one of two ways. You might say “Well, I know you don’t want to do this, but this is on my bucket list and it would make me so happy if you would share this experience with me. I hope that something about it will be awesome for you too” or you can get frustrated with your people and let them plan the whole trip for you as they dream of cozy amenities and cell phone connectedness. Well, the excited one took the later course and if you choose the later course with young adult children this is what you will get: “Mama, you have to drive the entire time because he will be looking all around and drive us off of a cliff.” “Will you plan this so that we can stop at Chic-Fil-A on the way back home?” “Will you make sure we only have to be in the park for that day?” “We will look at the main attractions and figure out how to take him to see those sites so that we can get out of there sooner?” Word to the wise: Don’t trust the resistant crew to plan your bucket list experience. Plan it yourself or hire someone to do it for you.

We arrived at the Park’s Tioga Pass entrance and the sign read “Elevation 9945” and we had to admit that was pretty cool. When we got to the gate to pay the attendant the entry fee, she gave us a map and said, “This pass is good for a week. Keep it visible on your dash.” I said, “Thank you,” but the thought bubble in my head and the heads of the young ones said, “Who stays in the park for a week?!” I knew what they were thinking because they chuckled as I said, “Thank you” and began to raise the driver door window. While we sat in sheer amazement that people actually arrive there with the intention of staying in the park for a week, the excited one felt affirmed and welcomed by kindred park spirits. The excited one grew more impassioned and believed he could do the impossible – convince grown people that the idea was a genius move because other people agreed with him. Hmmm. That “Oh kids look at what they are doing, it must be really cool” logic and strategy only works on little kids. It does not work on almost grown kids with some independent life experiences. So, the mission of the travel savvy kids in the car began – to scope out an information center to obtain a more useful map and actually have a conversation with a person knowledgable about the park to learn about “the things we shouldn’t miss.”

We located the information center and spoke to a really nice lady about the park. Good thing we stopped there first because we learned some valuable information that outdoor enthusiasts probably already knew like:

We should have packed food that was substantial in nature and not just snacks.
The restaurants in the park were far apart.
We should expect long lines at restaurants in the park or an ask about whether or not we had a reservation for dining.
The nearest restaurant was the convenience store/gas station/food joint we passed about twenty minutes ago.
It would take us at least three and half hours to drive through the park.

Suddenly, the panic of being in the park after night fall was real as were the quick eye movements and head sways that communicated a need to formulate a new course of action. It really wasn’t that hard to discretely develop another strategy for surviving what we were still intent on making a day trip to Yosemite because the excited one was taking in all of the sites and not really paying us any attention. Thank goodness for all of those fliers, artifacts, placards, and trees at the information center.

Since we were all hungry, we decided it best to back track, in the car of course, to the combo store/gas station/food joint. We ordered food and I used my history of loving to explore more deeply any opportunity to shop as an excuse to go to the store to buy us more drinks and snacks since we now understood this was going to take a bit longer than we expected. We also knew that we were definitely under prepared for this day trip. The excited one would never have supported the idea of buying more snacks because he was feeling as if we could live off the grid and off the land at that moment. Not!

With our bellies full and the cooler restocked, we forged onward through the park. The kids had taken the kind lady’s advice and determined the course we should take in order to see all of the things we shouldn’t miss. They did a phenomenal job navigating and we stopped at the most scenic spots for picture opportunities. We “climbed” to the top of some really big boulders and posed as if we had climbed Mt. Everest. We even found a guy to take a picture of the whole family enjoying the experience. While the excited one was experiencing an adrenaline rush and a hurried excitement to get to the next scenic spot, we were methodically checking things off of the list and watching the clock. Through text messaging and side bars we had a scripted time limit for each stop that would enable us to see all of the sites and exit the park before sunset. The roads were narrow and there were no street lights so visibility would surely be limited at night. Since I remained the designated driver and would be for the entire trip, I knew that exhaustion might be a real issue the later it got so we had to stay on schedule.

While we orchestrated the guided tour, the excited one was looking out the window pointing and commenting on things like a little kid in an amusement park and that phone camera was just clicking away. We were all humored because his bucket list experience was living up to his expectations. The only thing that probably could have made it better was the excited one being on this journey with a group of tourist yearning to explore the park for a few days. I wish we had thought of that during the planning stages at home. We could have paid for the excited one to stay in the park for a few days with more dreamers and come back to get him. I am sure we could have found some things to do in California for a few days. Plus, we had that parking pass to get us back into Yosemite without an additional charge. It was a extraordinary plan, but too late to save us that day.

All seemed to be going well until we spotted a waterfall that appeared within walking distance. We decided to stop in a restricted area for a quick picture. The excited one got out of the car and eased closer to the tree line for a better picture. Ok. All was still going fine until the excited pronounced that the water fall seemed to be in walking distance and the optimal location for a photographer and lover of nature would be at the base of the waterfall. “Oh no!” exclaimed the crew, “He will mess up the plan!” As we were trying to assess what just happened and how this happened, he vanished into the woods. Visions of darkness and cautious driving to avoid animals and people walking in the road in dark clothes danced in my head. The crew began to vocalize their concerns about the delay in reaching a location for dinner and free wifi. Heck, consistent cell phone service would have been nice.

Just before the excited one drifted into the woods he said, “I will be right back. This won’t take long at all.” Famous last words, right. Right! After about twenty minutes, the car dwellers started debating about who could reach out to him without him getting upset with us for suggesting that he speed up his dream experience. We selected a missionary and waited for a response. After about fifteen more minutes, someone got out of the car to see if there was any sight of our resident explorer. He was seen far in the distance moving closer and closer to the waterfall. We began to do the math. If it took forty minutes to get to the location, we could only hope that it would take about thirty to get back because he would be so excited to tell us about his encounter with the water. Meanwhile, the park ranger kept driving by our car that was still in the restricted area. We knew we couldn’t get out of the car and leave it, but we were also beginning to feel like this didn’t look like a temporary situation after an hour of sitting in a restricted area waiting for someone to jump out and take the quick picture.

In order to avoid the uncomfortable feeling I got every time the park rangers drove by, I moved the car into a parking lot that required special permissions and we sat there hoping not to be asked to move. We waited and we waited and we grew more tired, hungry, and frustrated as we waited. We were certain that the excited one was exacting his revenge on us for the collaborative spirit of resistance shown on this day trip. We imagined that the excited one was determined to take the entire day to meditate and soak in the aura that was Yosemite. As we neared what must have a been a beautiful sunset that we couldn’t see because of the vastness of the trees, someone said, “There he is.” Finally! We were physically and emotionally beat down and there was the excited one still pumped up, smiling and talking to some people he met on the journey. He was all bonded and gearing up for the argument that it really didn’t take him that long and that it was worth the time it took to see that amazing site. I tried hard to give a smile and an “Oh really. That WAS pretty amazing” because I wanted so badly to keep the vibe of support alive, but concern about the darkness and the my growling tummy occupied all of my brain cells.

What he didn’t know is that the focus of the crew shifted while he was on his merry journey. We made a plan that involved the backseat DJ’s alternating turns playing music or talking to me to help me stay focused and alert. They vowed to be my eyes as we moved toward the exit. We debated about whether one of them could take over the driving, but we all knew that the excited one would call rank and take the wheel. The thought of him driving and exploring was real so I maintained my role as driver and the crew held up their end as the navigational squad. The last thing we needed to do was miss a turn and be in the park maze an additional hour or two.

We successfully made it to the exit and to interstate. We located the hotel and considered the blessing of having a restaurant with an open kitchen in the parking lot adjacent to the hotel. While the excited one went to check on the room reservation, we ran across the parking lot, into the restaurant and ordered take out. We happily ate our food in the room that welcomed us with wifi, beds, a bathroom, and a television while the excited one basked in the glorious memories and beautiful pictures he took during his day at Yosemite and all was right with the world.