life path
There are times when all of us look back over the high and low points of our life. Ideally, the highs are much more prevalent than the lows, but not always the case. I know in my own case, I could have been a cat I have lived so many lives. Some I am proud of, some I hope no one ever discovers.
In high school, I was middle-of the road popular, had auburn hair, big ole brown eyes and a quick wit. I was a class favorite I suppose, got along well with most I attended classes with and the teachers seemed to place me in their top 20% of students. Grades were decent, I did have to dig a bit in some cases, but usually came out well when tested. I had several boyfriends over the four years of high school, and loads of girl friends. All in all I had a great high school experience.
I loved to read, was actually an avid reader since the grade school years. In fact, I made friends with the librarian at Westhaven Elementary in my third grade year and she always let me check out more books than was commonly allowed in a week because I read them so fast. I would start with a topic such as women in aviation, then read all I could about girl pilots like Amelia Earhart. When no more books could be found on the shelves, I would switch subjects or take on a particular author such as Louisa Mae Alcott or Emily Dickinson and read everything the dusty ole shelves held. I had a kind of lonely childhood, a bit hard at times and characters such as the Bobbsey Twins or Trixie Belden became my whole world of escape from the difficulties of the world around me.
When I entered high school, I was given a list of clubs I could join during orientation. While most of the high school girls gravitated toward the pep squads and Tri-Hi-Y clubs, I involved myself in the annual staff or newspaper club because I found that reading was second only to writing. I adored writing and would spend hours upon hours spinning tales in my free time, writing lyrics of songs for an unknown guitar player, or make up diabolically morose stories about my “sworn enemies”…of which there were truly few.
My created world became much my real world when the days grew long and hard.
A high school class I took changed my life in many ways. My teacher was Jan Knight, and she was already a writer of sorts. She taught us the honing of our skill and we put together a book of poetry and prose that year in high school. We excitedly bound it all into a book that was sold to friends, family and patrons of the school. I felt “published”, and it lit the fire of journalism forever in my soul. That book sits on my bedside table all these years later.
As time went by, I majored in journalism in college at Memphis State (now University of Memphis…I have no idea why the name change was necessary). I also took night classes in creative writing from time to time just because I couldn’t get my fill of writing during the day classes. One class was conducted by Ed Weathers. At the time he was a writer and editor for Memphis Magazine. He gave us basic skills and information for the first part of the semester, then the final part of the semester was putting together actual pieces for possible publication.
I was never so excited when Ed asked me to stay after class one night. He had my submission in his hand and it didn’t have any marks on it. I actually thought at first he was going to turn it back into me to do over again. “This is an excellent piece of journalism, Rhonda”. My knees were shaking, and my mouth went dry. I was stunned, because this was a really big deal to me. He then said he was going to take it, with my permission, back to the main editor of the magazine and suggest it be fleshed out for a piece to run in the next month’s issue.
When I got to my car that night, I had to sit for a few moments, the tears rolling. I knew my life was about to take a turn in a wonderful direction, if I let it. When I got home to my new husband and told him what had happened, he was very happy for me and took me out to dinner, which we rarely did at that time because finances were so low. As happy as he was, I knew he didn’t really get the importance of this one moment in my life, and never would. It was my big break.
I continued to write for Memphis Magazine, and several articles were published. I also wrote for Mature Living Magazine, Modern Maturity, Highlights for Children, Humpty Dumpty Magazine and others. I received my share of rejection letters as all writers do, but I was making a bit of money and doing what I loved so those really didn’t affect me. Marriage rolled on, a baby came, and suddenly there were just not enough hours in the day to write, read or anything else much.
I made a choice to be a mom, and placed my first calling on hold for many years to give my life to my second (in chronological order only) calling.
As I raised my daughter, homeschooled, participated at church over the years, I thought often of returning to the writing field. I did dabble here and there with church publications when they fit my schedule, but that was not often. I dedicated myself to the tasks at hand and loved every minute of those years. When time came that Samantha grew up and left home, I once again thought about taking up my pen. But things, people and situations got in the way and I veered off my true life path quite a while. I guess those years will be fodder for an autobiography, or not.
After my divorce and remarriage, I opened a business and became associated with a business group in my hometown. One of the group members was involved in a magazine start-up. My ears perked up when he presented the BLINK Magazine prototype, and told it would highlight leaders of our community, places to visit and so forth. It would be a really comfortable writing space for me since most of my work had been human interest stories and I loved to interview people. I talked with the editor after the meeting and he asked me to submit a few pieces I had written recently. I hesitated, then was honest and said I hadn’t written in a while but I knew this was something I was supposed to be involved in. I guess Jim saw the hungry look in my eye because he placed me on staff as a writer without looking at any work at all.
I spent my days running a large residential cleaning company and spent my nights and weekends interviewing high caliber community leaders. I wrote cover stories and inside issue pieces about local chefs, hospital administrators, the yearly regional festivals, people in the arts and theater. I was in my element and as time went on, I felt more and more that my day job was really just a way to pay the bills so I could do my real job, as a writer. My day job almost became an annoyance as I longed to get home and write.
One fork in the writing road for me came with my interview of Preston Lamm. He had come from an accounting background in college, got bored with it and started to pursue his greater interests. Over the years he had developed many properties in Memphis and the surrounding area and rubbed shoulders with people of class and wealth, and was known as a premier builder and business mogul. He was about to open an upscale restaurant in the area and he was my assignment. I had always gone on the interviews alone with only a photographer in tow. This time, Jim, the editor said he was coming with me. I don’t know why, but this worried me for days before the interview. I didn’t sleep, I researched and researched until facts and dates concerning my subject were all running together. I was certain I was going to make a fool of myself and Jim was going to be there to try and save the day if I did. I didn’t know why Jim wanted to be there unless this was a really big deal and he didn’t want me to blow the interview. I knew I had to find a hook, something to pull Lamm into my camp, and drag Jim back over with him. I had to do something unexpected.
On the day of the interview with sweaty palms, I met Preston Lamm. I could tell he was a little gruff, maybe a bit obnoxious if the need arose, and I was secretly terrified, but plunged into the interview. It went ok, no major stumbles. I could feel my adrenaline rise and fall many times as he answered my questions and I could hear the mild boredom in his answers and see it in his eyes. I could tell he had been interviewed to death, he felt this was nothing new, I was just another hack wanting a story, asking the same old dry questions.
We got to the end of our time and I said I had one more question. He looked relieved, leaned back a bit, crossed his arms and said “Ok, shoot.” I pulled a photo out of my briefcase and slid it over in front of him as I said “This young man is coming to you as a mentor. He is asking for your best piece of advice concerning his future, what he should do, if he is pursuing the right path for himself. What would you advise him, knowing what you know today?”. He looked down, and was taken back. He let out his breath, kind of coughed and said incredulously, “Where…where did you find this?”
It was a black and white photo of an 18 year old Preston Lamm, right before he started his first construction job out of high school, before college detours into accounting, before marriage and kids, before all of it. I told him I had researched for other articles about him, but had randomly run across this in my search and wondered if he would have had his dream job years earlier if he had turned away from the norm, and followed the road less traveled, the harder road, the road more challenging.
“Well, I would have to say, having hindsight, I would tell this young man to follow his dream rather than following what makes the stable money or satisfies family, or obligates you to a standard. I was the lucky one, I was given a second chance to do what I longed to do. Most are not afforded that second chance. They have to see into the future, 20/20 and without blinders on.”
I have never forgotten that advice, although I haven’t been able to implement it, as yet, in my own life to a great degree. If I had a choice right now, as much as I love what I do as an estate liquidator and seller of vintage items, I would lay it all down to write…day in and day out. I could find no greater contentment than to find myself like Jo March in Little Women….scribbling away with pen and ink in a drafty attic and crying over a half eaten bowl of russet apples, as fall leaves fly by my dormer window.
Maybe one day, it can happen for me. As I get older, my eyesight does get a bit better every day. If I look at my own graduation photo, I can almost see that journalist shining through. One day maybe I will have enough of the mundane and reach for my star regardless of the consequences. True happiness won’t really cost me a lot…just a notebook, an idea, heeding my own inner advice, and perhaps my one moment in time.
Today is a very special day. My twin grandbabies, Max and Isaac celebrated their first birthday yesterday and today we are having a luau party with all the trimmings! I can hardly believe it’s been a year since their birth…
In the fall of 2011 my daughter, Samantha, was working for my cleaning company as Operations Manager. She had held several positions since starting the company with me in 2002 but this latest position was in hopes of me retiring and she and her husband, Tracy, taking over the company. Several conversations, much praying and many months of consideration had brought us all to the same choice of direction. I was excited to think God had blessed my company financially and I could leave that “legacy” to someone who had the same vision in many ways that I did and would carry on a family business with respect and integrity. Lorelai had started preschool, which we had not originally wanted to do, but she seemed to be enjoying it and adjusting very well. The original plan was for Samantha to stay home with her and home school as I had done with her, but the talk about taking over the family business had trumped that by the end of summer .
Then one day, Samantha came to work and knowing my daughter, I could see something was on her mind. We worked through the morning hours, and then I went into her office across the hall. “You seem to have something on your mind…wanna talk about it?” My daughter with a hesitant grin said “Wellll…I think I may be pregnant.” For a moment, my excitement overcame reality of what this meant to my future and theirs. I was going to be a GiGi again, and was overwhelmed with gratefulness. My kids had experienced a miscarriage earlier in the spring, before the business talks had even started, so this was an answer to prayer in so many ways. As Samantha talked on, I had a feeling begin to creep over me that I couldn’t quite put a name to. I was excited, but at the same time so disappointed and kind of like the wind had been knocked out of me. My company had just weathered the storm of a tremendous turnover of both customers and staffing and this move to retire and let my kids take over was a glimmer of hope in the midst of the turmoil’s aftermath. In the blink of an eye, on the heels of a few words, my whole future was changing in almost every area.
My daughter went to the doctor soon after and I accompanied her. Medicine is so advanced these days. When I went to find out whether I was carrying a baby over 30 years ago, it was just becoming vogue to know the gender. Nowadays you can find out a lot sooner, you have an ultrasound immediately, and you know so much more than whether you are pregnant or not. That day is vivid in my memory…
We sat and waited on the ultrasound tech to come in. A perky little girl entered the room and quickly she scooted the wand around Samantha’s tummy for several minutes as my daughter and I watched the screen. I was looking at it and saying to myself “Something doesn’t look right here.” Samantha never indicated she saw anything out of the ordinary, but I was seeing two big black spots. Now it had been a while since we had viewed Lorelai’s ultrasound like this but I didn’t remember hers looking this way. The tech said “Well, are you ready for an answer?” This whipped my attention back to the reason we were there and that was to find out if I was indeed going to be a grandmother again! Samantha nodded and we watched as the tech circled the black hole to the left and said “ This… is Baby A”, and circling the hole to the right she remarked “ And this…is Baby B”. Sam laughed a little, looked at me and back to the tech and said, pretty calmly I thought, “Really?” The tech nodded then said she’d be right back, she needed to get more supplies for the second ultrasound. When the door closed, Samantha and I both jerked our heads around to look at each other with big “O” shaped mouths. I cannot describe the giddiness and goofy giggling that went on between us for several minutes before the tech returned. Suddenly, my retirement, selling the company to my kids, the questions of when would I lose my operations manager and what was I going to do now seemed to fade into the background. Nothing mattered but the reality that I was going to be a grandmother again, Lorelai was going to be a big sister, Samantha and Tracy were going to be parents again, and God had blessed us with not one, but two babies to soothe the heartbreak and loss we had all experienced in the spring.
And now we are almost two years from that moment and I cannot imagine my life any differently than it is today. The babies are growing up well and strong and happy. Lorelai stayed in preschool through the birth last May and finished out her pre-K year but is now home and working the original plan of homeschooling. She is the ultimate Big Sister teaching the babies all the important things like how to pirouette, the proper way to wear a tiara and wings, and making them grin when she dances through their scattered toys all over the living room. Tracy has a great job that is allowing Samantha to stay home which is a blessing because child care would be so high for three children, especially since two are babies.
And me, well…I am doing pretty alright myself. I pushed through some hardships personally and professionally and am working in an estate business I not only make a living from, as was the case with the cleaning company, but I am also exploring new things and living a passion, something few people do in their lifetime.
More every day I realize that I often choose the Thing One in my life. I pick the easy thing, the thing causing the least issues, the thing that makes me money for the house note, or lets me buy shoes for the feet and food for the table. Because all the basics are pretty much taken care of, I never even think about pursuing the Thing Two in my life. I don’t think I am very different than most folks out there either. Most of the time we don’t even know Thing Two exists until Thing One starts to look a little shaky or not quite right. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a Life Path Ultrasound? You could lie on a table, swirl a wand around and around and then the read out would show you the possibilities in your future…the Thing One and Thing Two. How many of us would choose a different thing if we only knew there was one?
I can say only in my own circumstances, I am fortunate enough to know there is more than one “thing” I can or should do. I can keep or sell my cleaning company, I can pursue the estate business full time, I can open a store or not, sell online or just hold estate sales for others. I have journalism and coaching experience so I can use one or the other or BOTH to forge my future. I can work for the dollar, or I can pursue my passions and make money doing it. I have choices, I can go left or right, up or down, stand still or start running with an idea…it is all up to me when and how. I don’t look at the ultrasound picture as just two black holes of uncertainty. I know both those holes hold LIFE, it’s just a matter of which I want…or better yet…maybe I will choose Thing One and Thing Two. I love my life, I love that I have choices…and I can tell you, through all of the past troubles and bumps in the road I’ve decided for sure at this stage of my journey, I don’t wanna miss a Thing.
I am one of the unfortunate sufferers of arthritis and osteoporosis. The effects of both these conditions have pretty much been a part of my life in one way or other since my late teens, early 20’s. At first, my parents thought it was traditional “growing pains”, so we pretty much ignored it as such and went on. But as I left my teens and entered my 20’s I started having some really odd pains…most mornings it was hard to get out of bed.
I found I couldn’t do the common things of a 20 year old…it was an effort to pick up my baby, my hands would “give out”, or my upper arms some mornings had virtually no strength in them, seemingly overnight. My feet had what I called heel spurs, but looking back I can see it was where the osteoporosis had set in. Not the normal physical life of a 20 year old. I plodded through it and played more with my daughter on the more mobile days, and cut back activity on others when we sat and read a lot or watched the tube, due to my aching joints and bones. But once I entered the 30’s, the pain had become debilitating more days than not, so off I trotted to the doctor, and thus the diagnosis all those years ago.
Several different medicines have been tried, but not being much for synthetic answers, I pretty much have just “adjusted” to the pain and difficulty in my body as the years have rolled on. Now at the age of “over 50”, there is pain every day, all day, in more than one spot of my body and that is my norm. Frankly most of the time I push through it and don’t even really notice it until it gets outside the pain level I have grown accustomed to all these years.
This week, I decided to change my daily routine. I had begun working at home the last couple of months pretty much exclusively and although I am a very organized person, I kept finding myself kind of drifting from one activity to another during the day and not getting as much accomplished as I desired and knew I could complete. I also seemed to be running out of time to just be myself and do some personal things I love such as read the Kindle on the back deck. So I sat down with pencil and paper, jotted down a tentative scheduling of my time and necessary daily activities, and placed those in general slots of time during the day. I wanted to create a new “normal” schedule for myself since the “normal” I have had for many years was no longer existent when I came back home to work, rather than going to an office every day.
All week, I have been on schedule and now that it is Friday it is actually starting to kind of feel “normal”. I marvel over the things I am accomplishing. I am marveling more over being able to stop at a certain time of the day, just like in an office setting, and fix my dinner, watch TV, read, rest or whatever I want to do for a slot of hours in my evening, rather than working till bedtime because I took 5 minutes here and 15 there during the day and “got behind” on things I really needed to complete for the day trying to grab moments of personal time of reflection and rest. I am more focused, I am more energized, and even my body is responding by getting more physical rest in longer segments, which could do nothing but aid in my health issues, right?
What I have found most interesting is this…
I have spent years working in my business. Many hours were willingly put in and very much enjoyed because the business was growing and so was I. I was meeting new people, being recognized in my community and among my peers, becoming a spokesperson for my industry. My new “normal” was getting up, working till bed with a few moments sprinkled through the day here and there of personal or family time, and doing it all over the next day. Prior to this working career, I had been a stay-at-home mom that worked at home, was in my yard and gardens for about 30 hours a week ( my passion), worked in my church, cooked every day, made bread, and did all those things that I adored doing for my family. A sad divorce forced me into the work world, and I adapted to it quickly and loved it, too…but the things that were once “normal” for me became the “abnormal”, and stayed that way for many years.
When I got up this morning at 6, I started thinking about my life now, and what my “normal” is now…and more what my “normal” today should be. As I took my morning walk, I thought about how my joint pain over the years had grown to a point that what was once thought of as terribly paralyzing “growing pains”, were tiny compared to the pain I now feel in my body as the norm each day. It truly does paralyze me in many ways and make me incapable of living a “normal” life for my age. I had let pain and difficulty physically become my “normal”. Nowadays, some pretty severe pain has to come along to slap me and say “hey you, you have some real physical issues here that need to be addressed. This isn’t just something you have to go through…a “growing pain”…it is out of the NORMAL…do something about it”.
How many of us, I wonder, have let sad situations, people who are jerks that consistently disrespect us by their words or behavior, or personal hardship and fear become our “normal” because it was looked upon as a “growing pain”…just something you have to go through, everyone does… it is “normal”…
Maybe it’s time for each of us to take a good long look at the life we lead, who we allow into it, what activities and priorities are part of the DNA of our today. Have we allowed people, emotions, beliefs or any number of “abnormal” things become our “normal” through disregard of the pain they may be causing us, and have caused us over the years? Is it time for us to change our perception? Or, even more… is it time to take a look at our pain head on, decide what has taken the value of our life and turned it into a devaluing thing…and then make a shift back to our kind of “normal”?
It might be that going back to our “normal” is the real growing pain we need to experience today.