Column

Every day my inbox fills with emails from public relations firms, angling for a plug for an author’s book or a new study on children. I delete most of them as quickly as they appear, but I nearly always read the ones on youth and mental health.

Suffice it to say the findings are not good. I often ponder over them, as we have a whole string of grandchildren (none of whom yet have a cell phone) poised to enter the teen years.

There is a corollary between the rise in popularity of screens among teens and feelings of isolation, loneliness, depression and the unspeakable.

The Digital Age has been a phenomenal asset to business and industry. It has put libraries and the world at our fingertips. But we will always be humans who were made for other humans – from the first breath of life.

In mere days following birth, the pupils of newborns’ eyes often enlarge when they connect with a mother’s face. Pupil enlargement is a physiological response to happiness and pleasure. In the case of a newborn, that pleasure is recognizing a familiar face and sensing a feeding may soon follow. A baby can sense the goodness of human presence, touch and care. We all can.

The opposite of that human connection would be feelings of isolation, loneliness and depression.

If the teen charged with perpetrating horror and evil in Buffalo, New York, is like others who have committed similar atrocities, they will likely find he is a loner who spent excessive amounts of time online and on the fringe.

Only a minuscule fraction of those who spend excessive time online become unhinged, yet the digital revolution has had an impact on all of us, our families and our relationships. Phones and screens can connect us in marvelous ways and shorten the miles between us, but they also separate us and partition us. We can now be in the same room with one another but worlds apart. Sometimes literally.

Greater measures of privacy, and even dark vaults of secrecy, are available at younger ages, Phones have transitioned from accessories to central command centers. Our response time to every ding, chime and vibration makes Pavlov’s dogs look like slackers.

In doing research for his wonderful book, “The Tech-Wise Family,” author Andy Crouch asked teens what the one thing was that they would like to change about their relationship with their parents if they could.

The number one answer was that they wished their parents would spend less time on their phones and more time talking with them.

Young people aren’t the only ones grappling with boundaries on screen time.

A mother of three adolescent girls and I were talking about phones, screens and the dark side of social media. She wondered if some of the devastating effects have become obvious enough that the next generation will be more cautious, more discerning, a bit more judicious.

They could. But parents will have to lead the way.

It’s not every day a kid walks into the kitchen and says, “Did you know Grandpa is outside rollerblading?”

I did not know he was outside rollerblading. I did not know he knew how to rollerblade.

To understand why a man three score and ten, a man who has never been on rollerblades in his life was outside rollerblading, you have to understand how he thinks.

He thinks thoroughly and explains thoroughly. And if he thinks you haven’t grasped his thorough explanations, he will draw a chart or a diagram, or give a demonstration. His modus operandi has always been “teach, tell, show.” It’s a good system.

Some of the grands discovered their mother’s old rollerblades, brought them over, found a pair in our garage as well, and were trying to rollerblade.

“How is he doing?” I asked the one who had come inside to file a report.

“Not very well. I think you should come outside and see for yourself. He’s very wobbly, so we’re trying to hold him up to keep him from falling.”

Her eyes grow big and she says, “And, Grandma, cars are slowing down and drivers are staring.”

I follow her outside and see she has described the situation accurately. Traffic hasn’t backed up all the way to the corner, but it is definitely slowing and drivers are gawking.

“I didn’t know you knew how to rollerblade,” I say to the man with his feet jammed into rollerblades too small, the man with a child on either side of him, each gripping an arm, holding him steady.

“I ice skated,” he says.

“I remember that now. College, right? You broke your ankle?”

Suddenly, he can no longer hear me.

“I played softball in high school gym class,” I say, “but that doesn’t mean I’m going to try out for the major leagues. Why are you doing this?”

“To show them how.”

Of course—teach, tell, show.

“I’m sorry, but they are helping hold you up. How is this instructive?”

“I know some basics and they’re not propelling themselves forward correctly. I tried to explain it and they didn’t get it, so now I am showing them. They need to push off with their back leg at an angle.”

He then pushes off with his right leg, throwing it out at an angle behind him, then abruptly careens left—

“The grass, the grass!” I yell. “Fall on the grass, not the concrete!”

He makes a last-second save and regains his balance.

After few more demos of questionable value, the girls put the rollerblades back on and are gliding with a near grace.

Their instructor proudly wears a look that says, “Mission Accomplished,” and will no doubt be looking for new challenges.

If you see a retired guy with salt and pepper hair who looks out of place at a skate park, I don’t even want to know.

It was C day in kindergarten recently. C being for career, kids came dressed as the career they wanted to have when they grew up.

A 6-year-old granddaughter who sports a mop of curly auburn hair, eats like food is a full-body contact sport, yet is built like a string bean, went wearing jeans, a long sleeve shirt, her hair pulled back with a pink polka dot headband, a green apron, a yellow baby carrier strapped to her chest on top of the apron, a Madeline doll tucked inside the baby carrier and a toy cell phone protruding from a back pocket.

Mom. That’s what she wants to be when she grows up. A mother. Just like her mother.

Did I mention that the kid is sweet, funny, playful—and can shoot a look that can melt steel?

The school never called, so I guess nobody challenged her on wanting to be a mom. Nobody told her to aim higher or to think outside the box.

The kid is already in training. The family has an aquarium full of fish. She keeps a close eye on them—monitoring them, watching them, naming them, predicting which ones will have the next babies and telling her dad when some of the fish are bullies and nibble on another fish’s fins.

Fish today, infants tomorrow. Everybody starts somewhere, right?

What does it take to be a mom? You know, besides cute headbands and a cell phone in your rear pocket?

It takes everything—everything you’re willing to give, everything you’re not willing to give, and then some. If you’ve ever seen one of those old iron rug beaters women used a century ago to beat carpets with, that’s what being a mom feels like somedays. There are days when motherhood simply beats everything you’ve got right out of you.

Of course, there are also wonderful, memorable, frozen-in-time days, receiving sweet hand-written notes and drawings of yourself where you look like an alien. Days when someone picked the towels off the bathroom floor without being told. An adolescent opens up without the slightest coercion. Someone says thank you. A grown child phones just to check in and say hello.

Like all of life, motherhood is a mix. At times, being a mom may be the hardest job you’ll ever have, the greatest heartache you may ever know and the deepest well of joy and satisfaction you could ever imagine.

There are days motherhood fills your heart with such love and wonder that you think you might just explode. But you don’t. Because after you exploded, you’d be the one cleaning it up.

One of the greatest things any mother can teach a child is how to keep  going through every sort of day, rain or shine.

Happy Mother’s Day, moms. Keep going.

 

The vocabulary intended to soften the blows of blistering inflation is a testimony to creativity. Economists keep talking about consumers experiencing shrinkflation. They don’t mean consumers are shrinking (although you do look amazingly trim); they mean the products we buy are shrinking, but the prices are not.

One manufacturer that has been shrinking the size of cereal boxes goes a step further and refers to it as “price-packing-architecture.” That sounds so much better than “sticking it to the consumer.”

Cadbury Chocolate said they will be implementing multiple price hikes, calling them “pricing waves.” It almost sounds like you’re at the beach. How restful. But those waves aren’t water. Hershey is also on track to raise prices.

You can buy candy on the installment plan or kiss chocolate goodbye.

Shrinkflation has also hit ice cream. What passes for a half-gallon, probably isn’t.  Check the fine print.

You can fool some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time, but you can’t fool anybody when it comes to ice cream.

I like the Dollar Tree approach to compensating for shrinking profit margins—there’s no sleight of hand or double talk, just a straight up price hike. Many of the items now cost $1.25, but the signage still says Dollar Tree. The attitude smacks of “tough cookies.” There are fewer of those in a bag now, too.

The silver lining of inflation is that I no longer need help carrying groceries into the house. My usual run that used to fill the backseat now fits compactly in two bags. Perhaps we can think of shrinkflation as a new form of portion control.

The concept of paying more for less is an economic wildfire. A popular pizza chain revealed there will now be only eight chicken wings in an order instead of 10. Interesting, but my question is why do pizza chains sell chicken wings?

Clorox announced they will raise prices on 85 percent of their products, giving “clean-up on aisle 3” new meaning.

The cost of a flight I booked recently wasn’t as high as I thought it might be. But when I went to choose my seat there was an extra charge for a window seat as well as an extra charge for an aisle seat. There was no extra charge for the middle seat, which is good news if you are the size of Barbie.

I can only imagine what the charge is to use the restroom. And there’s probably an extra charge on top of that charge if you want the privilege of closing the door.

Tom Hanks made a movie titled “The Terminal” about a man stuck in an airport terminal indefinitely. We are going to make a movie titled “Jet Engines” about a couple stuck in a house with seven giant fans that sound like jet engines.

If you have ever had water damage to your house and had giant fans hauled in to dry it out, you know what I’m talking about.

I said, “YOU KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!”

The noise is deafening. It’s like 747 engines at full power for takeoff, but the takeoff never ends, the roar of the engines never stops and the beverage service never comes.

It is so like being stuck in a plane that when the husband fell asleep reading, he woke with a jolt and mumbled, “I’ll take the pretzels, please.”

I told him, “WE DON’T HAVE PRETZELS, BUT WOULD YOU LIKE A BOTTLED WATER?”

This all started when our hot water heater sprang a leak and shot pressurized water with such force that it looked like a boxer punched out the drywall in the utility closet. Naturally, the utility closet is in the center of the house. Water soaked the walls, the floor and sent the overflow gushing into the crawl space—the day before we were going out of town.

We are now in what they call “remediation.” Every time I hear that word, I flinch. I get this sick feeling that my fourth-grade teacher Mrs. Grissom finally discovered I wasn’t working up to potential and wants me to return to Boone Elementary for more long division.

On the upside, remediation (the crew that dries the house, rips up the house and then reassembles the house) has greatly improved our social life. We have 20 new BFFs. They usually arrive one or two trucks at a time, but one day four trucks lined the street. People passing by who have had similar experiences, came to the door and offered their condolences.

I told several friends about our remediation and, of course, one household disaster story leads to another household disaster story, and it is always reassuring to know someone has a better story than you do.

One friend said when their dishwasher leaked under the kitchen floor, not only did they have to battle the insurance company every step of the way, but repairs began in January and were not finished until April. Plus, they could only get to their upstairs by exiting the house and re-entering through the front door.

Another friend said when their washing machine leaked, the giant fans lived with them awhile, but they still had to rip out the floor and install replacement flooring. And it all began the week after her husband was released from the hospital following open heart surgery. They live in a small house. Jet engines roaring 24/7 at full throttle were not an enhancement to recovery.

Household remediation after heart surgery won first prize for rotten timing.

But I ask you—IS THERE EVER A GOOD TIME?

 

Don’t ever say things can’t get worse. At least not aloud.

The cosmos will prove you wrong. It can and often does.

When life does indeed “get worse,” you quickly discover the things you can live without. It’s like a giant loofa exfoliates your entire life.

There’s sleep for starters. Going without sleep is never pleasant, but it is doable for a time. Power naps are vastly underrated.

Sit-down meals with real food and real dishes are dispensable. A bite here and bite there will get you through a crushing day. Oh look! An old protein bar in the glove box!

You can even do without a change of clothes if you must.

A friend used to spritz her little girls with fragrance when there wasn’t time to bathe them, change their clothes or do their hair. They may not have looked their best, but they smelled good.

Tightly-honed schedules can become dispensable as well. It’s hard to function without order, but nearly every mess can wait a little while. You can hurdle toys and shoes, ignore dirty dishes crusting over and snub laundry waiting for the washing machine.

We can manage without sleep, full meals, a fresh change of clothes, schedules, organization and even coffee, but there is one thing we cannot live without.

Hope.

Hope is the magnetic force that pulls us forward—through disappointment, grief, broken hearts, health crisis, horrific accidents and job loss.

Hope is a lifeline, a very thin one sometimes, but a lifeline nonetheless. Hope whispers that the storms will one day pass.

Hope fuels courage and even a healthy sort of defiance. Hope hears a dire diagnosis—and seeks a second opinion. Hope eyes bleak odds and goes for it anyway. Hope is the tornado victim digging through rubble searching for an unbroken piece of the past.

In the mid-60s, a time of unrest, upheaval and uncertainty, Hal David and Burt Bacharach wrote a song that became a classic. “What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.” Perhaps what the world needs now is hope, sweet hope.

This week, Christians around the world celebrate hope. More than 2,000 years ago, the followers of Christ watched their every hope die as the one they loved was crucified and buried. They sheltered together, grieving and bewildered, wondering what next.

Three days later, some women went to the tomb, found the stone rolled away and the tomb empty except for the burial cloths. The shock of that unexpected find would lead to the traditional Easter greeting of “He is risen. He is risen, indeed.”

Hope often lies behind stone walls of grief, despair and seemingly impossible circumstances. Christians around the world celebrate Resurrection Sunday remembering that their hope is in a person, Jesus Christ who, though out of sight, is never out of reach.

My newfound popularity is stunning. Everywhere I go people ask for my opinion. It’s fascinating how people I barely know—even giant corporations and conglomerates—are so interested in what I think.

Every time I leave the post office, the clerk behind the counter hands me a receipt, circles a website, asks me to visit it and tell about my experience. I came, they weighed, I paid. What more is there to say?

A while back, I sliced my finger with a butcher knife and wound up at an Urgent Care. We are now best friends, although my new bestie seems a little insecure. “How were you greeted? Did you wait long? How was the care you received? Were you pleased with the follow-up?” That sort of insecurity is concerning, especially coming from a medical clinic.

A few weeks ago, I had a mammogram and now keep getting emails asking if I would take a short survey telling them about the experience. I don’t need to fill out a 20-question survey to tell them about the experience. I can tell them in one word—painful.

Retail clerks at stores often ask, “Email?” as I check out. I always say, “No thank you,” but “no, thank you” implies you are refusing an offer, and it’s not an offer—it’s a request bordering on demand. I’m often tempted to say, “I’ll give you mine, if you’ll give me yours.” Whatever happened to stranger danger?

A lot of places want more than telephone numbers and email addresses. They want a “relationship”—silver, gold, platinum, take your pick. These “relationships” create more online accounts with more logins and passwords, many of which translate into more loyalty cards dangling from my key ring, and all of which will enable me to get even more text alerts, emails, digital coupons and perks.

If I am feeling like the relationship isn’t all it should be, I can download an app on my phone so we can be in even closer contact. Should I want to check my cell phone at 2 a.m. to see if my status has been upgraded, or if someone is waiting for my opinion, or if new offers, coupons and cash rewards have fattened my online wallet, I’m good to go.

Every business phone call ends with, “Please stay on the line to take a brief survey.”

Take an Uber, rate the driver and the driver rates you.

Stay at an Airbnb or Vrbo and you rate the rental and the host, and the host rates you.

Buy a used book online and it arrives with a web address asking you to rate the seller.

We are in a rating frenzy.

I rate it “exhausting.”

 

Sometimes the voices of the past are the ones we need most in the present. There is one in particular I revisit when the world goes wobbly. I have dog-eared the pages in the book where this voice resides.

The voice belongs to C.S. Lewis who delivered an address titled “Learning in Wartime.” It was October 1939, and the Brits were engaged in World War II.  Oxford University students were questioning the value and appropriateness of pursuing studies during a time of war.

Lewis was a good one to ask as he was both a scholar and war veteran. He served in World War I, in which his best friend was killed and Lewis himself was severely wounded, recuperated and returned to duty. His response was formed by a melding of time, wisdom and experience.

Many of us are asking the same questions those students asked. Do we simply forge ahead with ordinary lives, engage in work, coffee and conversation with friends, and even plan for pleasures like ballgames and birthday parties against the backdrop of a maternity hospital being bombed and cities now a heap of smoldering rubble in Ukraine?

Is it right to enjoy cheerful daffodils while images of refugees fleeing their homeland flash on the television?

The first thing Lewis did in his address was reframe the matter in a larger perspective. To paraphrase, he said we make decisions and choices all the time against an ominous backdrop of eternity. So how is it we function in the shadow of that enormity, but not under other shadows?

He said ceasing to pursue life because shadows loom, is to admit we have rejected the voice of reason and have made ourselves wide open to the voices of our nerves and mass emotions.

Voices of nerves and mass emotions have become all-too frequent companions these days, most often the product of lingering too long before a computer screen or cable news channels. There is a fine line between being well-informed and so overly informed that you tilt toward incapacitated.

Lewis said if we postpone the quest for knowledge and beauty until the circumstances around us are secure, we would never search.

How many times have you waited for life to return to n

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I have a long history of issues with my cloud. The main problem being that I can’t wrap my head around it. Some people can’t get their heads out of the clouds, I can’t get mine in.

I suffer from the trap of the literal mind. I have to picture things. And not just food or sitting on a shoreline.

Once every week or so my phone tells me it failed to backup because there is not enough cloud storage. Then it prompts me to buy a bigger, better cloud. Why would I buy more of something that I can’t comprehend now?

They want me to buy something I can’t see. What next? A bridge in Jersey? Hey, I wasn’t born yesterday.

Seeing is believing.

If I looked up at the sky and saw a cloud floating by with my name on it, or even just my initials on it, I’d be good. I wouldn’t even care if it were a cirrus, cumulus, stratus or nimbus—although one of those huge anvil clouds would be cool.

It would also be nice to see whose cloud is next to my cloud and if there is any cloud aggression going on. That way I could yell, “Hey! You! Get off of my cloud!” The Rolling Stones were in cyberspace before cyberspace was cool.

It’s the metaphor that is the problem. Yes, I understand that my calendar, documents, photos, emails and many things are in a cloud, but a cloud is . . . puffy. A cloud can evaporate and dissolve into nothingness. Why would I want to store my life in something wispy? A vault or a safe room, maybe; a cloud, no.

I would do better if the message on my phone said, “Your reinforced steel file cabinet in the sky is full and you need a bigger one, so pay up.”

Work stored in a file cabinet is easy to imagine. A file cabinet is tangible, it holds things—lots of things and you can even lock it.

For example, I know where all my tax records are. I know where my supporting receipts and invoices are. They’re upstairs in a two-drawer file cabinet where both drawers are jammed full and completely inaccessible courtesy of a shoe rack.

I may not be able to open the file cabinet, but I know where the file cabinet is. And that’s why the cloud wins. I may not know where my cloud is, but I can access its contents, which I understand are stored on a giant server called a Lexus. Or a Linux. Again, a Lexus I can picture, a Linux I cannot.

I’d be happy with an arrow on a map of the sky marking the Lexus holding my large file cabinet that says, “You are here.”

That I can visualize.

 

 

This is a story about a chicken. It’s not an earth-shattering story like so many stories these days, particularly that horrific one halfway around the world that occupies our hearts and minds and plays out a hundred different ways when you lie awake in the dark.

This is a quiet story, but we could all use something quiet about now—a diversion of sorts, if just for a moment.

We have a granddaughter who is one of the sweetest, softest things that ever fell from heaven. That might sound boastful, but it is only by way of contrast that we know she is sweet and soft. Our group as a whole is loud. We play loud, laugh loud and rib one another loud.

But this one is soft. Her voice is soft, her manner is soft and her gaze is soft. Even the hair that tumbles across her face is soft.

She lives in the country in a house her daddy and grandaddy built. She can see the chicken coop from the window in her daddy’s home office. She visits the coop every day.

The chickens flock around her, kicking up dust, cutting in front of her, erratically darting here and there. But one chicken walks a steady path, following the little girl. The two are close, so close that the girl has named the chicken after herself.

And so, Emma the chicken trails Emma the girl as she meanders down a path and ambles up a small rise to a plastic playset.

Sometimes they sit together next to the playhouse or on the slide, Emma the girl with Emma the chicken often nestled in her lap. The two Emmas watch treetops sway in the wind and study clouds floating across the sky.

Little Emma’s face is peaceful. Emma the chicken’s face is well, in my book, a bit too intense with those beady eyes and sudden jerking moves. Yet, once the chicken is in Emma’s lap, the old gal becomes restful, nearly sleeping with her eyes open.

Because you do things for those you love, soft Emma set to work at the kitchen table with yellow construction paper, tape and scissors. The zig zags were not easy to cut. They never are. It takes determination to get them even, particularly on a small scale. As for circumference, Emma the crafter probably doesn’t know what circumference means, but she knew the circle had to be just the right size.

She worked and worked, taping and cutting, cutting and taping, until at last she was satisfied.

She took her gift to Emma the chicken who received it with grace. The bird wore the gold crown and was the princess chicken for one fine day.

Well, not an entire day, but at least until the other chickens began pecking at her crown in fits of jealousy, knocked it from her head and trampled it underfoot. I think I saw that happen at a pageant once.

Nevertheless, Emma the girl was smiling, pleased that Emma the chicken had liked the crown and worn it. And for a brief moment, Emma the chicken didn’t look so intense and high-strung. She looked calm and at peace, as though she was sincerely pleased to be loved.