My Fundraising Dillema

Today, as I sat at my desk counting down the final hour of the work day watching seconds tick by, I heard from my desk a little boy asking from the front counter, "Would you like to buy a Christmas wreath?"

I hid behind my computer monitor and let the front desk girl send him on his way. Why? Well, because I wanted to shout, "Yes! Yes, you poor little man with a lisp, I will buy an overpriced wreath to support whatever cause you are selling them for!" But I didn't. I didn't because I have watched my husband send away countless amounts of youth attempting to fund-raise, I have watched him turn down great sales offers, and in doing so he has helped me learn the value of saying, "No."

I am not good at it yet.  That young man walked away and my heart was wracked with guilt! I shed tears over telling that kid, "No." My work study even wished him luck as he moved forward selling and I am sure it was the most polite refusal he has seen today, but for my heart, it didn't soften the blow.  I still shed tears over the disappointment I just made that young man feel.

There is some value though. Life is going to give us all a lot of that answer: NO. It makes the times we get a "yes" a whole lot sweeter.  There are also things that my husband always says these kids need to learn: how to be a salesman and plead your case.  This young man didn't start with any sort of greeting, not even a, "Hello!" He didn't tell me WHY he was selling wreaths, where he was from, who he represented, how much the wreaths cost, or the benefits I might gain from buying his wreath. He didn't even tell me his name.

In the real world, that won't get you anywhere. Someday you will plead with a professor over a grade or an opinion, a future employer over an intent to work contract, a supervisor over an account you believe in, a manager over office policy, an HR representative over your pay grade - and in doing all of these real world scenarios, you MUST sell yourself.  You better know exactly who you are, you better say it with a smile, you better convince the person WHY you are worth it, your product is worth it, your idea is worth it, your employment is worth it. And let me tell you a secret: you better believe what you are saying or they never will.

So the next time you fork over 30 dollars to the Boy Scouts for caramel popcorn, or 4 dollars a box for your beloved Girl Scout cookies, please make sure they worked for it.  If they haven't worked for it, you are only giving them the impression that all things in life come easily - and that, I assure you, will never serve them well for their future.

If I Should Think Of Love

“If I should think of love,

I’d think of you." ~William Shakespeare

I scrawled those words on the bathroom mirror over my husband’s sink many days ago.  I looked up at them again today to find the dry erase ink has melted the letters into something fit for Halloween – a font fit for the Goosebump novels – as countless showers have been taken since the time I wrote them, the steam and condensation doing a number on the original message.  If you look hard though, and squint just one of your eyes, you will find the original message still there. I think that’s why he hasn’t wiped it off yet.

I have this curse in my passion for literature that I discover things as I study and read: poetry, prose, letters, devotions, stories – things written for lovers that have stood the test of time, lasted through centuries, escaped fires, natural disasters, plagues, and remain to this day, a testament of emotions that ran so deep that when the author wrote about them, they became permanent.  Their love became enduring, everlasting, endless – right there in black and white for centuries upon centuries to read.

So I wonder, as I write, if anything I ever say about my love will stand the test of time. Does my love diminish or mean less if I can’t create a sonnet suited for Shakespeare’s audiences?  Does pain have to be associated with love for it to evoke the emotions that run so deep that poets praise it? Was it a different life? A different time? What made it so poignant?

I find myself wondering, did they ever nurse their sick wife back to health?  Did they ever stand at their husband’s bed side counting the breaths because the medicine sedated him so deeply, you wondered if he had died? Did they lose a child? Or hold hands as they brought a child into this world? Did he lift his wife off the floor and wrap her in his arms trying to squeeze the grief of losing a loved one out of her body and into his own, because he would do anything to take the pain away?  And I think: of course they did. Don’t we all?

Maybe we don’t do it in the way that poetry writes, but we choose love.  We choose hope. Love is a verb. I recently read a quote by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland about love that said, “It does not come without effort and it does not come without patience…true love booms when we care more about another person than we care about ourselves.” I would add that when that same level of care is reciprocated back to us.

So I feel love the same way the poets did.  I just haven’t mastered how to write about it yet.  It’s there, though, I can assure you.  I feel it in the dark of night flowing from my husband’s steady arms that surround me, like osmosis occurs between our bodies, and the love transfused between he and I where our skin touches.  I feel it in the way he tucks my hair behind my ear when I am crying to look me in the eyes and offer comfort. I feel it in the way his soul silently sends mine a message that feels like, “I am here. I will not leave you. You will always be my first priority.”  I smell it through fall flowers he gifts to me for no reason at all.  I feel it deep in my chest when my lungs are struggling for air because my chest is heavy with laughter.

I feel it, I just don’t write about it as well as the greats. As well as Shakespeare, but I mean it and feel just as he did….

“But were you in my arms, dear love,

The happiness would take my breath away,

No thought could match that ecstasy,

No song encompass it, no other worlds.

If I should think of love,

I’d think of you."

And Just Like That, September Was Gone

It’s October people! I love the fall. In Laramie, it is a short lived season, and I dream of a day where I live in a climate that gives me three glorious months of sweater weather with bright, changing leaves and pumpkins all around. For now, I will make do with clinging to the last strands of the fading season before my eternal winter begins again. 

Fall, for some reason, always makes me feel nostalgia.  Fall means football, and I feel nostalgia for the days that the Riverton Wolverines were winning state championships as I watched older brothers and cousins play football.  I yearn for the days when I traveled across this state every single Friday to follow around the Laramie Plainsman and watch my little brother live out his senior year with a Mohawk and shoulder pads.  There is a longing that drives me to sing ‘Ragtime Cowboy Joe’ and feel the buzz of War Memorial stadium that only Cowboy’s fans can create.  Canons.  Bands.  Pigskin.  Deep in my soul I feel a drive for sitting on the couch wrapped in a blanket, steaming mug in my hand, fuzzy socks on my feet, football on the TV, the man I love at my side, books in my lap.  There is just something about this season that makes me feel all the feelings so deep down in my soul and running through all my blood. 

Fall has this holiday, though, that I have been avoiding thinking about for quite some time.  Thanksgiving.  A time that is full of the best holiday memories I have.  Memories.  Just memories.  For this year, I will embark upon Thanksgiving without the very Grandparents who made it so special.  The first Thanksgiving after suffering the loss of their presence in this life. I have feared fall this year, not sure if it would bring the same feelings of wistfulness and make my heart as content as it always has in the past. 

I took this silly quiz to determine the color of my aura a few days ago.  One of the questions was, “What drives you?” There was an array of options to choose from, but among them was the simple choice: a need for peace.  Not the kind of peace when war ends, but the kind of peace that applies to feelings in the depths of our souls. Peace. Tranquility. Calm. Restfulness. Quiet.

 That’s what fall is – even this year with it’s scary reminders – fall is peace.  A need that gets met once a year as rain falls, cold fronts move in, leaves crunch under boots, and sweaters make their first appearances.  It is peace. It is fall. And it soothes my restless soul.