Story Library

Nanny Wrote It Down

Backstory

There’s a beautiful stained-glass butterfly hanging in my office window. I enjoy its vivid colors and romantic aura every day. It occurred to me that after I go, and the baubles go to an heir, they will have no idea where it came from or what it meant to me. The thought inspired this story.

Nanny Wrote It Down

My grandmother used to write it down. When it happened, where it came from, who gave it to her. We used to laugh that the boxes in her dresser drawers all told who a gift was from, what she felt when she received it, and when it was given.

Statues and vases had their little labels on the bottom telling their mini-story. The events of the day scribbled on used envelopes and stuck between the pages of the family bible.

Well, long after Nanny wasn’t with us anymore, those messages were an important source of knowing who my grandmother was and what was important to her.

With computers transmitting so many of our messages today I wonder if we’ll lose those important insights shared in handwritten letters or labels on the bottoms of vases. I hope we don’t.

Maybe I’ll just go write something on the bottom of a vase, so my kids will know why I wrote about this very thing today for you to hear.

Maybe you’ll be moved to do the same thing!

P.S. It’s probably more likely that I will leave behind records of my thoughts and emotions, rather than labels on my relics. If my heirs listen to a dozen or so of the hundreds of Consider This stories, they may get a good idea of the ideas that bubble up in my head, rather than the things that go through my fingers. Yep, that would be more significant, I think.

[Show #168]

Worry

Backstory

The lady next to me was wringing her hands. She had a “woe-is-me” look on her face and was obviously troubled. When she began sharing her problems, most seemed fixable or at least not worth drama. The interaction inspired these suggestions.

Worry

Why is it that some people seem laden with worry, and others just smile right through the potential calamity?

If you read the newspaper or watch television these days, you can be overcome by news of what has already gone wrong, what’s at risk of going wrong, or what has the potential to bring us harm and doom.

Meanwhile, if you look around you, chances are that very few of those cataclysmic potentials have actually affected you. Your home has not been foreclosed. You have not lost your job. Your teenagers actually love you and hold their own.

So how do we balance reasonable adult concern with worrying ourselves to pieces?

Ask yourself, “What is the worst that can happen?” Figure out how you would deal with that happening. Then move back into the world of here and now.

Don’t fuss about trifles. Keep yourself busy. Go smell the roses.

And if your yard has dandelions instead of roses, go out and pick some. Gather a bouquet and consider them Mother Nature’s gift to you for not worrying today.

P.S. Pollyanna wasn’t the author of this show. It was a mature woman, me, who has experienced enough of life to preach the futility of worry. Better to make a list, create some realistic goals, and set out to fix whatever has been haunting you.

[Show #196]

Our Beautiful Country

Backstory

October is a busy time here in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The mountains, woods, and little towns beckon those who want to capture the grandeur of autumn colors. City folks from DC mingle with Canadians, Americans, and Europeans and find a welcome in these hills.

Our Beautiful Country

We’ve been traveling our beautiful country in recent months and I am always so amazed at the variant beauty of this great land.

The colors of the desert . . . the majesty of the mountains . . . the mysterious draw of the ocean. It is all there for us to visit and enjoy.

I also appreciate something else you may not have thought about. We can travel so freely from one state to another. To cross from New Jersey into New York, there is no border at which we have to show our papers. There is no guard station when you cross from Georgia into Florida at the start of winter, or back north when Spring rolls around.

We take this travel freedom for granted, yet it is something we should cherish. Americans can go where they want when they want. It’s a freedom that is newly won. We’ve only had it for 50 or 60 years or so.

How different from our ancestors, many of whom never strayed more than 20 miles from home. Travel vehicles were not available. Neither were the roads. They had enough to do to keep bread on the table, let alone take to the road.

Today, we have many choices of how we can get there. What a great feeling to know we can spread our wings any time we want.

What are we waiting for . . . Let’s go!

P.S. Come to Woodstock this Saturday, October 7, for the fun-filled Shenandoah Autumn Festival at Shenandoah Fairgrounds. Authentic country happenings you won’t find elsewhere – Apple Butter-Making, Whole Hog BBQ Demonstration, Flippin Chicken Contest, Beer, Wine, and Spirits Tastings, Live Music, and Virginia’s Golden Axe Log Splitting Contest, along with Shenandoah Downs Harness Racing. What a swinging day of fun. Y’all come on down, y’hear.

[Show #471]

Coming Into Your Own

Back Story

How were your teenage years? Were you the cheerleader or football hero? Did you hate wearing glasses? Bleach your teeth? Did you study or glide through classes on pure luck? What things pop up when you place yourself back in your youth? We explore those times in this story.

Coming Into Your Own

What do you remember about your youth? I remember being a sponge; soaking up everything around me, trying out different styles.

In early times, the sponge soaked up someone else’s look, mannerisms, and values. I wanted to look like this movie star or sound like that rock star.

Then do you remember coming into your own? What age was that for you? When you took control and decided for yourself how you wanted to look, sound, think, love, and behave, distinctly from those around you.

That coming of age was a wonderful revelation. When you actually drop the adaptations and create yourself. Here you are, years later. Are you still that person from your early adulthood?

Or have you reinvented yourself more times over the years? If there’s anything you don’t like about what you created, change it. There’s still time. Every day you live is a chance to get better, a chance to change.

Be a sponge again. Try out new habits and new looks. Take up new pastimes or passions. Soak up the joy of the day and make it your own.

P.S. In Woodstock, there is an annual event where non-profits present their missions and troll for volunteers. It’s the perfect place to find a cause worth supporting. New volunteer activities lead to more ops for social contact and new friends. In your town, there is also a source for discovering volunteer opportunities. Your next passion may be waiting for you right there.

Show #218

Hoarding

Backstory

It was springtime, and I was getting the urge to change things. I wanted to spruce up the place, make it more colorful, out with the old, in with the new.

When I looked around, I had to admit things seemed to have gotten out of hand over the winter. Every place I looked, I found stuff. Opened drawers and found stuff. Closets – stuff. Basement – more stuff’. Oh my gosh, had I become a hoarder?

Hoarding

Is it a sign of our times that one of the television networks has a series based on Hoarding – the compulsive retention of things that clutter the house even to the point of causing safety concerns?

It is amazing to see hoarding – in reality, or on the TV screen; piles of junk and what we would consider trash, flowing off table tops and bureaus and even sleeping places.

Thank goodness most of us don’t get to the state where parting with old magazines causes an emotional meltdown. But if we look around, chances are there are things we have not used for years; clothes that don’t fit, gadgets we don’t use, things that no longer match our lifestyle.

What so many of us do is arrange more space to accommodate these cast-offs. Box them and put them in the attic? Build more shelves or bookcases? Rent a storage locker and pay monthly for the privilege of keeping our STUFF?

Maybe it’s time to look at things a different way. How about parting with this stuff? Ask your adult kids if they want any of it. When they turn you down, have a yard sale. Call a charity. Many will even come and pick it up.

Adopt a mindset of parting with what you don’t need, instead of keeping it or worse still, treasuring it.

They say it’s freeing to give it up. Are you ready to try?

P.S. I visited a friend whose spouse had died three days before. In front of their house were 27 large, black trash bags. He explained they were filled with old, overworn, or out-of-style clothes, shoes, and purses that his wife should have tossed years ago. He had wasted no time in seeing that they were removed. He was determined to avoid hoarding, now that he was alone.

It seemed disrespectful to see belongings discarded so soon after the loss of a loved one, but perhaps he had the right idea.

[Show #301]

The Panini Generation

Backstory

An aging population and a generation of young adults struggling to achieve financial independence are putting middle-aged Americans smack in the middle. Nearly half (47%) of adults in their 40s and 50s have a parent aged 65 or older and are either raising a young child or financially supporting a grown child (age 18 or older). A stressful situation lightened up by a beloved cartoonist.

The Panini Generation

There’s a book out that takes a humorous look at the struggle of the sandwich generation – middle-aged people charged with caring for aging parents – and one or more adult children who have returned to the nest.

You may remember the cartoon, Cathy. It was a mainstay in American entertainment for 34 years. In 2010, cartoon creator Cathy Guisewite (Guyz’white) retired, to focus on caring for her family. Now she mines the life she spent sandwiched between aging parents and an adult daughter, all of whom needed her.

Guisewite’s new book is titled, “Fifty Things That Aren’t My Fault: Essays From the Grown-Up Years” The amusing, self-deprecating observations that were in the Cathy cartoon are now applied to life in transition.

The author says the ‘panini generation’s days are completely different from what they expected at this time. Facing responsibility from both sides, trying to be a loving guide, yet still making time to have a life and take some selfies.

Guiswite confesses in her book that “the job of letting go and hanging on is wrenching.” She hopes that her essays can bring a beam of humor and understanding to an otherwise potentially depressing situation.

Good to have Cathy back in the game.

P.S. A new study reveals multigenerational living nearly quadrupled in the past decade, with the pandemic playing a strong role. https://www.gu.org/app/uploads/2021/04/21-MG-Family-Report-WEB.pdf

[Show #657]

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