Be a connector

/in /by

In this era of social media, the lives of our circle of friends and family scrolls by on our phones and tablets. Sometimes we will pause to like it or make a comment and through this we feel like we are staying connected to other people.

The reality is when we post, not everyone who are friends see it, in fact Facebook and the other social media company has structured things that way. We can have 5,000 “friends” and only a couple hundred will see what we post.

I say all that to say this…. STOP IT! This is not connection. Gaining likes and smiley faces is not a relationship with another living breathing person.

In the olden days, like prior to 15-20 years back, if you wanted to know how someone was, you picked up the phone and called. You interacted for a few minutes or longer and before you hung up you had truly connected. Some folks would even go so far as walk or drive over to someone’s house or office and say let’s go to lunch, or “Here, you got some coffee, I brought the donuts.” Then they would sit down and talk.

When I was growing up, folks often had two living rooms in the house, one was for company (living room) and the other (den or family room) for the family. One remained clean to receive folks who dropped in and the other was generally more lived in. Many folks had both a formal dining room and the a kitchen eating area.

We built our lives, our homes, our decor, expecting people to drop in for a talk, a meal, or even overnight – hence guest rooms.

This is how we connected. I have noticed that the formality of things have disintegrated over the years and now not many go out of their way for guests, in fact many don’t even bother with the old social norms of greeting folks at the door, asking them in, offering them a seat, serving a refreshment, and then just being there with them, no distractions, to just talk. When they leave, you show them out, and wave a smile as they go. In years past, there were long lists of etiquette to follow.

Today, well, folks are lucky if people even come to the door if you knock.

I have traveled much of my live passing through towns and made many friends through the years. Before we carried cell phones, if I was rolling through some where and the timing was right, I would often just stop knock on the door and spend some time with friends. I remember one time passing through Plains, I stopped knocked on the door, my friend, Miss Allie, came to the door, invited me in, offered me refreshments and we had a nice visit before I got back on the road. Being of the WWI generation, she followed all the expected Southern formalities. This trip my friends the Carters were away, so spending a few minutes with Rosalyn’s mom was a blessing and allowed me to reconnect and learn about everyone’s current status through Allie.

In my dad’s family, we had two connectors, people who managed to keep us all interwoven by regular phone calls, cards, and an outward showing of love – my Uncle Burl, who died a few years back and my Aunt Lois who left us this Mother’s Day. She was our last connector. Through her, we knew how all those we are suppose to love because of blood are doing. I realize with her death, those phone lines will no longer be burning. My weekly visit by phone will no longer occur when I got the updates on this cousin’s children or that cousin’s illness, or someone’s birthday is this week. For years I have known everything about everyone that is suppose to matter. More than I could ever glean from scrolling through social media.

That will be gone now. Our connection is cut. Now I will go through my weeks knowing less and less about family until we happen to bump into each other at a town event, store or restaurant when we spend a few moments asking about everyone and learn what’s happening. Those encounters are good but really not enough for meaningful connections.

I remember when I was a boy Sunday was visiting day. After church, we would spend the rest of the day in the car going from house to house or we would be at home receiving friends and family. You never knew who might show up, but Mom always had extra food prepared and the house was extra clean so folks wouldn’t talk. We connected regularly.

Whether by phone or in person, be the connector in your family or circle of friends. Shake the bonds of the computer age and return to real life people talking to one another face to face. You might even like it!

Change is inevitable

/in /by

In life, we often see ourselves in a never ending cycle of the same.

We go through the same routine daily. Get up, prepare for the day and off to work.

Then we return and back to house routine until we slow down for sleep.

We do this, day after day, year after year, often just watching our lives fly by as the clock spins upon the wall.

While things in our lives often remain the same, day in and day out, from time to time something happens which jolts us out of our mundane routine.

Sometimes its a pleasant surprise which makes life different. If we are single, we might fall in love.

If we are childless, a child might be in the making.

Or we might be jolted by some unexpected moment that changes our lives – an accident, a fall, an illness, the death of a loved one. Any of these might shake our life.

It might be something simple. For me recently after many years with having the same people live around me. Solid good neighbors upon which I depended upon for decades, now I am seeing a shift as different ones move away. With each a little adjustment is required. Now there are new people to learn, but its unlikely that decades of neighboring will be recovered quickly in these new relationships, but in time perhaps, I will once again feel as comfortable as I did with the others. At least I hope so.

No matter what aspect of our lives we are looking upon, the inevitability of change is always there—new co-workers, new responsibilities, new expectations, new neighbors, new elected officials, new problems, new hopes, new dreams and new losses.

Despite this, we see our lives as routine, but in actuality every day is filled with little differences.

We are provided opportunities for countless choices every single day. Any one choice might be the one that catapults us into a sea of unknown circumstances. We choose the wrong food item at lunch and we get food poisoning. Were off to the hospital and we get an unplanned bill. We miss a few days of work. All this sequence of events hinged on a quick decision while walking through a cafeteria or restaurant food line.

Change is always with us, it is the source of our opportunities. If we are mindful and watch the changes in our surroundings, we might find one coming that opens boundless opportunities for our future.

I am saddened at the recent and coming changes within my circle of neighbors. Hopefully, good folks will fill the voids left by these changes and overtime will become the stalwarts I hope to have around me as we move forward in this uncertainty we see around us.

Be mindful and forward thinking as you go through you daily routines and perhaps, just perhaps, you will be the orchestrator of positive change that impacts us all rather than the dutiful recipient.

The ground is turned

/in /by

The spring brings such a joy as it comes time to run my feet through the dirt of the garden.

This year took a bit more effort for me as my tiller was finding every reason not to run this year.

I had endured that last winter and turned the rows by hand. Sadly, it wasn’t as good as I hoped it might be.

It took my brother and I to give it a good tune up a couple of weeks back and it still had a hidden issue neither of us could find. It’s amazing how a small engine with only so many working parts could give one such a time.

A fellow gardening friend – Pete – thankfully had the tinkering abilities to get it going. Maybe it was the magic touch.

A warm day and a couple pulls on the engine and I was off tilling the garden giving it a solid treatment.

After letting the fertilizer sink in a couple of days, I was ready to plant.

I rotated my normal vegetables – cucumbers, yellow and zucchini squash, potatoes, green beans, corn, bell peppers, corn and tomatoes and added a few new to try out this year – spinach, lettuce, onions, cantaloupe and a couple of herbs – basil and thyme.

I learned many of my early gardening from my Grandpa Jesse and my mom and dad. It’s amazing what a little hard work, well cultivated soil, good seeds and some watering can provide.

When I was a child, my mother put up in jars so many vegetables from what we grew in our small garden. We often had food throughout the winter. With each passing year as a kid, I took great joy in seeing a greater yield in what we were doing.

Since I returned to the effort about three years back, unfortunately, I have not seen the return of those childhood yields. Perhaps I have forgotten a few of those early lessons which gave me such a childhood advantage. Or simply, my soil is so much poorer in where I garden today compared with what I had built up over time as a youth.

It seems I can manage a pretty good crop of cucumbers, squash and peppers, as those are what I have pickled, frozen and eaten the most through the winter from my efforts.

With the rising costs of food, that we all are seeing in the stores, I have high hopes that I will be able to be more effective this season in my endeavor.

I even tried a few experimental watermelon in a place I don’t normally plant. As they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

In any event feeling the fresh-tilled soil between my toes reminds me such of walking behind my grandfather as his plowed.

It’s not exactly the same, but I can almost see his Bib overalls legs up ahead of me as I look along the ground. I can hear his booming voice as he calls out for me to bring the seeds and walk behind him placing them just the right distance apart.

Then months later, I remember looking up at the corn so high above me head with the bean vines running up each one.

My seeds are in the ground, the watering will bring on what comes next and hopefully in a few months, all of my efforts will yield some great eats.

I hope you are taking the time to plant some food wherever you are. Even if its just a few plants on a patio. Every little bit helps and we all need all the help we can get these days.