A Real Goal Getter: Part VI

I'll pause for a minute about what my goals are, to tell you a little story, because I had the most interesting experience at the pool the other day.

As I was finishing my swim, an old man entered the indoor pool area to take his own afternoon swim. He was East Indian, with clear, warm skin. Nevertheless, he was so wrinkled, I had the desire to iron him. I'd learn later that he was quite old.

We exchanged pleasantries, and I liked his gentle nature and his warm smile so much, I must have been grinning at him, because he continued to speak to me after he got into the pool. We discussed the Pool Closing Tragedy, the alternate Aquatic Center down the road, ways to get the best value for our gym membership dollar, and the advantages and disadvantages of paying for a full membership versus paying ala carte.

The tone of the conversation suddenly changed.

"I am 75-years-old," he said. "I came to this country with $45 in my pocket. But I was determined to get an education. Now I have a PhD." I congratulated him, but was a bit confused, because this seemed to have nothing to do with our previous conversation. But he continued.

"I've seen tragedy in my life. My child, my only son, worked for the government. He gave his life for his country at the American embassy in 1998, when he was only 37. I stood over his casket and I told him that for him, my son who was always so worried about my health, I was going to lose weight and quit smoking. Many people complain about quitting smoking and how it will make you gain weight, so I decided to do both at the same time. When I began, I weighed 250 lbs. I just got off the scales in the other room, and I weigh 181 lbs."

I congratulated him, and he thanked me. Then he said the most remarkable thing.

"So many people say they want to do big things, but immediately come up with excuses why they can't. If you want to drive to Chicago, you don't wander around Douglasville, get low on gas, then go back home. You go to mapquest, you plan your route, you plan where you will need to stop and sleep, and then you head out with a full tank of gas. It takes preparation and it takes a plan. The excuses are just things to look past. You cannot let them get in your way."

"People let obstacles and not goals guide them," I said, letting him know I was actively listening to him. In fact, I was enthralled that this man would be saying these things to me, a reformed slacker, a real goal getter. He smiled at me and nodded, satisfied that I understood him.

All the things he said to me wouldn't fit in this entry. It was funny though that the night before, in the bathroom of a nightclub, I paused from the entertaining evening I'd had with friends to look at myself in the mirror and speculate on the wisdom of all my recent plans and goals. Were they crazy? Was I crazy? Did my reach exceed my grasp? Was this all too hard? Would I ever be able to afford to make the changes I wanted to make?

Call me crazy, but I think the next day brought my answer, from a man who lost his 37-year-old son and his only child and in doing so learned a thing or two about goals. Only to share that lesson with a 37-year-old only child standing on the edge of a pool, who is learning a thing or two about setting goals herself.

--Laura

Crackers

Lately I've noticed that when men are trying to be flattering, they call you a Georgia peach. Naturally, this only works in Georgia, but it goes something like this:

I'm just a southern gentleman, looking for my Georgia peach. Or,

I like ladies to be sweet like a Georgia peach.

I'm going to be honest with you. I know they are trying to be cute with that little come-on line, but lately, whenever someone has said this to me, all I thought was, "I need to get my eyebrows waxed and head to the gym again, this man thinks I'm round and fuzzy."

The truth is, I'm nothing like a Georgia peach. See, I come from Crackers. Oh, I know, a man trying to make an impression would get his face slapped if he called some lady a Cracker, but do you know what the word means, because it really fits. Let me explain.

Georgia Crackers were the original settlers of Georgia, so to call someone that name means their family has been around since Moses was a toddler. And as it happens, that describes much of my family on my mother's side.... Rollins.... Byrd... Tyson... Hodges... In fact, I can ride down the main street of a little town called Guyton, Georgia, and I can see the craftsmanship of my great great uncles in the finish work of many of the old houses still standing there. Beautiful old houses with intricate wooden scrollwork along the roofline.

And in front of those houses, the old railroad bed has been lifted up and planted with trees, standing in a straight row like soldiers. But it used to be the old Central of Georgia railroad company, which called Guyton, Station No. 30. William Perry Rollins used to drive that train from Savannah to Guyton, which is how he met Dora Ellen Tyson, his future wife. She was a school teacher who rode the train to her school. They were my great great grandparents. And my family is one of the few left who could be buried in the Guyton Cemetery just down the street, because we were among the founding members of the place.

The term "cracker" came into fashion during Elizabethan times, to describe braggarts. They got the term from the Middle English word crack, as in to crack a joke. There's an alternate spelling to this, which is craic. This word is still in use in Ireland and Scotland, which is where my people came from. In fact, by the mid 1700's, cracker was applied specifically to the Scotch-Irish settlers (still my folks), who came to this country and settled the remote southern back country. There is a passage from a letter written during that time to the Earl of Dartmouth, which says in part, "I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode."

So as it turns out, I authentically come from a long line of tough crackers - self-reliant people who settled the American south, people who relished telling a tall tale, and were constantly on the move.

As it happens, I have the talent to accentuate or eliminate my southern accent almost at will, so to some, my tough cracker past might not be obvious. But it's there, in all the stories I tell, in the way I quietly take care of my own business, and in the travels I take. I've got cracker under my skin and in my blood.

So listen, if you want to flirt with me, you're welcome to call me a Georgia peach. But if you really want to win me over, you'll need to call me a Georgia cracker. But say it with spunk, okay? Say it like you mean it.

--Laura

A Real Goal Getter: Part III

Continued from "A Real Goal Getter: Part II"

On Saturday I was running through the grocery store collecting stuff I needed for a party later that afternoon.

I first noticed him on the canned vegetables aisle. An elderly man, he steered a motorized chair, the ones provided by the grocery store. His face looked tired and red, as if each breath were a struggle. My reaction was to switch roll my cart down another lane and double back so I wouldn’t have to navigate around him.

I would encounter him later though, in the frozen foods section. And being trapped by his vehicle, I decided to feign a deep interest in whether I’d get frozen spinach or broccoli. And as he passed me, I realized that he was humming. The store music system was playing a really old Dionne Warwick song, “Reservations for Two,” and he was humming along like a paid backup singer.

Huh.

I spent the rest of my visit wondering why he’d feel moved to hum along with such a poignant duet. Did he have a lady love at home he wished to reconnect with? When he got back home, did he hug her a little tighter than usual, making her wonder just what had gotten into him?

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of goal setting. I know my plans will take time and discipline, but I believe that I’m being drawn in new directions and that ultimately a move is in my future. It is tempting during a transitional period to evaluate your current conditions and find them wanting, kind of a “sour grapes” game with yourself. I remember doing that in high school, when I determined that everything about the South was backwards and ridiculous and how happy I was to be getting out.

But I returned to the South after college, and I think in the years I’ve lived here I’ve made peace with what’s bad about it and what’s good. There’s more good than I realized. It didn’t need to change. I needed to change.

And now, as I am forging a new path which will probably lead me out of the South yet again, which will get me back to a place I never really wanted to leave, it’s kind of fun to pass a little old man in the grocery store, and know he was more than some nobody to avoid because he was in a big old awkward chair I didn’t want to navigate around. He was a man moved by an old love song, who seemed to have his own tender memories and who seemed to identify with some of those deeper emotions we all ascribe to. It made him interesting to me.

Maybe this time, when the time comes for me to leave the South again, I can take the good parts of it with me. I think in the midst of new resolutions about goal setting, it’s important to acknowledge that goals allow you to strive toward something, and not run away from something. When I left as a young woman, fresh out of high school, I was running away from all I thought was bad. This time, I think when I leave, I will hold onto all the things which make me strong and capable and healthy. I’m excited to learn how that will impact my plans.

I can’t help but believe it will shape things for the better.

But more on the actual goal setting later…

Confession: Part II

After the Great American Novel Tragedy (GANT), you may wonder why I didn’t start over, just re-write the story. I’ve joked in the past that the reason was because it was so bad that I was doing the world a favor. For example, the story was set in Ireland, a country I’ve never visited. Most of the main characters were Irish, and at that point in my life I’d not met a single Irishman. If the cardinal law of writing is to start with what you know, I’d broken it.

But my joke about its quality isn’t completely true. Parts of me know the book wasn’t bad, just naive. I followed the formula for that genre precisely. And I still remember Maeve, my Nancy-Drew like American. I remember the mystery man, Ian. I even remember Angus, the groundskeeper (because all Irish estates need groundskeepers). I still have the blueprint of Ian’s estate in my head, from the house (manor?) to the grounds. Ian even powered his estate using hydroelectricity. He was an engineer. He’d come up with the plans himself. He was mysterious and awesome.

I set the story in County Waterford because I have family roots there. As I was describing the landscape, I wrote about the estate being near ruins of an ancient round tower. I thought that was unrealistic, so I did research on the area. Well it turned out that near Ardmore, in County Waterford, situated minutes off the main Waterford - Cork road, is just such a round tower, ruins from the 12th Century.

The significance of this event should be underscored, because it was the impetus later (on a campus noted for foo foo hippy-ness) for my college pagan phase. I was convinced that I was psychic and if I developed my natural talents, I could be a conduit, tuning into the cosmos like an elegant old radio adjusting her buttons from static to station – from confusion to understanding. Oh, and of course, my ancestors had something to do with that old round tower. One day I’d be sensitive enough to hear what they wanted to tell me about it.

I’m serious. Well, I was.

So what about re-writing the story? Well, the decision to discard it was unconscious at first. I was in college by then, with distractions like work, school, trying to become an adult. Briefly after graduation I did try to take it up again. But I got a job and put it aside once more, that time for good. Today I couldn’t tell you where the remnants of my manuscript are, or if they even exist. It belongs to the shadows of nostalgia.

It’s funny, because for years I regarded this as a failure. I’d never be that earnest dedicated girl again. I couldn’t even re-write a story that was tucked away in the corner of my mind. People say, you can’t go back. Well they were right, I thought, and I clung to that regret. That’s how I viewed everything I did in my life, whenever I experienced failure. I was just a hopeless list of good ideas I could never quite carry off.

But in the meantime, I wrote. Not the great American novel, but about ordinary events from my life that gave me insight on the Big Picture. Maybe there’s still a part of me who wants to be psychic – be that elegant old radio tuning from static to station – only I’ve reached the point in my life where I’m not calling on the ancestors or copying from an expert. Now I know how to speak for myself.

And so here’s the truth. The book I wrote then was for a particular time and place. When I attempted to recreate it, I couldn’t write the same story because I wasn’t the same person. I could no longer write for her, the girl who was trying to become someone else. Time will tell if I’ve lived up to that girl’s expectations. Sometimes it’s hard to escape the worry that I’m letting her down. She was a cool kid, quirky and interesting and worth getting to know.

But making my adult self proud seems more productive than living in the past. I’m not that kid anymore, so it’s unrealistic to try and please her. I’m still writing. I still try to move from static to station, which makes me cool. I don’t have it all figured out yet, which keeps me quirky. I’m still learning, and I think that makes me worth getting to know. So in all the ways that count, I think I still am that kid.

But I’ve learned things she didn’t know, like how to speak with my own voice instead of copying others. I’ve learned how to mend fences and heal from hurt. I’ve learned what’s important to me and what I can live without. And the thought that I still have so much left to learn doesn’t make me tired, I find hope in it, because it means I can meet someone new each day without even leaving home.

And everyone who takes the time to acquaint themselves with me will share in the discoveries, just as I will learn from them. Is that the definition of success? I don’t know. I think maybe it’s my definition of life. Time will tell.

--Laura

Confession: Part I

Since my audience here is probably less than a hundred (that’s funny, it’s probably less than six), I feel comfortable with this confession: I once authored a mystery-romance novel.

I thought of this recently when I was thumbing through the pages of Southern Homespun a book by a family friend. Occasionally I look it up on Amazon to see if anyone is selling copies. Thinking about her book made me think of my own.

Mine was never published of course, but as a junior in High School, I believed I could emulate the style of mystery-romance novels written by Phyllis A. Whitney, someone I’d been reading for a few years because mom liked her.

(At 37, it doesn’t escape me that had my passion been boys, the hard sciences or computing, my life might be much different today. History not so much – because who gets a job with a history degree? I love history now, but I think my 16 year old self did me a favor on that front at least. I’m a bit chapped with her about the other ones though; I bet I would have been good at computers. She could have put a little more shoulder into it. She was convinced she was going to be a foreign correspondent).

She, well I, was also convinced I could write a mystery-romance novel following Whitney’s time tested formula. She was at thirty books by the time I began copying her. And she lived to 104, so that alone is impressive. Anyway, her formula is basically this:

1. Girl discovers mystery is afoot.
2. Mystery tries to kill/maim/injure girl.
3. Girl is perky and sets about to solve mystery.
4. Boy shows up and Girl is irritated yet strangely attracted to Boy. Note: they need to be forced together by chance. This Girl is independent, like Nancy Drew with the titian blonde hair.
5. Boy and Girl fall in love. Kissing ensues.
6. Dramatic tension: Something suggests the Boy isn’t who he says he is and may want to kill Girl!
7. Climactic Moment: Girl tested by extreme danger, mystery killer is revealed and Boy is cleared.
8. Tie up all loose ends of mystery. Kiss Boy. Plan future. The End.

So during one class each day (Yearbook), I wrote my version of this story in a mead spiral notebook. I had won it in a contest that year, along with a box of mead paper products. I still do most of my writing in longhand and struggle to do any real thinking while I’m typing. I’m not sure why.

When I had finished the novel, I typed up the story, using my parent’s typewriter. It was an iron beast with its own black hard plastic carrying case. I stored the entire manuscript in a shirt box.

At some point not long after that I got my first computer. It was a Leading Edge, Model D. and I wanted to be different, so I got the amber CRT monochrome monitor. It had two floppy drives. I don’t remember it running windows, and it is the sole reason I know any DOS commands. I was going to use it in college. I was on the crest of the personal computer age, so of course the novel was meant to go on my new computer and saved on a disk.

Plan's First Fatal Flaw: I destroyed the typewritten pages as I input the story.
Plan's Second Fatal Flaw: I didn’t make copies of the disk.

To cut to the chase, the disk corrupted one day and I lost all but about 50 pages of the end of the book.

--Laura