Hearts and Flowers

I’m one of a group of women who were asked to teach a fifth-and-sixth grade girls class on Wednesday nights. We each were to take a turn, and last week was mine. My topic? “Being Cool and Popular.”

After recovering from the emotional trauma of recalling now not cool and popular I was, I began to plan my lesson. I decided to begin by getting them to define “popular” for me, to give me some characteristics of popular people.

Good looking. Lots of friends. Good at sports. Likes to be the center of attention. Great clothes. Has all the up-to-date gadgets. Mean sometimes. Has a cool car.

So far so good. I write these on the board.

Then one girl shyly says, “They have good handwriting.”

What? I pause for a minute, wondering what to do with this seemingly random contribution.

Then I remember. Way back before cool cars or football or iphones even mattered. I remembered girls who crossed their t’s at a jaunty angle, who looped the end of letters just so, who dotted i’s with hearts and flowers while the rest of us valiantly attempted to do a passable imitation of their artistic embellishments on the standard cursive script that marched around the room on top of the blackboard.

Boy, those were the days.

Listen Up!

Does the thought of fighting through crowds at the mall on Black Friday send you into a depression?

The oral-history organization StoryCorps has a relaxing alternative. They’ve declared the Friday after Thanksgiving a National Day of Listening. The purpose of the event is to give family members a reason to sit down and have intimate conversations that can be recorded and preserved as heirlooms. StoryCorps founder Dave Isay explains that “this is the kind of project that can help us through difficult times by remembering what’s really important, and that all of our lives matter.”

Gail Ostrow, a 64-year-old college professor plans to interview her husband. “There are things I want to know about him that don’t come up in conversation,” she explains. After interviewing her mother last year, 8th grader Ally Stein reveals the she got “closer with her. I can tell her things now that I thought I wouldn’t be able to.”

According to StoryCorps, “the experience creates more than a historical record to share with future generations. It can break down barriers and provide an opening for otherwise reserved participants to clearly voice their emotions.”

What a gift—the power of shared narrative. And you don’t have to get up at 4 am to beat the crowds.


Oh, if you do decide to go shopping, here are three gifts to avoid:

--Rehab Barbie
--Vet-me Elmo
--Monopoly: The Bailout Edition

This Old House

Until I was almost six years old, we lived in an old white house in the little town of Aubrey, Arkansas. I remember a lot about that house. It was on the main road through town and sat next to the farm shop where my dad worked. Our house was within walking distance of the school, the church, and the grocery store. It had black shutters and a porch that ran all across the front and down one side; a porch swing hung to the right of the front door. I remember eating cocoa gravy and biscuits at the kitchen table by the window on Sunday mornings, up on my knees for better access from plate to mouth. I remember my little brother and me in bed in the cold, cold wintertime, under covers so heavy we could hardly move. I remember the rope swing in the back yard and the heavy lawn chairs I used to fashion a makeshift playground.

In my mind, I can walk through the house and see where all the furniture was placed, the TV in that corner, the sofa along that wall, the bed beside that window. I remember my parents watching the Razorback games (in black and white, of course) while my brother and I, with our own bowl of popcorn, our legs stuck straight out in front of us on the couch, found our entertainment in them, whooping and clapping and jumping to their feet with each touchdown or interception.

That porch swing was important. I remember Mom sitting there, a captive audience for my variety shows, which always began with a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and was followed by songs and various theatrical productions. (Sorry, Mom.) I remember Dad, determined not to raise a scaredy-cat daughter, forcing me to sit on the swing with him through a thunderstorm until I could get over my fear and learn to appreciate the sublimity of thunder and lightening. (Thanks, Dad.)

I remember Mom taking what seemed like forever to bundle me up in my warm clothes just so I could run next door to “visit” Dad at the shop and stay only long enough to convince him that I really needed a Coke out of the machine and some peanuts.

I remember how empty the house would feel when Mom would go, some evenings, to a wedding or baby shower. I’d hang around in the front room waiting, nothing quite right until she returned.

That little white house was not the house I was born in. My parents had lived in at least a couple of other houses before that one, and, in the spring before I started first grade, we moved out of the little white house to our “new” house, the one I lived in until I got married. But that old house looms large in my memory. And that, I think, is a good thing.