As I pondered these two things, I decided to highlight another “strong woman on a journey”, Angie Morris, who as you’ve probably guessed, is a “lunch lady.”
Angie attended school at Black Oak Elementary very near where I live in rural West Tennessee. Their mascot is the eagle. She only went to college for a short time, married Jonathan and had Aleix and Jon-Andrew. A job that followed the school schedule seemed perfect when she decided to re-enter the workforce so she took inventory of her skills (cooking) and her passion (loving kids) and became a “worker” in the same cafeteria where she had enjoyed lunches all those years ago.
When the Cafeteria Manager decided to retire, Angie decided to try for that job. As fate would have it, the State of Tennessee conducted a week-long intensive workshop called School Nutrition Chefs and she was one of only 20 selected to attend. As she describes it, the goal was to train school chefs to help students “fall in love with school food again.” (When she said this I remembered those school rolls and immediately knew what she was talking about.”) They learned all sorts of “hacks” to add value to the school lunch experience like using seasonings and making tiny cuts on the hot dogs to mimic grill marks because as she put it,”kids eat with their eyes, too.”
Angie brought her new found “smarts” back to Obion County and snagged the job she had set her sights on as manager in the cafeteria at Black Oak. Before she signed her contract accepting the position, she boldly told her new boss at the Central Office, “I want to make sure you are up for adventures!” As I learned more about Angie, I realized that “adventures” would be a common theme when discussing her passion for her work.
You see, she actually wants dining in the school cafeteria to be an adventure and an experience for kids at her school. It’s really not a cafeteria she told me but rather, it’s the “Eagle Cafe.” She painted the walls to create a more inviting space and decorates for each and every holiday because lots of her students just don’t get that kind of thing at home. There’s another thing that Angie is afraid they don’t get much of and that is a smile. She makes sure that her employees, which she calls “Eagle Cafe Lunch Beauties” (not lunch ladies, I noted) show up each day ready to smile because her concern is “that their smile might be the only one some of these babies see each day.”
I’m convinced that Angie shows up each day at 6am with a smile and her “A” game. I was impressed by so many of her tips, strategies and her management style. Apparently, others have been as well. She was asked several years ago to present at school nutrition conferences all across the state and has shared with many others how she is able to elevate a meal she prepares for 240 kids each day to an experience they can look forward to and enjoy. Let’s face it, the thing most dreaded by those in this profession is a full plate of food being tossed in the garbage. Angie has literally learned the “secret sauce” to keep this from happening.
I learned that she’s not only preparing tasty, attractive meals for kids but is also asking God to “show her what she needs to see” just in case some of her “babies” need an extra hug or encouraging word. It was touching to hear that last month when a community many of her students live in was ravaged by a tornado, she couldn’t sleep and was worried sick until she heard that they were all safe. Naturally, she began immediately to make plans to prepare meals for those that needed them during that emergency. That wasn’t hard for her, she had organized similar efforts when schools closed for Covid and she believed many of her students were food insecure. That time, she got a box truck, assembled a team, and went around the neighborhoods passing out lunches to kids. I’m thinking that was definitely an adventure!
This month our little social enterprise, OUTsideIN, is focusing on doing small things with great love. Most of us think of a school lunch as a very small thing but let me assure you that Angie Morris does not. Even so, you better believe she is doing it with great love.
]]>My first trip to Glacier was when I was 16. Me, my mom and dad along with another couple and their 12 year old son piled into a blue station wagon with wood grain on the sides and headed out for two full weeks. Can you even imagine? No phones, no devices, just me and Jody sitting between our parents for 3000 miles.
I returned to Glacier just last year. I’ve changed a lot in the last 40 years or so, Glacier, not so much. It’s very beautiful there and should be on everyone’s list who enjoys the great outdoors.
My friend is going to be quite adventurous and has a big list of activities that includes horseback riding and even a hot air balloon ride. I did that once. I wasn’t going to. My husband saw the ad when we were on a trip to North Carolina and on a whim said he wanted to go. I declined at first but when I saw that balloon start to lift off the ground I quickly changed my mind and asked to get in the basket too. Lesson here: be spontaneous!!
When packing, some people plan outfits for each and every day they plan to be gone. My mind doesn’t work like that. Sure, I’ll try to pack for special activities like the horseback ride. I mean, you wouldn’t want to do that wearing a skort, would you? But I think it’s more realistic to pack basic, versatile pieces that can be switched around.
For this clothing list, I chose a selection of “bottoms” that would be comfortable for the activities she knew she would be engaging in. I’ve encouraged her to look for pants and shorts that are lightweight and breathable. Then I selected “tops” in basic colors like black, white, beige, brown and gray. The tops have different lengths, weights, and sleeves. There are a couple of jackets on the list because it can be chilly in the evenings and mornings out there.
Often on a trip as long as hers (10 days), some pieces will have to be pressed into service more than once. When I know an item won’t be able to be “recycled” after a certain day’s activity (like the horseback ride), I try to go ahead and wear it early on in the trip so that it won’t be needed after a day like that.
Shoes are always the toughest part of a packing list. For this trip, I’m asking her to take a good pair of athletic type shoes, a pair of hiking boots and a pair of sandals or flip flops. She’ll also need a hat, pajamas, swimsuit and coverup, underwear and a cute wristlet from OUTsideIN!
Don’t wait until the last minute to pack. Look for things in your closet that can be versatile and then shop for things you need to fill in the gaps. Avoid packing something that will only be worn for a few hours for some reason. For instance, if a restaurant requires a jacket for men, we automatically know we won’t be dining there. No one restaurant is worth that expense of space in our bags. And never, ever bring more than one roller bag per person. Feel free to have a small carryon or backpack but please limit yourself to one suitcase.
When headed to this special part of our country, what you really want is to be able to enjoy all that beauty in comfort while looking like a smart and savvy traveler. Hopefully, this list will help.
Packing list for Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks Tour - Late August 2021
Activities:
Horseback and wagon rides
Hiking
Float trips
Hot air balloon ride
Safari trip
Tops:
¾ sleeve or long sleeve fishing shirt
Light weight sweat shirt
Long sleeve T-shirt (white or gray)
2 Tank Tops (white and black)
2 Hip length T-shirts (for wear with leggings)(black, brown, gray or white)
1 graphic T-shirt
1 athletic wear T-shirt (gray, white or black)
2 T-shirts (beige or white, and black and white stripe)
Bottoms:
Black leggings (mid calf length)
Colored jeans
Blue Jeans
Trek type pants
Trek type zip-off pants
2 pair shorts (Trek type preferred but one could be blue jean)
Track suit
Jackets:
Denim ( medium shade of blue)
Athletic hoodie (close fitting, not baggy)
Dresses:
T-shirt Dress
Tank Dress (black)
Other: Shoes:
2 Pajamas
Hat
Underwear
2 hiking socks
3 shortie socks
Swimsuit and Coverup
OUTsideIN Wristlet bag
Shoes:
Hiking Boots or shoes
Athletic/Walking shoes
Sandals or flip flops
]]>I’m Scottish, not Irish, but I grew up next door to a large Irish Catholic family and considered Saint Patrick a friend if not my leader. Decades later, in fact, a week ago - while making a Saint Patrick’s Day greeting card for a friend, I began to think about my own Celtic heritage, and the history of MacMillans.
One of the reasons I kept the surname McMillan (an alternate spelling of MacMillan) when I married was because I was proud to be a McMillan. Keeping my own surname is not as odd as it may sound. There is more patrilineal/matrilineal variation in the world’s naming than you might think. In some cultures, children do not take their father’s family name at all, or they use it as a name secondary to their mother’s. In the Anglo and Celtic traditions children take their father’s name – or in the case of Scottish clans, their clan’s name. A clan is like a tribe: a collection of families descending from one ancestor. In the Bible, the "twelve tribes" of the Hebrews were the twelve collections of families that sprang from the sons of Jacob. Even in modern times, tribes exist all over the world, so it’s not accurate to call tribes or clans an old-fashioned custom. Family collections are important to the survival and integrity of indigenous peoples whether they live in South America, North America, Africa, Asia…well, anywhere.
In my view, caring about your family and its origins is supported by the Biblical commandment: Honor thy father and thy mother. There is much to be learned from your family, be it religious, cultural, societal, political, educational, though family pride that scorns people and traditions outside one’s own family is never a good thing. I speak from experience because my paternal grandmother bequeathed me with outsized pride, and from my father I inherited a quick temper: a tricky combination.
Having justified or at least explained (I hope) my pride in my lineage, and before you fall asleep, I’ll move on. My father, Edward McMillan, was fascinated by genealogy, and I was privileged (so he claimed) to be entrusted with typing up the notes he scribbled while studying our ancestry. I freely admit that a lot of it, like the Biblical begats in the book of Genesis, however important, made my eyes cross, but some of it made my eyes sparkle. Learning that I was descended (down a very, very long ancestral trail) from King MacBeth, a fellow so grievously vilified by Shakespeare in the 17th century play The Tragedy of MacBeth, inspired me to write an English literature term paper vindicating MacBeth, much to my teacher’s astonishment. Really, who would expect such a thing from a short, stumpy 15 year-old girl wearing braces on her teeth and white patent leather go-go boots on her feet? My father offered to defend my position while my mother advised him to let me fight my own battles. I did receive a passing grade if not much praise for that paper.
Unsurprisingly, my father was founder of the Clan MacMillan Society of North America, and as I’ve written before, long ago I lived with and worked in Scotland for the Chief of the Clan MacMillan. Our clan is proud (there’s that word again) of our crest, pictured here:
A crest is sort of visual trademark (like a logo or icon, in today’s terms). In Medieval battles, you knew who you were fighting by the crest that decorated other soldiers’ shields.
Scholars of MacMillan ancestry and heraldry can (and will, like it or not) debate the meaning of our crest for hours (…zzzzzz…), but the short version is this. The Clan’s motto is MISERIS SUCCERRERE DISCO, or “I learn to succour the unfortunate” and the double-handed sword at the top represents the Clan’s willingness to do battle in order to defend and fulfill this motto. It derives from the Aeneid, an epic poem penned by the ancient Latin poet Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, which prefaces the motto with, “Not being myself unacquainted with difficulty, I learn to succour the distressed.”
In other words, MacMillans are saying: "We have been there, done that, and we wield our swords in order to help and protect you who are suffering as we have." To my mind, that motto is a clear marching order for this particular McMillan, in this particular world, which is so full of unfortunate and distressed people. I’ll admit that I don’t think of my family crest or motto on a regular basis, but I do believe my family’s motto is an important one, and I do swear loyalty to it.
To succour the unfortunate. It may not be your own family’s motto, but do you think it’s a worthwhile one, one that you can, and will, follow? Does it speak to you, even if you’re not a MacMillan? Perhaps you’re a Jones, Kwasnik, Giancola, Chung, Lee, Bonkole, Santos, Schmidt, Swenson…well, you get the idea. We are a big and stupendously varied world, but we are all God’s people, no matter what our surnames or other affiliations.
To succour the unfortunate. To run to the aid of the needy, hurt, distressed. To help, guide, and comfort them. You don’t have to be their hero, just their helper. You don’t need shining armor or a crest emblazoned with your family’s crest. To borrow from the The Beatles, all you need is love.
]]>In times when we’re all inundated with bad news about sadness, strife and struggles, it’s wonderful to know a strong woman who works hard to encourage and strengthen other people and does it with such love and care. Thank you, Caroline! We’re honored to be your friends and neighbors.
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An example is the hamburger sandwich, which contains beef, not ham. Some people claim it was invented by a Hamburger - that is, a resident of Hamburg, Germany – but others say it was first created in America in 1900 by Louis Lassen, a Danish immigrant and restaurant owner who may have dubbed it “hamburger” in honor of the German dish “Hamburger Rundstück Warm”, which is a hot dish consisting of a slice of warm roast beef or pork served between the slices of a halved round wheat roll, and then doused with hot gravy. Not so much a hamburger made of ground beef as an ancestor of the gravy-drenched American ground beef “hamburger steak” that was popular when I was a child. Whatever the origin of that dish, the true Hamburger is a human German citizen and not at all edible (in polite circles, anyway).
And then there’s the frankfurter, a sausage which does contain pork but also refers to an inedible human resident of the city of Frankfurt, Germany. However, I can attest to the fact that Frankfurters do eat frankfurters, so to speak. The customary approach is to remove the frankfurter (aka “hotdog”) from the bun with your fingers and eat it one bite at a time, end to end, before starting on the (usually much shorter) bun. Needless to say, the bun is not the soft cottony type Americans favor but rather a heartier German style roll, which is yummy all on its own. Perfectly simple and delicious, just the memory of a Frankfurt frankfurter makes my mouth water. And oh dear, the fresh pretzel bread slathered with butter…
Let’s head back to Great Britain before saliva begins dripping down my chin. The Brits, including the Scots, do eat quite a lot of pork (aka “hog”) in the form of a wide variety of sausages, and I’m sure the products of Williams Sausage Inc. (just for example) would be welcome there, although most “bangers” are a finer-textured sausage than Tennessee country sausage.
The term “bangers” is slang that arose from the tendency of cheap wartime sausages (plumped up with water when meat was rationed) to explode (with a bang, one supposes) in the heat of a cooking pan. It’s now a term most often used for the ever-popular “bangers and mash” – a comforting, “commoner’s” meal of sausages served with mashed potatoes and gravy that never appeared on the elegant dining table at Finlaystone. We did, however, have bacon or sausages with every breakfast, a meal that was unthinkable without meat (fish included, but that’s a whole other subject) of some sort.
Of course Scotland has its own unique varieties of sausage, including “lorne” (a flat square slice of skinless sausage), "white pudding" (oatmeal with pork meat or liver), "black pudding" (with pork blood added to the white pudding filling), and the infamous “haggis”. I confess that this proud Scotswoman has never eaten haggis. When we were in Scotland in the 1950's, my father of course gave it a try (I was too young to notice his reaction) but didn’t force it upon us children. Haggis is sheep’s “pluck”- that is, innards plucked from within, including heart, liver, and lungs, fortified with oatmeal and suet (beef or mutton fat) and encased in (of course) the sheep’s stomach before being boiled for an hour or two. Yes, I have the same reaction to that recipe, and I’m the one who claims to not be a fussy eater. But if you’re poor and hungry, you make do, and the Scots are good at making do. If there’s nothing else to eat, we eat pluck, potatoes, and suchlike.
Why are Scottish sausages called puddings rather than sausages? Although some claim the source is the French sausage “boudin” (which sounds slightly like “pudding”), it’s more likely to be the Gaelic word for sausage, “putóg bhán” (“putog” sounding something like “pudding”). In all the of the British Isles, “pudding” covers much broader culinary ground than in the States. Perhaps a topic for another day.
Bacon was another important meat served with breakfast on an almost daily basis at Finlaystone. After frying the “rashers” (slices), we religiously saved the grease, combining it with the fat rendered from any and every other meat we cooked, especially beef. We used it to fry eggs (including the 14 eggs I had to fry my first morning at Finlaystone) for breakfast, sauté vegetables, brown meat and poultry, and more. Along with the bacon and eggs we served thin slices of white bread, toasted in the Esse coal stove, then neatly set in a silver toast rack to cool - and dry - before joining the rest of the meal on the trolley journey to the dining room. I never quite came to terms with that dry, cold toast, being spoiled by butter melting in nooks and crannies, but slathering it with homemade marmalade helped me choke it down.
My favorite way to eat bacon was (and, I confess, still is) with a fresh bap. I’m at a loss to explain the word “bap,” which in the UK is also used to refer to a woman’s breast (I know, I know, but there it is). Perhaps it comes from the sound of bread dough being slapped into submission before being formed into lovely, brioche-like bap rolls. Mummy H always made us bacon and baps to eat on our way to the early morning flower market in Glasgow, where we sold the snowdrops and daffodils we slaves picked in the cold, damp grounds of Finlaystone. Originally the bunches contained 12 flowers each, but when the metric system arrived, we switched to 10 (converting to the metric system was not nearly as traumatic as most Americans imagine).
Mummy H split each bap, spread it with butter, placed three or four slices of cooked bacon on it, covered it with the other half of the bap, and wrapped it in parchment paper. Once all the flowers were loaded in the van, we hopped in and set off, happily munching baps during the 30-minute drive to Glasgow. Although carting flowers to Glasgow was an appallingly early morning task, I would have happily done so every day rather than deal with cold toast in the cold (of course) formal dining room. But it was a twice-weekly project and we slaves took turns at it. I somehow suspect all the slaves jumped at the chance to breakfast on bacon and baps while motoring those narrow country roads through scenic fields of frolicking sheep.
I’m sorry that this article ends with sheep rather than hogs, but even for the most loyal fan, I can’t conjure up a scene of hogs frolicking in the lowlands of Scotland. So please, Mr. Williams, comfort yourself with the new knowledge that sausages are indeed celebrated every day in Great Britain.
]]>I’ve had a lot of jobs in a lot of places in the past 45 – 50 years. Whether shoveling chicken manure in Scotland, sourcing sanitary ceramics in Southeast Asia, writing and publishing fiction and non-fiction (when traveling and when at home), developing needlework designs in Indian Orchard, MA, or grant writing in Troy, TN, getting my bearings has seldom been a problem. As long as I was in motion – preferable forward – I was okay. I’ll admit that being stood up by business associates in Lisboa and Izmir, tussling with an impatient customs inspector in Seoul and getting lost in Jakarta with a driver who spoke no English was all disconcerting. But hey, it wasn’t all bad. The first time I visited Hong Kong, I found somehow found myself giving the Chinese taxi driver directions to my destination (a friend suggested that I had lived in Hong Kong in a previous life. Hmmm.) Getting lost can be frustrating, but it can also lead you to places you never knew existed. Sometimes they’re wonderful, sometimes not. Just keep on moving, right?
OUTsideIN is more than a social enterprise in Troy, TN. In the beginning it was simply a workshop full of buzzing sewing machines where we intended to train and nurture marginalized women. At the time I wasn’t even sure why I volunteered to help because previously I had paid very little attention to marginalized people of any description. If you don’t recognize the marginalized people all around us, it may be because you don’t even see them. You’ve got work to do and places to go, so like me, you just keep on moving.
Now I realize that it was God who sent me to OUTsideIN, but at the time, it was uncharted territory. We all – volunteers and employees - had to figure it out as we went along. It was (and continues to be) an ongoing learning experience. And for me, it turned out to be one of those places I never knew existed. And unlike the alley in Antwerp where store-front prostitutes ply their trade or the busy roadway in Lima where people empty their bladders and bowels on the median strip, it was (and is) a wonderful thing. Sure, it was a good deed to volunteer there, but I never expected it to transform me as well as its marginalized workers.
So again, OUTsideIN is more than a social enterprise. It is people – living, breathing women full of faults – and full of potential. In my working past, I strove to limit emotional connections to my coworkers. I hoped to avoid (or at least limit) clouded judgment, avoid fanning the flames of office politics, and avoid taking actions driven by my heart rather than my brain. That sort of avoidance isn’t a bad thing – whether or not a business is for profit, work is #1. It must be done, properly and efficiently, every day, day after day, for the business to succeed. But at OUTsideIN, I discovered that shared emotion was the ground we all stood on and that ignoring it (be it good or bad) was impossible. I befriended – and was befriended by – women whose socio-economic backgrounds were very different from mine, but who shared with me some of the same traumas and struggles I’ve experienced in life. I found kindred spirits: broken but unique, beautiful, funny, warm and loving women.
And I worked alongside LeEllen Smith, another unique, beautiful, funny, warm and loving woman. We agreed, disagreed, laughed, cried, experimented, failed, tried, failed, tried again…proving the undeniable truth that no matter where you are, at home, in an office, digging a ditch, life is a learning experience. I learned a lot from LeEllen (although I’m sorry, the chances of me ever mastering a balanced P&L statement are slim and none). She is, among many other things, a wise person. When I was upstairs in the workshop office struggling with some frustrating task and ready to bang my head against my desk, she would say, “I think you need to go downstairs and make something with your hands.”
OUTsideIN works for a variety of reasons, not all of which I can claim to understand. One of the ways it works came to clear to me recently when an artsy-craftsy friend told me that the craft group of older ladies she leads proves something she heard from Oprah Winfrey years ago: that that women who do crafts together, working with their hands, are emotionally healthier than those who don’t. This isn't just hearsay; it's been studied by a variety of experts, from neuroscientists to psychologists, who all found in their research subjects a bounty of benefits from engaging our minds and hands in meaningful effort, including stress reduction, improved physical and emotional health, greater resilience, improved social networks, and more. The coordination, movement, and connective tasks involved actually stimulate the cortex, resulting in increased connections in the brain that foster growth, intelligence, learning and functioning.
Carrie Barron, M.D., a psychiatrist and the co-author of The Creativity Cure: How to Build Happiness With Your Own Two Hands, writes, “When you make something, you feel productive, but the engagement and exploration involved in the doing can move your mind and elevate your mood." The result can be a spontaneous, positive, even joyful experience. She explains that handmade self-expression can even help us to let go of negative thoughts or experiences: "You may or may not be conscious of what perturbs you, but creative action with your hands, mind, and body can turn undermining forces into usable energies."
In other words, working hands are healing hands.
For the marginalized women that OUTsideIN serves – and for me, a former volunteer there – I strongly believe that the act of creating handmade products (in this case, travel bags) is crucial to healing and growth that can mend a broken woman and make her strong. Strong, and beautiful, just like the products OUTsideIN makes.
So, no. OUTsideIN is not just a social enterprise. It’s a place where God gathers together women to work, love, and shine His light on the little community around us. If you haven’t visited the workshop lately, or ever, I highly recommend a trip to 107 West Westbrook Street, on the square in quaint little downtown Troy, Tennessee. See it and believe it, come away with travel bags you won’t find anywhere else in the world, and tell others about the beauty you found there. And I'll tell you this: although I’ve left the OUTsideIN workshop, it will never leave me.
Note: the term "healing hands" is commonly found in the world of health services, but it's also used by a wonderful Christian humanitarian aid organization in Nashville called Healing Hands International (hhi.org).
]]>You’re not alone in finding that language amusing. Scots and their language are the source of laughter, sometimes (well, let’s be honest, it’s almost always) unkind, to the English, which rather begs the question: if we’re all daft twits, why are you so bloody anxious to annex us and our land of lost, bleating sheep? I doubt there’s a clear answer to that question, so let’s treat it as rhetorical and move on.
One possible source of the world Hogmanay is the French “homme est né” (which, take my word for it, sounds a lot like “hogmanay”), which means “man is born”, but non-Christian possibilities include more folkloric phrases for the antics of elves and trolls. When I visited Scotland as a wee lassie, my Scottish nanny Sybil derived a lot of glee from terrifying me with tales of the clans of wicked little people lurking in the woods nearby, so I can well believe that connection.
Although of course Hogmanay traditions are numerous, the most widespread, modern(ish) custom practiced when I lived in Scotland in 1970-1971 is called “first-footing”, which starts on New Year’s Eve. It involves being the first person to cross the threshold of a friend or neighbor and often involves the giving of symbolic gifts such as shortbread, whisky, and black bun (a rich fruit cake), intended to bring different kinds of luck to the householder. Food and drink (as more gifts) are then given to the guests. This may go on throughout the early hours of the morning and well into the next day (although modern days see people visiting houses well into the middle of January).
The first-foot is supposed to set the luck for the rest of the year. Traditionally, tall, dark-haired men are preferred as the first-foot, rather like this ruddy-cheeked lad bearing the gifts of a black bun, a smile, and Hogmanay kindness (described in Scots poet Robert Burns’ classic New Year’s poem, Auld Lang Syne, of which you may have heard, even here “across the pond”).
The Finlaystone slaves’ first-footing began in the evening of December 31, 1970 and involved a long, moonlit walk in the damp and dark to the family home of Sari Hepworth’s local boyfriend. I’ve forgotten his name so let’s call him Andrew (a common Scots name). We had dinner as usual at 8:00 p.m. in Finlaystone’s formal dining room and set off on our Hogmanay adventure after we’d finished cleaning up (as usual) the dining room (see picture below), butler’s pantry, kitchen, and scullery.
The first foot in the door of Andrew’s home that night belonged not to a tall, dark-haired man but a short, dark-haired 15-year old girl (Sari) who was too young to qualify for a swallow of whisky but, like her sister Jenny and me, quite willing to feast on shortbread, black buns, and tea while we waited (uselessly) for something exciting to happen. Which didn’t. And after an hour or so of idle chat, we bundled up and trudged back to Finlaystone, where everyone else had gone to bed and we stood in the kitchen debating the merits of a pantry raid versus warm beds. Warm beds won the night and have done so almost every New Year’s Eve in my life ever since, making me wish we’d caught at least one glimpse of Hogmanay elfish mischief. I’m sure the elves were up to something sneaky that night, just not within our narrow human view.
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My first Christmas away from home was far from the difficult and suffering places I’ve seen in this world, spent in Scotland at the splendid 18th-century country mansion of Finlaystone Estate with the highly civilized MacMillan family (who are my clan mates but not direct kin). Finlaystone is the site of a 14th-century castle. John Knox performed the first Protestant Reformed communion service there in 1556, and legendary Scots poet Robert Burns dined there often in the late 18th century. It was rebuilt as a Georgian mansion in 1764 and has been carefully maintained and upgraded (including electricity and modern plumbing but no central heating) by the Kidston and MacMillan families since 1872.
Surrounded by 500 acres of woodland, farmland, and formal gardens, it’s now an officially listed UK historic home with grounds and part of the house open to the public. To the best of my recollection, the mansion house has 33 rooms. There are more on the top floor of the house (the former butler’s quarters and nursery) which when I lived there was rented by an older couple and their wee dachshund who kindly allowed us slaves to watch Upstairs Downstairs on the colour television in their sitting room once a week but did not give us a tour of their flat (apartment).
The rooms I do recall are as follows. Ground floor: entry hall, cloak room, gun room, WC (“waste closet” or toilet), billiard room, dining room, butler’s pantry, office, flower room, kitchen (and food pantry), scullery, cold room, and servants’ sitting room. Upper floors: ante room (waiting room), drawing room, library, laird’s bedroom (the laird is the lord of the castle), laird’s dressing room, Victorian bathroom, four more bedrooms, two bathrooms, and two dressing rooms (my bedroom was actually the dressing room for a nearby bedroom that was used as a guest room), plus in the servants’ quarters were three bedrooms, a bathroom, and the laundry drying room (above the Esse coal stove). I think it’s safe to assume that the top floor tenants had a sitting room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. There was even an old lift (elevator) to transport them from the ground to the top floor.
It was my first Christmas away from home. But Christmas was no big deal, right? At 17 years old, I had outgrown Santa Claus, Christmas stockings, and twinkling lights. My parents were headed for divorce and had stopped giving Christmas gifts and providing frivolous things like shoes, winter coats, and boots (which I therefore had to borrow from Finlaystone’s voluminous cloak and gun room). I was actually relieved to have escaped my troubled family of origin, and the holiday season there kept me busy. We provided floral arrangements and decorated Christmas trees for local businesses and social events; made and sold orange marmalade and brandy-soaked holiday fruitcake; entertained MacMillan friends and family; and prepared gift boxes for Boxing Day (December 26th, when we hosted a meal for servants and tenants and gave them food gifts as part of the centuries-old tradition of gifting those in service and those in need).
I watched in awe as Lady M decorated the 12-foot Christmas tree near the pink marble pillars of the grand staircase in the 2-storey front reception hall (an even grander one graced the library, awaiting decoration for Boxing Day on December 26th).
I helped Mummy H prepare a glorious rib roast (from estate-raised beef), mashed “tatties and neeps” (potatoes and turnips); a vat of gravy; a variety of vegetable sides; delectable Yorkshire pudding (a savory side dish sort of like a popover; see photo below) and of course the legendary, suet-laden “figgy” (dried fruit) Christmas pudding.
So I didn’t expect to miss home and family, but on Christmas Eve I foolishly declined the MacMillans’ invitation to the Langbank Church of Scotland worship service and the Hepworths’ invitation to a service at St. Andrews Roman Catholic Church in Port Greenock, and found myself alone in the huge house. I doubted that my own family was at worship or any other sort of Christmas celebration, and suddenly I felt completely on my own, and in a sense homeless, in the entire world. It was a very strange sensation. I climbed into my narrow bed, beneath a heavy weight of blankets, to read the Agatha Christie mystery novel that one of the MacMillan sons had given me for Christmas and escaped (a lifelong habit) into the world of fiction.
I spent the following Christmas at home with my mother in New York, having been rejected by the University of Edinburgh and accepted to college in Connecticut. My father and brother had moved to Oklahoma by then, leaving Mom and me to eat popcorn for dinner and burn old kitchen chairs in the fireplace to stay warm.
Now, almost 50 years later, I’m looking forward to another quiet Christmas with my husband, complete with roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and a hungry herd of begging pets. And I’ll spend some time retrieving my memories of my first (and last) Scottish “Hogmanay” New Year’s Eve celebration so that I can share them with you later on. Meanwhile, I wish you a very “blithe Yule”.
]]>Right now, I’m still just getting started on the Thanksgiving dinner I’ll get to serve to my in-laws and kids tomorrow. Still, I feel I must just take a few moments to talk about some things I’m thankful for at OUTsideIN.
To begin, we are all healthy. Despite the fact that she and her husband had Covid-19, Lisa was able to have a full recovery with no aftereffects. Kayla continues to pursue physical fitness and is trying to eat healthier and drink more water. Her daughter, Makayla, is getting “blues” and “greens” in school. (That’s a positive.) My daughter, Micah, interviewed Kayla a few days ago for a college paper about social enterprise and Kayla told her that the job she had at OUTsideIN had changed her life. That’s a humbling thought for a “Momtepreneur” who concedes every day that she really doesn’t know what she’s doing trying to steer this little ship.
Just before the pandemic, I spoke to the Holy Angels Catholic Church in Dyersburg, Tennessee and they decided to buy us a new commercial sewing machine. That was huge!!!! I still really can’t believe that happened. We love it so much and it has been a game changer. Later on, we started making face masks for our local first responders and a local food processing plant. That sure helped our revenue stream, which had all but dried up.
But maybe the thing I’m most thankful for is the fact that for eight years now, I’ve been helped, coached, mentored, chided, admired, corrected, and loved by Jean McMillan. Just a few weeks ago, Jean asked to be released from her volunteer obligations at OUTsideIN, I’ve now realized how very much I took this amazingly talented woman for granted and I want to go on the record as at least trying to convey in a public way how much I appreciate her and all she has done.
Jean, who was barely an acquaintance at the time, was in the room when I announced my plan to start a social enterprise. Two days later she told me she wanted to be involved and I was stunned speechless. I was pretty sure that she probably didn’t even like me and couldn’t imagine that we could work together to accomplish our mission to empower women. What did I know? Apparently, very little.
Because you see, God was in the midst of our unlikely partnership and as I learned one-by-one the things I didn’t know how to do, Jean would reveal that they were exactly the things she was quite proficient at. She designed our very first logo, brochure and employee manual. She sourced and ordered almost everything we’ve ever purchased, making sure to get the best value for our hard earned dollars. Eventually, Jean crafted a website for us and taught me to use the latest iteration of it. She’s the only person I have allowed myself to vent to, brag to and cry in front of. I know I’ve told her things that have made the hair on the back of her neck stand up but she has always maintained a calm reassurance that everything would work out. Not long ago, we shared a laugh about the time an employee wore short shorts to work and how freaked out I was about that.
Jean has given so much of herself to OUTsideIN and has asked and received nothing in return. She simply seemed pleased to be contributing to an effort that we both realized was “life - changing” (reference Kayla’s earlier remark). In the beginning, Jean had another job and did most of the things I asked her to do at home. Eventually, after we got our bigger workshop she left that job and attempted retirement. I say “attempted” because she then just started coming in to OUTsideIN on a regular basis and doing even more work for us. That’s not exactly retirement. However, the challenges of the last few months along with a few health concerns have caused her to reassess the amount of time she was spending away from Mr. Parker, her husband. (Yes, that’s a different last name. Did I mention Jean is a bit of a feminist?)
Anyway, I can’t help but agree that Jean McMIllan has done way more than any volunteer should ever be asked to do and is certainly entitled to devote her time to other things she enjoys, like cooking, gardening and making beautiful things.
And speaking of beautiful things, I hope with all my heart that she considers a little social enterprise in Troy called OUTsideIN one of the most beautiful things she’s ever been a part of. Because I do.
It makes me sad to think of all the times I should have been more thankful for this sweet woman that God put in my life to help me with my dream to launch a non-profit. I know I could not have done it without her. I would have given up long ago. And I’m a little bit afraid that I won’t be able to do it without her now. I have depended on her so much. But that kind of mindset simply won’t do. My mentor, Jean, has literally spent years empowering me to believe that I had everything I needed to succeed at making a difference with OUTsideIN. Even though I will miss her so much I’m determined that she has not wasted all the encouragement she has poured into me. That would make her so mad and I cannot bear the wrath of that Yankee temper.
Already distressed by the prospect of frying 14 eggs, I suddenly realized that my presence might be an inconvenience rather than a help to the MacMillans. “So this wasn’t a good time for me to arrive here, was it?”
“No, no. Don’t worry. It’s just family. The MacMillans’ son John, his wife Belinda [pronounced “Bline-dah”] and their smalls [children], and Belinda’s parents. Lord Lumley-Webb was in the Army with Sir Gordon, and Belinda was once a slave. They’re all here for the Hunt.”
“The Hunt?”
“Yes, it’s shooting season, you see, so if it goes well, we’ll soon be dining on pheasant. Do you like pheasant? I’m not very keen on it, but the MacMillans adore it.”
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“We’re 14 for brekkers [breakfast] this morning,” Jenny explained as we set the massive dining room table with antique Blue Willow plates and ornate sterling silver flatware, “because we’ve six guests, plus the usual workers, slaves, Sir Gordon and Lady M.”
Already distressed by the prospect of frying 14 eggs, I suddenly realized that my presence might be an inconvenience rather than a help to the MacMillans. “So this wasn’t a good time for me to arrive here, was it?”
“No, no. Don’t worry. It’s just family. The MacMillans’ son John, his wife Belinda [pronounced “Bline-dah”] and their smalls [children], and Belinda’s parents. Lord Lumley-Webb was in the Army with Sir Gordon, and Belinda was once a slave. They’re all here for the Hunt.”
“The Hunt?”
“Yes, it’s shooting season, you see, so if it goes well, we’ll soon be dining on pheasant. Do you like pheasant? I’m not very keen on it, but the MacMillans adore it.”
“I’ve never had pheasant before. What does it taste like? Chicken?”
Jenny frowned and said, “Not quite. You must try it and judge for yourself. But now we’ve got the table set, we must be off to the kitchen to fetch the food, so come along smart now.”
I could tell you lots of things about my life in the Scottish county of Renfrewshire. I could describe narrow, winding roads; old stone walls; fields of scampering sheep; heather on the hillsides; rhododendrons blooming in the spring; the cobbled streets of Port Greenock…but I am my mother’s daughter and food is almost always foremost in my mind.
Mom’s family was famous for describing all their travels only in terms of food. Where an ordinary person (whatever that is) might say, “We went to Newport and toured the Vanderbilt Estate,” Mom would say, “We went to Newport and had steamers for lunch and lobsters for dinner.” When I think about my own travels, I often find myself following her example. “I went to Valencia and had paella,” or “I went to Taipei but didn’t eat snake” (someday I’ll tell you about Taipei’s Snake Alley).
So I think again about my first morning at Finlaystone and want to tell you more about that first breakfast.
Every breakfast was served with ordinary, store-bought white bread cut in thin slices. We had no toaster, and making toast in the Esse coal stove’s oven was a slow business, so we fried the bread in the grease we saved from cooking just about any kind of meat – bacon, beef, chicken, lamb, whatever. I realize that may sound dubious (if only in a nutritional sense), but the toast fried in that grease was (unfortunately) delicious, as was any other food we cooked in it.
Along with eggs and toast, we cooked bacon or sausages. And every breakfast was served with Scottish oatcakes slathered with homemade butter that the downstairs maid, Margaret, had formed into wee balls with butter paddles [see note below], plus marmalade that we made ourselves using with tart, pectin-rich Seville oranges, rather than the sweet ones preferred across the pond [across the ocean, i.e. in the States]. Oatcakes are a flat bread made of oatmeal (which could be declared the national food of Scotland, as it’s essential to Scottish breakfast porridge), sort of a cross between a cracker and a cookie. I fell in love with them at first bite. When we made porridge it was so thick you could stand your spoon up in it, but I preferred the crunch of oatcakes.
Of course there was coffee, often bitter from being reheated several days in a row, served with sugar cubes and the cream Margaret had skimmed off the top of the milk pail that was delivered daily by one of the farmers who leased Finlaystone land, along with the freshly laid eggs that he collected from Annie the “Egg Lady” (another tenant who raised chickens) on his way to “the big house”. Every morning we made a gesture of healthy eating by drinking sour tinned [canned] white grapefruit juice before settling down to the real business of fueling up on tastier stuff for a busy day.
Jenny and I put all the breakfast foods in bowls and loaded them onto the Victorian wooden breakfast trolley we used to take the meal on the long journey from the kitchen through the back hallway to the formal dining room. I’m not sure of the exact distance that covered but can give you a rough visual of it in the form of this photograph of the rear of the house.
I admit that when the food finally arrived in the dining room, it was not piping hot. The trolley made that journey for breakfast at 8:00, lunch at 13.00 [1 p.m.], tea at 16:00 [4:00 p.m.] and dinner at 20:00 [8:00 p.m.] – a total of eight trips a day. No wonder its wheels were a bit wonky [unsteady] after some 130 years of service.
The plates, cups and saucers made extra trips, as the china was washed in the butler’s pantry beside the dining room after each meal, carried by hand back to the kitchen, and stacked on the side of the Esse coal stove to keep warm until the next meal time. Like most everything else at Finlaystone, the Blue Willow china was ancient and treated with reverence. When the dishes broke, they were sent off to be glued and stapled back together, then put back in service. No one seemed concerned about the potential accumulation of bacteria between the thick metal staples or about the lead content of the antique porcelain.
Blue Willow china is beautiful and often quite valuable, but the thought of it makes me cringe even today. When transferring it from the Esse to the trolley, I dropped the plates – 16 of them - and every one of them broke into a mess of shards on the kitchen floor. Jenny, Mummy H and I gazed at the shattered remains, then each other.
After a moment of horrified silence, Mummy H said briskly, “First we must warm up more plates for breakfast. Then you must sweet up the broken bits and tell Lady M what happened.”
Aghast, I cried, “I can’t tell her!”
“You must!”
When Lady M arrived in the kitchen five minutes later, Mummy H said, “Jeannie has something to tell you.”
Unable to meet Lady M’s stern gaze, I squeaked out my confession, ending with a deeply sincere, “I’m so sorry.”
Envisioning immediate exile, I wondered how I’d ever get home again (my ticket from New York to Prestwick was one-way). I was (and am) short and facing the sturdy, stout Lady M felt rather like facing down a bull. After a few minutes of ominous silence, Lady M said, “You must be more careful in the future. Very careful. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Lady M,” I squeaked.
“Right. Well, let’s get on with breakfast. Everyone’s waiting in the dining room by now.” She stomped out of the kitchen. The moment Lady M was gone, Mummy H gave me a quick hug, then turned to the Esse to transfer the rest of the meal onto the trolley. When it came time to move the newly warmed plates to the trolley, I gave them a look of fear and distrust.
“I’ll do that today,” Mummy H said, “But you must take your turn from now on. Just be extra careful.”
Needless to say, breakfast was not a jolly meal for me that day, but the clatter and chatter of the MacMillans and guests enabled me to keep a low profile. By teatime that day, the Hepworths (my coworkers) had inducted me into the Slaves’ Hall of Infamy. I still regretted dropping the Blue Willow china, but turning it into a funny story saved the day – and became a useful tool in dealing with trouble that has served me very well in the 50 years since that memorable breakfast at Finlaystone. I highly recommend it.
Note: To make butter balls, Margaret placed a “knob” of butter [a walnut-sized chunk of butter] on the grooved surface of a wooden butter paddle, placed another other paddle on top of it, and holding a paddle in each hand, moved the paddles in a staggered circular pattern to shape the knob into a ball.
]]>It was my first chilly morning at Finlaystone and I had no idea what the Esse was, but I joined Jolande beside it and did appreciate the warmth. While Jolande explained the daily breakfast routine, I happened to notice a skillet of burning bacon and without much thought, reached over and pulled it aside. The bacon and its tantalizing fat simmered down and I turned back to Jolande, who terrified me by telling me that there’d be 14 for breakfast that morning so I must fry 14 eggs. I glanced at the Esse and realized it was a stove. I would have to fry eggs on this stove? How? Where were the burners? Did it even have burners? Fourteen fried eggs?! FOURTEEN?!
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It was my first chilly morning at Finlaystone and I had no idea what the Esse was, but I joined Jolande beside it and did appreciate the warmth. While Jolande explained the daily breakfast routine, I happened to notice a skillet of burning bacon and without much thought, reached over and pulled it aside. The bacon and its tantalizing fat simmered down and I turned back to Jolande, who terrified me by telling me that there’d be 14 for breakfast that morning so I must fry 14 eggs. I glanced at the Esse and realized it was a stove. I would have to fry eggs on this stove? How? Where were the burners? Did it even have burners? Fourteen fried eggs?! FOURTEEN?!
For perhaps the first time in my life, I attempted to negotiate. “Do the eggs have to be fried? What about scrambled eggs?”
Jolande shook her head. “No, they must be fried. We had scrambled eggs yesterday.”
Later Jolande told me that she knew I was born to be a cook when I rescued the bacon. An immigrant who had fled Hungary during World War ll, she had decades of experience in the hospitality industry, running hotels and restaurants in northern England’s scenic Lake District, and ruled the kitchen at Finlaystone as well as working for the estate’s florist business. She taught me how to cook and welcomed me into her family. I became an adopted sister to her daughters: Sari (a 15-year-old student at a secondary school in nearby Kilmacolm) and 19-year-old Jenny (a “slave” like me) and soon began calling her Mummy H.
The H was for Hepworth, the surname her alcoholic ex-husband gave her, along with a broken nose during a drunken fight (she told me quite openly that both of them had been drunk). At the time, Jolande spoke English, German, Hungarian, and quite a lot of French; later she learned to speak Spanish. When she couldn’t think of the right word in English, she would substitute one from another language, and if all else failed, made up a word on the spot, which could be very entertaining.
Most of my conversations with Jolande took place in the kitchen, where cookery was nothing at all like heating a Swanson’s TV Dinner. Finlaystone’s kitchen hadn’t changed since the Victorian era, so we cooked on the Esse coal stove (Esse is the brand name), washed up in the scullery nearby, and stored food in the “cold room” because we had no refrigerator, even in 1971-1972.
Although I had been to Finlaystone with my parents when I was five, I remembered little about the mansion’s interior and sometimes felt as if I was living in a museum.
I had I moved to Scotland a few months after my 17th birthday, living with and working for my clanspeople, General Sir Gordon and Lady MacMillan. Sir Gordon was Chief of the Clan MacMillan (note: a clan is like a tribe of people) and it was Lady M’s family that had owned Finlaystone, a forested 500-acre estate and mansion on the Firth of Clyde (an estuary of the River Clyde) outside southern Scotland’s big city of Glasgow, for several generations. Sir Gordon inherited his title but Lady M earned hers; the Queen bestowed the “Lady” upon her in recognition of her work caring for London evacuees (mostly children) during World War ll, while Sir Gordon was serving in the British Army as Governor of Gibraltar.
I was too young for a Scottish work permit so basically worked for my room and board. Starting with their children’s friends and classmates, the MacMillans employed low-paid young people they called “slaves” to do what you could call scut work - mostly menial, sometimes nasty chores like shoveling chicken manure (frightfully good fertilizer, you see), raking leaves in the rain, washing dishes in the scullery, and picking bulb flowers in the cold, damp early Scottish spring to sell at the Glasgow flower market.
We “slaves” were a longstanding tradition at Finlaystone, which is now open to the public, offering a variety of outdoor activities, a tea room, falconry, gift shop, tours of part of the mansion’s interior, concerts, and 10 acres of beautiful gardens to explore, including one called Slaves’ Paradise. [Ironically, an 18th century occupant of Finlaystone was the owner of real slaves who made a fortune from his Jamaican sugar plantation.] When I try to imagine a garden that would be paradise to a Finlaystone slave, I see one without weeds, thorns, fallen leaves, flowers to deadhead and insects to avoid, and needing no compost , be it chicken or any other fecal matter.
But back to the Victorian kitchen, where my cooking career began under Mummy H’s patient tutelage. I confess that I’ve never come to terms with frying 14 eggs for breakfast, but I learned countless useful things about cookery that I still practice on a daily basis. Mummy H passed away some years ago but sometimes I feel she’s at my elbow here in my own modern kitchen. I still consider her daughter Jenny as my sister though I haven’t seen her since 1982, when I visited the home she shares with her Spanish husband and their family on the Balearic Island of Menorca, off the coast of northern Africa. Nowadays when I have a cooking question, it’s Jenny I ask, and she always gives good advice as well as funny stories.
Built in 1764, Finlaystone’s current mansion was made of stone and had no central heat. The Esse coal stove made the kitchen the warmest room in the house, followed closely by the Linen Room directly above the Esse (where laundry was hung to dry and then ironed).
Close by was the servants’ sitting room, where we spent our free time huddled before the “electric fire” (a small heater set on the hearth of the real fireplace) with our feet resting on the Hepworths’ large and loving black Lab, Berry (after whom I named one of our black dogs), Berry being short for Blackberry. We had no television; ironically (again) to watch Masterpiece Theatre’s Upstairs, Downstairs show, we went to the top floor of the house (at one time the nursery and the butler’s flat) to join the tenants who rented it and who had a black and white television set.
A rear entrance to servants’ wing led to what used to be stables, and a mountain of coal for the Esse sat in one of the stalls. We took turns filling the Esse each night, lugging the coal in a tin scuttle back to the kitchen and into the belly of the stove.
I dropped the loaded pail on my left foot one night, which was extremely painful but excused me from outdoor chores for a month. I spent that time painting a sign for Finlaystone’s garden centre and experimented with baking, using the marble-topped Victorian baking table. I became quite good at making scones, but unwittingly ended my baking career by having the gall to put cinnamon in the scones for our daily afternoon tea. Sadly, we had no elevenses (morning tea break) but since dinner, served in the huge formal dining room, wasn’t until 8:00 pm, the 4 o’clock tea was a necessity.
My bedroom was actually the dressing room for a much larger, very grand room that was reserved for guests. Each night I slept under a mound of blankets so heavy that it was quite a job to turn over. There was an electric fire in my room that I was allowed to use only when dressing and undressing. My one window looked out at the rear of the house where Lady M’s formal rose garden waited for weather warm enough to bloom. In the distance I could catch a glimpse of the river’s Firth, which had once been home to a thriving shipbuilding industry.
The only room in the house with a wood fire in its fireplace was the formal drawing room. Slaves weren’t banished to the servants’ sitting room – the MacMillans encouraged us to spend our free time upstairs in the drawing room – but I felt more at home downstairs, laughing with the Hepworths. In truth, it was their friendship that kept me warm during that long, cold winter. When I came in from picking snowdrops in the damp, chilly woods, Mummy H would hug me to warm me, just as she hugged her own daughters. She was a flawed and troubled person, but I loved her just the same.
And truly, finding the warmth of fellow humans is a wonderful reason to explore our world.
Note: pencil drawings by Jean McMillan
For more information about Finlaystone, go to: http://www.finlaystone.co.uk/
]]>I was born in Ipswich, MA, a small seaside town with beautiful beaches, quaint Colonial architecture, and a dark history of witch-burning. When “summer people” arrived, clogging the streets and trashing the beaches, the natives sighed in resignation. When the tourists departed, the natives gave a collective sigh of relief. As an adult I lived for a time in the foothills of Massachusetts’ scenic Berkshire Mountains. I can remember standing in the picnic area of a small park there laughing at the “leaf peepers” who jammed the highway with their cars and their oohs and aahs as the deciduous trees gave one last splendid color show before snow, not cars, came to block the roads. Come warm weather, “summer people” would fill their cars with cheap (sales tax free) booze at the state-run liquor stores at New Hampshire’s southern border before heading north to mountain country. I can also remember coming home from Hong Kong to find Memphis International Airport filled with Elvis impersonators, including one fellow who was Asian (and if I were Elvis, I’d be mighty flattered by that).
Most of my travel has been for business, not pleasure (although one doesn’t necessarily exclude the other), but for now let’s lump business and pleasure together. When developing and sourcing consumer products (anything from stuffed toys to faucets to accent furniture), I spent time in “touristy” places like Lisboa (Portugal), Rio de Janeiro (Brasil) and Bangkok (Thailand) and did my fair share of shopping for souvenirs. Though I was seldom in those places during tourist season, I recognized some of the natives’ resignation when dealing with Ugly Americans. And I also got glimpses of what can only be called opportunism by natives, sometimes shaded with cunning, disdain and even deviousness. Tourist excursions I’ve taken in Beijing (China) and Honolulu (Hawaii) have landed me in some peculiar situations, coerced into paying for a meal or souvenir that I had no wish to buy. That visit to Honolulu was especially humbling because I was this sophisticated world traveler on her way home from doing business in Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Indonesia. I suspect God was smirking at me up in heaven. Silly girl, you’re not in charge here!
I guess this is another plea, begging you not to be the Ugly American when you travel, and encouraging you to behave with as much courtesy and respect as you can muster as you visit new places and meet new people, and to keep your mind and heart open to what you might learn.
Recently my husband and I watched a travel show on television in which the host, an older fellow I’ll call Mr. Jones, whose intentions I’m sure were good, went to poverty-stricken southern Ethiopia in the company of two Ethiopian men who are involved with the World Bank’s financial aid program using a strategy called Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction.
The World Bank requires recipients of certain loans to use those funds for poverty reduction via sustainable economic development. In theory, developing new industries (including tourism) can help alleviate poverty by providing jobs and building the infrastructure needed for industries to function and thrive. It’s a program that’s succeeded in parts of urban Ethiopia but has been slow in the rural areas of southern Ethiopia. It sounds like a sensible approach to me, but this television host’s behavior veered off track and he ended up proving (as my mother would say) that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
During this episode, Mr. Jones quickly discovered that the tribes living in that part of the country have very mixed feelings about the advent of tourism. I can’t really speak to that without first discussing it with an Ethiopian resident, but it appeared to me that they were not interested in welcoming this visitor and his crew, did not want to be treated like animals in a zoo – inhuman objects of curiosity - and were uncomfortable being photographed. Some of them demanded payment – cash in advance (so to speak) for having a picture taken of them or their homes – and fights broke out whenever Mr. Jones tried to explain his purpose to them – No, no, I want to be your friend, I want my audience to learn about you, I want to share you, not pay you. Instead of listening to their objections respectfully, he smiled, laughed, and even put his arm around the shoulders of the protesting residents and reached out to pet the heads of their children. Needless to say that backfired, and as he led his crew away, he spoke sadly about how being so misunderstood had ruined his visit.
Mr. Jones’ failed Ethiopian expedition brought to mind Patsy Cline’s 1956 song, Stop, Look & Listen:
Well, I know a cool cat from way downtown
He's been boppin' all around
In this ole world he's livin' fast
Someday I'm afraid he's gonna run outta gas
So if you're travelin' that way, too
I tell you, friend, what you better do.
Ya gotta stop, look and listen
Hey, ya don't know what you're missin'
Ya gotta stop, look and listen
'Cause ya might be missin' kissin'
If you're trav'lin' slow, you'll go a long, long way.
It’s important to pay attention to other peoples’ behavior, body language, beliefs, and more under any circumstances, but especially when traveling abroad. If you don’t stop, look and listen, you’ll not only miss some interesting sights but will learn little and possibly be a poor ambassador. So as Patsy sang, travel slow. Travel – and act – slowly and you’ll have a long and wonderful journey. Bon voyage!
That’s why my correspondence with pen pals and faraway friends is so precious to me. That correspondence helps keep me connected with other people. It reminds me that I’m alive, that helping other people is as valuable for me as it is for them. Volunteer work earns no cash, but it fills the wallets in my heart and mind.
Although I’ve sought volunteer work all my adult life, the volunteer opportunities that engage me now came – or so it seemed – out of nowhere, reminding me that God, not Jean, is overseeing my journey through life. One of those jobs is coordinating my church’s correspondence with the Asian kids we sponsor through an organization called Agape Asia. When I took on the job, I didn’t expect to become anyone’s pen pal, but circumstances put a young Chinese student named Xiao Song in my path, and our correspondence is truly a blessing.
I wrote about Song (Xiao is his family name; Song is his given name) in Happy & Full, an August 2, 2020 article for the OUTsideINworks.com blog in which I addressed his fear of failure and how he can hardly breathe under the pressure of studying for and passing the entrance examination to medical school. When I read his letter asking for my advice, I easily understood his feelings because I happen to be another person driven to succeed no matter what, so it was easy for me to reply with empathy, to reassure and support him.
In the first paragraph of that article, I wrote, “Sometimes I think if more people made an effort to personally connect with people in other countries, we would learn more about each other and in the process, learn how to make the world a better place.”
I’m not sure I can claim to have cultivated even one square inch of a better world, but I want to tell you about Song because I believe this story shows how even a few kind, heartfelt words can make a difference in this troubled world. Here is Song’s reply to my letter of reassurance:
Dear Jean,
Thank you very much for your careful answer to my problem. After reading your reply to me, I feel much better now and I feel much less pressure in my heart.
I feel that I have always regarded every step in my plan as too important. It is undeniable that every step and every decision in our life will have a certain impact on us. However, as long as we can take our life seriously and try our best to complete our plans, it doesn't matter if we have a few unfinished plans occasionally, because among thousands of plans these plans are almost negligible.
I told myself that I must finish something when I was young, which is also the expectation of people around me. How many scores must I have in Chinese? How many scores must I have in English? How many scores must I have in Math? I must go to high school. I must go to a good university. My life has too many "must's." Now in retrospect, you should only do just as well as you can. There's no need to force yourself.
I admire your courage to change your job. In my opinion, changing a job may be a tremendous thing. My plan now is to be a doctor in the future and I never thought that I would be engaged in another career. Maybe I'm afraid of failure. I don't dare take my future as a bet to face the unknown risks. To some extent, I'm a little weak.
Best wishes for you! Your friend, Xiao Song
Song’s words made me cry, not just because he said my letter had helped him feel better but because they touched the invisible strings that tie us together, over the 12,00 miles (by air) and many time zones between us. His letter reminded me that those strings may be invisible but are strong nonetheless as they reach across geography, cultures, customs, languages, and the decades’ difference in our ages.
In some ways, Song is not a foreigner, not a citizen of a country too many Americans revile, not a burden on Agape Asia and its supporters. So, who is Xiao Song? He is a good person working hard to make his dreams come true, and like his 67-year-old American pen pal, his life has “too many musts.” Like me, he’s afraid of failure, a little weak, and very human. And he cares about me and wishes me well, just as I care about him and wish him well. That, to me, is a connection that makes the world a better place, at absolutely no cost to me. In fact, it’s priceless.
I know many busy people who feel pulled in a million directions, burdened with work and family and responsibilities and too little time. As the saying goes, I have been there and done that, more times than I can count. Please, don’t ever underestimate the power of one kind word or gesture. Prayer is important, but I firmly believe it’s not the only thing God wants us to do. As my mother was fond of saying, put your money where your mouth is. If you have time to pray, you have time to connect with someone who needs your help and love. You have time to transform one square inch of the world. So cultivate the connections that can hold us all together even in dark, confusing times like these.
Interested in learning more about Agape Asia? Visit their website, AgapeAsia.org or find them on Facebook.com/AgapeAsia.
]]>This lesson brought to life something my mother had told me when I was a teenager. She and my father were hard-working Christians, both dedicated to the Protestant Work Ethic and a shared belief in the importance of moral behavior, but their different personalities colored their views. Dad viewed the world in infinite shades of grey, while Mom’s view was forever black and white. She delivered that view loud and clear at every opportunity. [If you think I’m outspoken, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. When (and if) you get to heaven, look over at God on His throne and you’ll see Mom there, lecturing Him about the global problem of illiteracy].
And me? I’m the kid with the box of 200 crayons, all worn down to stubs from heavy use. I see the world as vividly as my mother but render it in infinite shades of every color on the spectrum. And the people and events that have tested my belief in morality have also enriched my world as they so colorfully illustrate Mom’s black and white rules.
When I was in my teens, Mom warned me to be careful of men who might draw me into immoral situations. Her favorite example was the archetypical man who claimed to be a starving artist and would lure me up to his atelier (attic studio) to show me his etchings, with seduction as his ulterior motive.
That scenario struck me as improbable but quaint. Etching as an art form was popular in centuries past, but not so much in the 1960’s and 70’s, when the psychedelic ruled the art world. Albrecht Dürer’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse fascinated me in an art history class, but my own artwork at the time favored pastel flowers and fairies. While etching was an interesting art form, it hardly seemed likely to ever pose a moral dilemma or threat.
Even as a teenager, I knew Mom’s tendency to hyperbole (of which I solemnly swear on a mountain of minutely annotated Bibles that I never, ever in a trillion years inherited even one microscopic iota) well enough to automatically downgrade her wilder warnings. And as an aspiring artist and budding feminist, I envisioned a future in which I might lure a man up to my own atelier, but sadly the opportunity never arose. In fact, I forgot about the starving artist until that day in Athens decades after Mom warned me about him.
As a developer of flooring material (among many other things) for a home renovation and restoration catalog, I went to Greece in search of marble tiles and oriental rugs. My business meetings had to be scheduled around the local custom of a big midday meal, when businesses closed and the city of Athens snoozed for three hours. On this particular day, I found myself at loose ends and decided to go for a walk. No shops were open, but Athens is full of interesting things to see. My hotel was located at Syntagma Square, near the 19th century Old Royal Palace that now houses the Greek Parliament, and within walking distance of many of the “must see” sights.
Huddled in my raincoat, I wandered past Byzantine churches, modern office buildings and shuttered houses. Although the city was sleepy, I was not alone, walking past men who sat on their doorsteps and (I presumed) gossiped the afternoon away. I would smile and nod at them but kept up a brisk pace because it was too chilly and damp to dally. To my surprise, an older gentleman (older than me, anyway) sprang up and walked beside me, saying in excellent English, “Good afternoon, madam. Can I help you?”
“No thank you,” I replied.
“You come up to my place and I show you my paintings?”
I could hardly believe my ears. Here he was: Mom’s starving artist. He would show me paintings rather than etchings, but was the seductive artist all the same. Trying not to smile, I said, “No thank you” and turned away.
Not at all deterred, he followed me for a few feet, saying, “Hey! I know you Anglikí (English) ladies! I know why you come here! You come with me, eh?”
Once again I said, “No thank you,” and because his persistence was making me uneasy, turned the next corner, and the next corner after that, and headed back to my hotel. Were there really paintings in that fellow’s atelier? I’ll never know for sure, but perhaps I missed something wonderful. Or… perhaps not.
I never told my mother about that encounter in Athens that winter afternoon. Why? Because I already knew what her response would be.
“It gives me no pleasure to say this,” she would say, “But... I told you so.”
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Have you ever felt that your ambitions were impossibly difficult to achieve? I certainly have, and this is what I wrote to him.
]]>What’s a pen pal? It’s a person with whom one becomes friendly by exchanging letters, traditionally via postal mail, and often someone in a foreign country whom one has never met. It’s perhaps unusual in this day of social media and communication via texting, but I have enjoyed corresponding with pen pals since I was a child so long ago - back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth. Or so to speak.
I can’t say that I have a favorite pen pal, but I feel a very strong connection with a young college student in China. Song says that his English is poor, but in written form it is superior to the English language skills of many American adults, and that has made it easier for us to know and understand each other. He comes from a difficult, impoverished background but is determined to become a doctor. The next step in his career is a postgraduate entrance examination that will determine what medical school he attends, and at times that exam looms over him like a dark cloud. Recently he told me “my dream is very big and it is difficult to realize it” and “I can hardly breathe under such great pressure every day.” He asked me, “Have you ever encountered this problem in your life?”
Have you ever felt that your ambitions were impossibly difficult to achieve? I certainly have, and this is what I wrote to him.
Dear Song,
Last week I received news about your college studies and internship. It was fascinating to see your photos of the ophthalmic surgery, the radiology lab, and you at your desk. I was happy to read that when you are at school, working hard with your classmates every day, you feel “very happy and full”. I love that phrase: happy and full.
A few days later, I received your letter telling me about the great pressure of studying for your postgraduate entrance examination and your fear that you will not score well enough to enter the school of your choice for the remainder of your education. Your writing is so eloquent, and I recognize very well the feelings you express.
It seems to me that some people just float along the surface of life, never thinking or feeling deeply. It’s hard for me to understand their seemingly carefree existence because I am not that sort of person. Like you, I am a person who thinks and feels deeply, who believes in things very strongly, and feels compelled to tackle every project with total commitment, attention and energy. Neither the “surface” person or the “deep” person is right or wrong, and it’s probably good that humans are all made different from each other.
I have to admit that being a deep person is not always easy. We expect so much from ourselves, sometimes to an unreasonable degree, and find it difficult to relax enough to enjoy what we’re doing – to feel happy and full. One of the most challenging things in my life – that is still a challenge – is to keep a good balance. I wish I could give you the magic formula for how to do that. All I can do is to reassure you that you are a good person, a hard worker, and full of potential. I believe you will succeed, but making that happen will involve a lot of hard work on your part. It probably won’t be easy, but every minute of it will be worthwhile.
I have a friend who dreamed of being a schoolteacher. She married young, had two children, and worked at any job she could find in order to provide for her family. When the children were old enough to go to school, she went to college to study education, but her education took a long time because she also had to care for her family and work full time. After 10 years, her dream came true and she was finally she was able to become a teacher full time. Ten years sounds like a very long time, doesn’t it? But in fact it was just a fraction of her lifetime. She worked as a teacher for 35 years, and she made a difference in the lives of countless students.
Now, here is my story. Two weeks after I graduated from college at age 21, I married and moved to the town where my new husband planned to attend graduate school. We could not afford for both of us to go to school at the same time. While my husband was in school he was not able to work so I had to work at a low-paying job in order to pay rent and buy food. Somehow I found things to like about my lowly job, met interesting people, and learned useful if simple things about how to be a good employee and improve my performance of my job. When my husband finished school we moved again, and this time I got a better job where I learned things about international trade that I found fascinating. Every few years I would find a better job, and then an even better job, as I searched for work in international trade. I was 34 years old the first time I embarked on a business trip overseas. It had taken me 10 years to achieve my goal, much longer than I would have liked, but every minute of it was important and worthwhile. I discovered abilities that I didn’t know I had and acquired skills that proved to be very useful. I learned a lot, met many people who helped me grow, and I gained confidence every day.
I must also tell you this. If you’re not able to go to the medical school of your dreams and instead attend another school, you will still learn a lot and become a great doctor. You are a good student and any medical school will give you knowledge, but YOU are the one who will use that knowledge in important, life-changing ways that will help so many people.
You can feel happy and full when doing more things, and different things, than you can imagine today. The more new things you try, the better your life will be. You will discover things you’re not good at or you don’t like, but you will also find new things that you never imagined before, things that make you feel happy and full.
Your friend, Jean
Now I ask you: is there something in your life that makes you feel happy and full? What priority do you give it? Do you ever feel cheated because other tasks push the happy ones aside? Do you feel guilty when you do take time for the happy ones? I was raised by parents whose belief in the “Protestant Work Ethic” drove them to be frugal and disciplined, to work hard without expectation of reward, pleasure or satisfaction. Even so, I saw glimmers of happiness and satisfaction in both of them when they were engaged in the things that they cared about. I embarked on my education and business career with the same goals as my parents’: hard work and discipline. Along the way I discovered the experience of happy and full in unexpected ways, but it took me years to give those things a priority, and sometimes I wonder if I should have given them a higher priority much sooner. Now I believe that the happy and full is (yet another) gift from God, and I encourage you to accept that gift and honor it in your daily life. When we are happy and full, we are in a great position to share that gift with others. So, don’t be stingy: give it your all.
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At the University of Connecticut (speaking of overheated lecture halls) I minored in French, and in one of my French classes there learned the term une dame d’un certain âge, a wonderful term for a woman over 40 who leads a chic and adventurous life, and whose youthful verve is balanced by the wisdom and experience of a mature person. This worldly woman is also likely to have a handsome young male escort on her arm as she attends parties, shops, travels, and otherwise enjoys life to the fullest.
At 19 years old, I couldn’t imagine why a young man would prefer the company of an older woman and assumed that this dame must pay her escort for his time with her, but I never could pin down my French instructor on that point. As the years passed and no handsome young man who was eager for my company rather than my money ever appeared at my elbow, I wondered if perhaps the payment part was true. It wasn’t until I visited Turkey on a business trip in my early 40’s that I learned the truth of the matter.
While in Istanbul, I spent a free afternoon on a cold, wet winter day shopping in the Grand Bazaar, a labyrinthine market filled with interesting, sometimes exotic products, from gorgeous Oriental rugs to shiny gold jewelry to evil eye talismans, all hawked by aggressive but friendly vendors who would do just about anything short of dragging you by the arm to get you into their shop. Plying you with hot, sweet Turkish tea poured out of ornate copper teapots into glass cups, they would display dozens of tempting items and vigorously (though politely) combat your every effort to leave without making a purchase. It was entertaining but tiring, and after a few hours I made my escape, stepping out of the Bazaar into a sea of mud that was nowhere near the entrance I had used. Lost again: the story of my life.
Lugging a rolled area rug destined for my living room and a heavy, bulky leather jacket for my husband (quite possibly the most foolish purchases one could make abroad, with the possible exception of the Muslim prayer mat I bought in Amsterdam at age 18 when I had only a backpack to carry all my worldly goods), I waded through the mud in search of a well-traveled street with taxis available. Such a street was oddly hard to find near a tourist attraction like the Grand Bazaar, but then again, it was January – not at all peak tourist season. (Which illustrates the sad truth about business travel—its timing is rarely as felicitous as vacation travel.)
As I trudged along, I was surprised to suddenly find at my side a handsome young man who said, “Tünaydın [good afternoon]. My name is Davut. And you are?”
Unable to come up with a false name on such short notice*, I said, “I am Jean.”
With a slight bow, he held out his hands and said, “Here, Madam Jean. I will carry that for you.”
If you wonder why I’d lie about my name, the answer is my Northeast USA upbringing, during which a big social mantra was: Don’t talk to strangers. In truth, my travels have often made it necessary for me to talk to strangers (assuming we could find a common language), and rarely with a bad outcome (but some day I’ll tell the story of my visit to a South American country under chaotic military rule). And where I live now in the rural South, there is no such thing as a stranger—or not for long, anyway.
But Istanbul was (to me) an exotic mystery, a strange mixture of East and West, where one of the first sights I saw was a man walking a large bear on a leash down a city sidewalk. I was a woman alone in a country brand new to me, and right or wrong, I felt that caution would be wise.
My own safety was more important than (and not as heavy as) the rug I’d bought, so I allowed Davut to take the rolled-up rug while I kept my grip on the leather jacket, and we went on down the sidewalk side-by-side. As we walked, he told me about all the marvelous sights I must see in Istanbul. He pointed at the almost hallucinatory splendor of the Hagia Sophia, which I remembered from a college course in Byzantine architecture. Originally a Greek Orthodox church, then converted to a mosque when Ottoman forces conquered the city, it was then a marvelous museum that I would have loved to visit, business meetings permitting, but not necessarily on the arm of young Davut.
He went on to suggest a day of sightseeing tomorrow, and oh yes, at what time could he collect me for dinner that night, and at which hotel was I staying? Dinner at a Turkish restaurant sounded good to my inner gourmand, but coward that I am, I pretended that I hadn’t heard him. He went on to ask where did I live? To what address should he ship my rug, so I need not bother to carry it everywhere my travels took me? Did I need perhaps to convert some US dollars into Turkish lira? Because Davut knew of very interesting souvenirs I might wish to buy, if I would kindly allow him to escort me to….
Eventually he paused to take a breath, and during that pause I asked, “Why are you being so nice to me?”
Davut shrugged and said, “It is winter. Business is slow.”
Wanting to laugh, I realized that I had finally become une dame d’un certain âge in this exotic place far, far from home, while my stalwart husband worked and tended our dogs and cats and shoveled snow in a middle class New England suburb. Fortunately at this point I finally spotted a taxi ahead and made my escape after reclaiming my rug and thanking Davut for his help – dubious as that help might have been. Shopping had emptied my wallet of Turkish lira, so I left him without even a small tip (note: in some countries, offering a tip is considered bad manners). By no means a chic and adventurous dame intent on romance and adventure, to this day I smile when I think about my handsome young Turkish eskort on a slow Istanbul winter day so long ago.
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And I was probably born a food adventurer. According to family legend, my parents enjoyed playing the "Let's see if the baby will eat this" game, especially after a martini or two. Fisheyes and live sea slug are the only foods I can recall refusing to even try. At times in my travels I've felt a bit suspicious when I asked my host what the food was on my plate and got, "No word in English" as a reply. I'm pretty sure that I was eating beef brains when I got that response during a lunch in Buenos Aires (it was delicious, by the way). And of course, the fruits, vegetables and other foods found in Thailand are often quite different from those found (for just one example) in Scotland (I’ll tell you about Scottish food some other time), so when a young Chinese acquaintance told me that there was no word in English for a delicious green vegetable that I loved to eat in Fuzhou, my response was regret, not suspicion.
One time when I was having dinner with friends in Hong Kong, I greatly enjoyed a mysterious dish and grabbed more every time it came around on the turntable at the center of the table. After my 3rd helping, my friend Elaine (whose Chinese name is Yin Ling) leaned over and said, "Jean, you like this?" I answered, "Yes, it's delicious," and she said, "Jean, it is eel. You like eel?"
I laughed and said, "I thought it might be eggplant! But yes, I like eel. It’s yummy," and shoveled some more of it onto my plate. I will admit that if I’d seen that eel before it was caught and cooked, I might not have been eager to try it. It was probably the wiggling of the sea slug that made me cringe. And the fish eyes? I don’t know.
Sadly, eel is hard to come by in rural Tennessee, so I was delighted when Mr. P. recently bought some frozen eel online. When thawed and cooked and garnished with chopped fresh fennel fronds, it was almost as delicious as the eel I enjoyed in Hong Kong. And that, my friends, is a very happy culinary memory.
Trying new foods everywhere I go has been both educational and enriching. And sometimes fattening. But mostly, yummy! So I tell you now what my mother used to say, “Don’t knock it 'til you try it.”
]]>I am a veteran traveler. In the past 66 years, I have explored the world, at first as a child with my parents in the USA, Canada, and UK, and later as a business woman traveling - mostly alone – to 27 countries in Europe, Asia and South America. Every business trip was also a personal exploration, discovering beauty and ugliness; fascinating people, foods and cultures; and opening my eyes to things I never before knew existed – like them or not. I know this makes me sound like quite the adventurer, but when I first set out on my own shortly after my 17th birthday, I was not a brave traveler at all. In my teens, I was a timid soul and excruciatingly shy in travels that might have gone better if I were more courageous and outgoing.
Having graduated from high school in 1970 at age 16, and convinced that I was not smart enough for college (yes, I know now that my assumption of stupidity was contradictory nonsense, as later on I graduated from the University of Connecticut Magna Cum Laude), I went along with my parents’ plans to give me me (too young for a work visa) a one-way ticket to southwest Scotland, to work for my room and board at Finlaystone Estate in Langbank, home to the Clan MacMillan. I had been there as a child, so it seemed like a safe enough destination. My parents dropped me off at the airport in NY and Lady MacMillan collected me at the airport at Prestwick. An easy enough trip.
Someday I will share stories of my life as a Finlaystone “slave”, but let’s concentrate on Jean the Traveler for now. In 1970, I thought of myself as a flower child. I’d heard about fellow free spirits wandering around Europe (especially Amsterdam) spreading peace and love. I vaguely dreamed of hefting a backpack and joining them, but since I had limited resources (the pound or two of “pocket money” I was occasionally given at Finlaystone, as I was too young for a British work visa), I decided to spend my first solo holiday in the Netherlands, where I would travel by foot and rail and stay in inexpensive youth hostels. By April 1971, I had accumulated enough cash and hostel vouchers, so off I went.
I walked eight miles from Finlaystone to the train station in Port Greenock, boarded a train for London, and chugged through southern Scotland and the length of England down to London; got another train to the port of Hull; and that evening boarded a ferry bound for Rotterdam.
As a kid growing up on Long Island, NY, I had traveled by train, alone and with friends, to and from Manhattan, so negotiating a train journey felt like an easy and safe way to go. I had been on several ferries in New England and in Scotland, so the ferry ride across the English Channel was not much of a challenge. But there was a big challenge facing me when the ferry arrived at Hull the next morning. I stood on the ferry’s deck with my backpack, surveying the busy commercial port and the dawn of a misty, grey day in Holland.
Looking not at all like the bright fields of tulips with storybook windmills I’d dreamed of, it might as well have been a port on another planet. The dock was crowded and busy and from the ferry I couldn’t see where I ought to go in order to find transportation to the youth hostel in The Hague. I was utterly terrified, frozen with reluctance and fear of the unknown, and stood there transfixed and panicked as all the other passengers and vehicles had exited and only I remained on the deck beside the ramp to the dock, which to me might as well have been a gangplank to certain death.
Finally a fellow from the ferryboat crew approached me and said, “You must disembark now, Miss.” He must have seen the fright on my face because he added, “If you want to get back on the ferry, Miss, and return to Hull, you’ll have to go to the ticket office first.” He pointed to some unseen place on the dock.
It was one of the (all too many) times in my life when I wished I could just disappear. How could I return to Finlaystone with a tale of cowardice instead of stories of adventure? So pride forced me to trudge down the ramp to the dock, all the while forcing myself to resist the call of the relative safety of the ferry. And much to my surprise, the dock was nowhere near as scary as it had seemed aboard the ferry. I followed other passengers on foot, found the train station, and bought a ticket, and climbed aboard the train to Den Haag (The Hague), and never looked back.
I then spent two weeks wandering around the Netherlands with very few mishaps and gained confidence every day. Eventually I saw the fields of tulips and windmills; ate toast with Nutella for breakfast (my joyous first encounter); saw the sights and met other youngsters even more footloose and fancy free than I could even dream of being. I returned to Finlaystone with good memories and funny stories to tell my fellow slaves. My first ever solo trip had opened my world – and me – in more ways than I can count.
I have never been a daredevil – my personality and upbringing have kept me in check – but I am very blessed to have awakened so young to the boundless potential and value of exploring the world around me, near and far. At Finlaystone, I made dear friends with whom I’m still in touch 50 years later. My trip to Holland didn’t magically turn me into a fearless extrovert, but without it, I suspect that my life would have been much the poorer for it.
Sometimes there is a huge and unexpected payoff for taking a risk, if only we’re willing to consider it. Change is almost always hard, but very often full of unimagined potential for personal development and transformation. Armed with all of that, we’re then far better able to look around us and find endless ways to help other people down their own paths of improvement and healing, and in the process of helping others, we help ourselves continue to learn and grow. Life is the longest trip, the biggest adventure I’ve ever embarked on, and I mean to make it a wonderful one.
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I can’t remember the first time I met April Parnell, and I was surprised at how little of her story I even knew. At OUTsideIN, I let folks tell me what they want me to know about their lives. What I did know about April’s life was that her mom and our employee, Lisa Salazar, was very proud of her. I wanted to know why.
]]>Did you know what you wanted to do with your life when you graduated high school? I thought I did. I got myself accepted to the University of Tennessee Dental school at age 19 and took off to Memphis. After only two weeks I was completely miserable and able to add “dental school dropout” to my resume. All this came to mind when I was interviewing this month’s “Strong Woman on a Journey.”
I can’t remember the first time I met April Parnell, and I was surprised at how little of her story I even knew. At OUTsideIN, I let folks tell me what they want me to know about their lives. What I did know about April’s life was that her mom and our employee, Lisa Salazar, was very proud of her. I wanted to know why.
A couple of decades ago, Lisa became a single parent to April and her sister and they lived in the Nashville area. At about the time April graduated high school and tried to decide what to pursue next, Lisa started to pursue drinking. Heavy drinking. April entered college with the idea of becoming a teacher but after a year, she realized that teaching wasn’t for her - just like I decided that becoming a dentist wasn’t for me. But she was a hard worker and resourceful and soon began work and got certified to be a pharmacist technician. She found out she really liked being associated with health care but wanted to be more involved with patients. That’s about the time she encountered Emily Hinson, a pharmacist who began to plant the seeds of returning to college in April’s mind. Empowered women empower other women and soon April found herself attending classes at Bethel University in McKenzie with the goal of becoming a nurse.
This time, the college experience was much different. Having a husband (Dylan) and son (Easton) made time management a life skill that she had to master in order to survive. In fact, it became her “super power.” And this time, unlike before, Lisa was involved and available to help her daughter achieve this important goal.
Like so many others receiving their college degrees this spring, April did not get to participate in the. commencement ceremony she had worked so hard for. Instead, she began a new job at in the emergency room at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Union City, Tennessee. Starting a new job as a nurse right in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis meant that April launched her career at probably one of the scariest times that modern medical professionals have ever faced. Even so, it provided the backdrop for an encounter that affirmed her decision to become a nurse. While caring for an elderly man who was distraught to the point of tears because his family was not allowed to visit him, April was able to reassure and pray with him. This simple act gave peace to this gentleman and strengthened April’s resolve to continue to “run towards the pain.”
While a young woman getting a second chance at a college education is certainly worth writing about, the bigger story here to me is that of a relationship between a mom and her daughter being restored through recovery. Today, May 23, 2020, Lisa celebrates 7 years of sobriety. That has been hard work for her just like school was hard work for April. Seeing the way they have supported each other in their respective work has been inspiring to me. But not enough to make me go back to dental school.
]]>Mom was a hard-working, smart, funny, vivid person, and a very tough act to follow. Her tongue had a razor-sharp edge and though for decades I swore that I would never talk like she did, as I aged her voice came out of my mouth more and more often.
Her career as an English teacher made her vigilant about her children’s speech and writing. When my brother and I discovered “swear words”, every time she heard us use one, she would exclaim, “Jeannie! Kirk! Must you use words of only one syllable?”
When I was 14-15, she told me she would rather see me become a streetwalker than to misuse the English language. I had to do some secret research to find out what a streetwalker does before coming to the conclusion that I would never test Mom in that way. As time went on, I found plenty of other ways to test her. And I assure you that had I chosen streetwalking as a career, Mom would have a great deal to say about it. And loudly.
Mom, a Coast Guard veteran, ran my Brownie Scout troop like an Army platoon, shouting “Column right! Column left!” as we practiced marching. Our beds had to be made with what she called hospital bed corners; men must be called “Sir” and women “Ma’am”.
Mom taught me how to sew and knit when I was 11-12 years old. Eventually I became quite good at it, but I always relied on Mom to pick out stitches and fix mistakes I’d made. In her late 70’s, she told me, “I’m not going to be on this earth forever, you know. It’s time you started fixing your own mistakes.”
I did not want to hear or heed that advice, not as much because I dreaded a lifetime with a seam ripper at the ready but because the thought of Mom’s absence was far worse than the thought of tedious sewing repairs.
Recently I looked down at my hands and found not my own but Mom’s hands attached to my arms. It was a very odd feeling. I’m 66 now and having a hard time dealing with the many ways the ravages of time have changed my body. The sight of my mother’s hands was another reminder that aging takes its toll on the human body, but it was also comforting to have part of Mom with me every day.
When Mom died at age 90 after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease, I felt that my entire body, my entire being, had been ripped apart. I’m glad to report that the sorrow has eased with time. At the same time, she is still present in my everyday earthly life. Sometimes I can almost hear her chide me for transgressions like wearing white before Memorial Day. I picture her watching me from up in heaven, taking breaks from lecturing God about illiteracy, in order to check on me and keep me going in the right (that is, Mom-approved) direction.
Each spring I watch the blooming of the dogwood tree (her very favorite tree) under which she and several pets are buried and think that Mom is with me forever…or until the day I can join her in heaven. A day that grows closer every day, so I’m darned sure to make every day count. I think Mom would approve of that. Well, I know it would. Right, Mom?
Jean McMillan 4-30-20
]]>We had been in China about four days. We'd visited the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and a Chinese dentist. (That experience really needs a whole other post). Our trip was fascinating and exciting, and the best part was still to come. A bus took us to a four or five story building where we were ushered into a room that looked like a classroom. Twelve families in our group were there to adopt. There were siblings, grandparents and a random uncle who was a bachelor. My husband and I had left three sweet sons ages 11, 8 and 6 at home while we went to adopt the sister we’d been waiting for 18 long months.
One by one, the babies were brought into the room by their respective nannies. I studied the face of each one to decide if she could possibly be a few month’s older version of the small face we met just weeks earlier on our computer screen. Finally, I saw her, my beautiful daughter. She was wearing tiny red socks and a thin blue striped playsuit. She was 13 months old and a few days later at her physical we would learn that she weighed only 14 pounds. To say she was tiny would be an understatement. To say that she was the most precious baby I'd ever seen would be a gross understatement.
The adoption facilitator called our names and we nervously moved to the front of the room. Then she said our baby’s name, Guo Chun Hua. Back in the day when we had been having our children the conventional way, Jimmy's preferred "girl" name was "Spring." I wasn't enthusiastic about this name idea at all and since we never actually had a girl, it was a moot point. Thankfully, in the adoption process, he'd forgotten all about that name and I got to choose her name. Well, part of it anyway. Come to find out, Chun Hua means "Spring Flower.” The adoption agency shared this information during the very first phone call when we were told about her. Since “Spring” was indeed part of her name, this was precisely the moment that we knew that she was, in fact, our very own daughter.
As families received their babies, after about 10 seconds every single baby in that room began to scream. It was normal for this to happen. Every single one of those babies - except ours. Micah just looked at us curiously as if to ask, "Where have ya'll been?"
That was our "Gotcha Day," September 9, 2001. Two days later, we woke up to the horrible news about what had happened at home. It was shocking and scary to think that we were on the other side of the world and planes were not flying. But God held us through that, and we returned home a few weeks later, only about two hours behind schedule, toting our very precious cargo, Micah Chun Hua Smith.
The second time I went to Wuhan was last summer when we took our daughter back on a heritage tour to see the country of her birth. Again, fascination and excitement prevailed. The best part of that trip was when we got to travel about two hours to the actual city where Micah was living before she was brought to Wuhan to meet us. We had asked to visit the Social Welfare Institute where she lived. A welcoming committee met us. There were gifts, speeches and a fancy banquet style lunch. And did I mention there were tears? It was so, so special. I will never forget it.
Until about six weeks ago, you probably never heard of Wuhan even though it's a city of 12 million people. The fact that a scary virus originated there has given it an extremely negative image in the minds of most. Most, but not all. Now, instead of those troubling images of people wearing masks and disturbing looking meat markets my hope is that you will have a new image in your mind. One that shows a tiny girl with her forever family.
“’For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord. ‘Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future’.” - Jeremiah 29:11.
]]>And yet, it seems to me that there is something innately wrong about using the word influence in the context of something so impersonal as Instagram. Allow me to share two stories of real influence that I recently experienced.
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And yet, there is something that seems innately wrong about using the word influence in the context of something so impersonal as Instagram. Allow me to share two stories of real influence that I recently experienced. On Christmas Eve, my family was delighted to get to deliver a bundle of gifts to a family in Hornbeak (yes, there is such a town). I had run into a childhood classmate of mine some time earlier and she had updated me on a recent turn of events in her life. It seems that after her husband passed away, she believed she should look for a way to give of herself in a way that would be useful to our society. She decided to take in some foster kids. Apparently, that went well and she took in a few more. This process went on for a few years and about a year ago she found herself the mother of her own granddaughter and nephew, and three very young foster kids.
Then came the word from the Department of Children's Services that the foster kids were to be placed for adoption and my friend had to decide whether to solidify her role as their mother permanently or hope another family could be found to take them. Did I mention that my friend and I started school together in 1968 and we're well into our 50's? This is an important detail to this story. Trust me. I've no idea what kind of process she went through to make this decision or how much time it took but she stepped into the role of forever parent, never to look back.
My family of millennials - with a GenZ mixed in for good measure - delivered the gifts and thoroughly enjoyed the experience of seeing little kids light up at the sight of brightly colored packages. We chatted a few minutes to see what this little tribe liked to do and reconnect with the excitement of Christmas, so to speak. The wireless headphones and books about philosophy on my own kid’s lists couldn't compare to the LOL dolls and video games on theirs. My sweet friend told my kids that she had fostered over 20 kids over the course of the last five years. I was so thankful she told them because I want my own children to see that you don’t have to possess wealth, college degrees or really anything except selfless love to make a difference in this world. She had done this by just loving kids who needed a mom. That's real influence and I doubt they'd ever seen it on their Instagram feed.
But before we saw ourselves out the door, she drove the point home by stopping my oldest and saying to him, "before you leave, I have to tell you something about your grandparents." We all stopped, never expecting to hear any mention of them. Sadly, both my parents have been gone for over a decade and honestly, I worry that at least my younger kids may have few memories of them. She went on to tell them of how my parents were the first to take her to church and she had vivid memories of sitting next to my mother. My mother would give each of us a quarter to put in the collection plate when it came past. What? While I do remember that this friend was invited to church by my family I don't remember this small detail. She added that my family had influenced her to make a relationship with the Lord a priority, and that my kids should now see the fact that she herself had influenced the lives of 20 foster kids as a ripple effect of that action.
On a day that we totally expected to be a blessing to another family, another family totally blessed us. Yes, we were the ones with a credit card who made a trip to Target but this was the one who recognized that sharing the story of someone's influence could be a gift of indescribable value. She reminded us all that God places people in our path each day that we can influence and that we might never know who they are or even how we did it. I can assure you, my mother never considered that she had even the slightest effect on my friend’s life after elementary school. And yet look how many lives had been impacted because she invited a little girl to church and gave her a quarter for the collection plate.
No, my mother never took a photo of a plate of food, or her latest outfit, gadget, or vacation destination. Heck, she could barely check her email, but was she an influencer? You better believe she was. I know 20 kids who can prove it.
]]>I'm going to make a broad statement here; you can agree or not. If you're over 50, you have a strange obsession with Gilligan's Island, three hour cruises, and coconuts. It's because for at least 30 minutes each day after school we were glued to the one color tv in our house and we could follow the adventures of 7 people who got thrown together with little hope of ever being rescued off a tropical island. It was sort of our generation’s "Survivor." If you're under 50 you should just "Google" it.
I'd be surprised if this month's "Strong Woman on a Journey" has ever seen an episode. Here's why. Pat Stoeken grew up living a similar adventure, not watching it on tv. At 16, she was attending boarding school in Vancouver, Canada when she received a telegram from her parents. Her Dad was completing a long-term work assignment in Vietnam. At the end of it, her Mom had joined him and they had bought a boat in Hong Kong. They gave young Pat, an only child, the option of completing her studies or joining them as they sailed away. She chose the latter. This began a life-long love affair with sailing that has now led her to St. Thomas, USVI and to the Independence, the 44-foot' yacht she has been captain of for over 20 years.
We first sailed with Pat 10 years ago when friends recommended we join her on one of her day sails out of Red Hook Bay. It was such an amazing day with good food, good friends, good wind and a little good snorkeling thrown in for good measure. Like most experiences like this, there is always a desire to repeat it. Such was the case for us recently.
I'm just going to confess, ten years has taken its toll on me. I've worked hard to stay fit, lose a little weight and maintain my chemically dependent golden locks. And still, a side by side comparison of vacation photos will clearly mark the difference in the timeline. It's ok. That's life. Pat however, seemed to have been living in a time warp. Freckled legs poking out from under board shorts, long sleeved T-shirt, floppy hat and really cool sunglasses that fastened on the bridge of her nose are almost the same attire you’d see a millennial surfer wearing. Time apparently stands still for some people. Her first mate Ray had now been replaced by John and I wondered how many young people had been mentored by this woman sailor.
As someone who grew up in land locked Tennessee, the idea of living life on a 44-foot boat in the Caribbean your entire life is just plain fascinating. Here's a few more details about said life. Pat's been married to the same man who made her captain of her first vessel for 50 years. She has two children. Perhaps the most interesting part of her story is that they sailed into Red Hook Bay every morning and dropped them off at school and picked them up in the afternoon to sail back to their watery address in the ocean each evening. Isn't that crazy? This routine was disrupted when the kids were 5 and 7 when Pat says they went on a “trip" to the Pacific Ocean. For three years they sailed around Hawaii, TahitI and who knows how many other islands I've probably never even heard of. They almost sold the Independence at the end but Pat's husband finally told her they were heading back to St. Thomas and she joyfully removed the "for sale" sign from her beloved boat.
There's never been a glass ceiling over Pat's head. The ceiling over her head is the stars. She has seen them from so many places. After our chat, I believe her most treasured viewings may have been from the Mediterranean when she was a young girl sailing with her parents. But she says that the trip to the Pacific is what "made" her family when the kids were little.
When I say she is a "strong woman on a journey, I guess it'd be more accurate to say her whole life has been a journey. She's sailed thousands of miles in her 73 years allowing folks like me to live the "Gilligan" life, if only for a three-hour tour.
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Each month this year I will tell the story of a strong woman on a journey. We’ve of course adopted that as part of our tagline at OUTsideIN. The phrase “Strong Women on a Journey Making Travel Gear for Yours” has become an important part of our brand as it perfectly describes not only the fact that we make gear for travel but that the women who make it are on a journey to reinvent their lives. One of these women is Mrs. Doris Weatherly, a widowed octogenarian from Sassafras Ridge near Hickman, Kentucky.
I remember the day I got a phone call from her. It was 2014 and I was in Colorado with my daughter, preparing to hike in the Rockies. She told me she had just read an article about OUTsideIN and was interested in volunteering at our workshop. By this time, we had already had several volunteers who came in on a weekly basis and I was well acquainted with how effective they can be in modeling the kind of workplace behaviors that help our employees see that work can be a joyful, fulfilling experience. Let’s face it, some workplaces just don’t foster that attitude. We know that ours must. So, we’re always looking for women who have the kind of servant heart that allows them to work alongside other women who may have a completely different life experience from them.
I didn’t know Miss Doris, as we came to call her, and she didn’t know me. She read a newspaper account of a talk I made at a local church, but she wasn’t in the audience. I think she just knew she could sew, speak encouraging words and mentor, and was simply looking for an organization in need of those skills. She came to the right place! For over five years she has faithfully driven over to Troy one morning a week from her home, a journey takes least 45 minutes one way. She has done basically every job in the workshop and has sewn on every machine we have. Plenty of times she has taken fledgling projects home with her, like the “Days for Girls’ hygiene kits and the Angel Gowns. She cheerfully returns the next week with completed items that she must have worked on the entire time she was gone to have completed so quickly.
A couple of years ago, Miss Doris got very sick and had to be hospitalized. The infection she had was serious and frankly, I doubted she would be able to return to us. I should have known better. After a few months’ recovery, she was her old self again and hard at work. We also had to give her a little time off in 2018 to take a trip to the Holy Lands with a local church group. She told us all about it upon her return and clearly it was a dream come true for her to be in the same place as her Lord had walked.
And while that was certainly the journey of a lifetime, it’s not that journey that I’m talking about today. Just last week I got a text (yes, Miss Doris texts) telling me that she thought it was time to stop making her weekly trip to Troy. I was certainly sad to receive this news but could not fault her for the decision one little bit. We have enjoyed the fruits of her giftedness for several years now and we want to unselfishly say we understand that it might not be the best thing for her anymore.
So in the case of Miss Doris, I’m using the term “journey” in the metaphorical sense that her whole life has been a quest to live each day to the fullest, serving, loving, teaching and caring for each person God has put in her path. We are thankful that this journey brought her to our little workshop and want her to know how much she will be missed here. We might even try to go on a journey of our own someday to visit her at Sassafras Ridge if we can get our GPS to find it.
LeEllen Smith, Founder
]]>Yesterday was a tough day in the workshop. Our Lisa got the devastating news that her long-time sponsor, Angie B. (not her real name or initial), had passed away. Lisa’s reaction was akin to what you would expect on hearing this news about a spouse, parent or child. It was gut-wrenching. Clearly, the relationship they shared was deep and had carried Lisa through dark days of struggle with her addiction to alcohol. I didn’t know Angie B. but I had heard her mentioned for years. I think her dedication to AA, the Big Book and those fortunate enough to have had her as a sponsor was legendary. I have no knowledge of her own struggle but imagine that it too, could have been legendary. How else could she have helped so many? You see, people don’t ask people like me to be their sponsor. I grew up in a home where the use of alcohol was strictly forbidden. This gave me a healthy respect for the grip it could have on a life and I’ve been fortunate that its’ allure doesn’t entice me to overindulge. Sadly, this isn’t true for everyone in my family. And probably isn’t true for yours.
People ask people like Angie B. to be their sponsor. A sponsor is someone you call at any hour when you feel an overwhelming desire to use. They remind you of what happens when you do and how far you’ve already come and try their best to keep you from going there again. This can’t be easy. Especially when their own recovery is a daily endeavor. Of course, one of the tenets of AA is anonymity so Angie’s last name was never revealed to me and I would not have known her had we met on the street.
Most efforts like OUTsideIN have FAQ’s or frequently asked questions. People ask things like “where do you get your ideas?” (God and Pinterest),” how do you find women to work with?” (they find us) “and what is a social enterprise?” (a business that exists for a purpose other than to make a profit). One question that is not frequently asked, in fact, has never been asked at all is, “are you in recovery?” And the answer is yes, I am. I’m not in recovery from the effects that substance abuse can have but am in recovery from the effects that apathy and indifference can have. Every day is a struggle to see the needs around me and run towards them rather than away. Maybe you’re like me. Sometimes it’s easier to just look away than to see the problem and lean into it.
Let me encourage you to make today the day that you empathize with those in recovery. One thing I’ve learned is that no one sets out to become an addict. Another thing I’ve learned is that recovery doesn’t happen alone. Lots and lots of Angie B.’s are needed because the number of people is recovery is not getting smaller, it’s getting larger. And they need us. They need us to see them and pray for them and celebrate their recovery. And even though it’s hard, today, we’re going to celebrate a “Hero in Recovery,” Angie B.
It’s time to talk about Small Business Saturday! Once again our little social enterprise located on the historic town square in Troy, Tennessee will be open for business on Small Business Saturday, November 30, 2019 from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.
This day has come to be very important to us. There are two reasons...
It’s time to talk about Small Business Saturday! Once again our little social enterprise located on the historic town square in Troy, Tennessee will be open for business on Small Business Saturday, November 30, 2019 from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.
This day has come to be very important to us. There are two reasons:
Reason 1. SMALL
Yes, we are small. That’s not a bad thing. When you are small you pay particular attention to every customer. We have to. We cannot afford to have even one dissatisfied customer.
Reason 2. BUSINESS
Sometimes if people are not familiar with the concept of social enterprise they don’t realize that we simply must sell products. The proceeds from our sales go directly to pay our employees and therefore we must base hiring decisions on sales. More sales translates to more marginalized women gaining meaningful employment.
That’s pretty much it. We’re counting on you to remember how important it is to shop with small businesses like ours. If you still need convincing think about this. Do you think the big box retailers and online conglomerates do a little “Snoopy Dance” when they make a sale? No, neither do I. But guess who does. WE DO!
And we’ll give you a reason to do one too. On Friday, November 29 we’ll have all our scented candles marked $5. Several scents to choose from. On Small Business Saturday, all Necktie Clutches will be $10. Both make great gifts!
Please remember to visit us for a shopping experience that you’re sure to enjoy. The cow bell will ring when you come through the door signalling to us that someone who is thoughtful about their purchases is ready to shop and let us help them with their holiday gift giving. You can also find our travel gear at OUTsideINworks.com. You won’t hear the cow bell but the app on my phone will send me a little “cha ching” sound that will trigger the “Snoopy Dance” all the same.
If you know me very well, you know that I’m not much on planning, or goals, or knowing what I’m going to be doing for the next six hours. It’s not that I’m opposed to such things, it’s just that I learned a long time ago that having said plans thwarted by a sick kid, a family emergency, a broken car or the need to make four dozen brownies by noon left me feeling frustrated and unproductive. My fallback position was to just deal with whatever the day held with grace and attention that wouldn’t be available to me if I felt resentful of a growing list of tasks and goals that refused to be marked off.
Then came Labor Day 2012. I took a little road trip with my youngest son, to preview a college. Sitting in a class that day it dawned on me that I was about to be downsized. He was two years from graduation and his little sister was in the 6th grade. What would I do with myself when these last two left for college. I could see myself wandering around my house from room to room, imagining the good ole days of constant trips to practices and feeling nostalgic about the stomach virus. I needed a plan.
The idea for OUTsideIN was born in my brain that day and it has been my constant companion ever since. I have nurtured it, loved it, reinvented it, and prayed over it for almost seven years. This morning it all paid off. No, we didn’t have 50 orders waiting on us this morning when I opened the email. It wasn’t that kind of payoff.
You see, yesterday my husband and I dropped that last kid off at college. Even though she turned 18 last year and graduated from high school this May, neither of those two milestones felt like yesterday, or this morning. This morning, the huge mane of silky black hair wasn’t piled over her pillow and no one asked for William’s Sausage and biscuits for breakfast. Instead, I had to feed my daughter’s cats. And that may have been the precise moment that I recognized that my plan had worked.
I made my breakfast and lunch, packed my clothes for the day (in a HangUP garment bag, of course) and headed out the door to work out and then walk down the street to our workshop. It was pretty much like any other morning for the last seven years. That was the beauty of the whole thing. I didn’t have this gaping void in my life. I had something precious and special just waiting on me a few miles away to command my attention and creativity for the next 8 hours.
And while my plan has been a good one, it would not have been possible without so many people who have come alongside me to see it through. It’d be foolish of me not to recognize the part that Jimmy Smith, Jean McMillan, Lisa Salazar, Doris Weatherly and Stephanie Oszman have played in making OUTsideIN what it is today. In the early days, we also had volunteers like Jackie Vaughn, Lynn Goree and a great board of directors who do important things for us. Phillip Green is constantly having to troubleshoot our worn out computers and the hardware guys next door fix our roof leaks. Over 20 different women have passed through our doors and given me a chance to work alongside them, mentor them and learn something from them in return. I am blessed.
So, today felt like the first day of the rest of my life. I love my family and I pray they will have awesome lives but today I remembered that I have one of my own.
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