Simply Hope

Hope is strength.

Hope is enduring.

Hope handles the tough jobs.

Cleaning out your deceased mother’s house.

Comforting your father during

your mother’s funeral.

Hope survives struggles.

Like losing a child.

Hope thrives in the face of adversity.

Like raising and caring for a

disabled child.

Hope is able to see that

even people with damaged brains

have beautiful souls

and experience moments of pure joy.

Hope is the first to call

when a brother needs support

or just a word of encouragement.

Hope stands in the wings and cheers

for the people she loves

when they take the stage.

Hope survives crashes

and grueling years of rehab.

Hope is a presence in your youth.

Hope is there from the 

moment you are born.

Hope is strong and enduring.

Hope is beautiful.

Hope is love.

Hope is my sister’s name.

Arrowheads and magic Eyes or How to Grow Up to Be What You Want to Be

I wasn’t very good at spotting arrowheads. I lived at the lake with my parents. Each winter the water would recede in preparation for spring rains. The power company had decided that it was better to open the dam and let the next lake down the chain deal with spring flooding.  In front of our house a large shoal would reveal itself. It reached out from the shore at the top corner of the cove and extended straight out a good 200 yards. Muddy, red clay covered in gravel sized rocks.

A neighbor three doors down had a huge collection of arrowheads that the water would churn up from the sticky mud each year. He said that they were really easy to spot. They just stood out.

So sporting rubber pull-over-your-shoes snow boots I made my away along the shoreline to the mucky red sandbar (or claybar, in reality. But that doesn’t sound quite right). Spluck, spluck, splucking my way to the plethora of arrowheads and Native American artifacts waiting to be discovered by me.  This was going to be great. Newspapers would be calling.  The elders of the Catawba tribe would probably want to shake my hand and personally thank me for recovering long lost spiritual relics. I’d be an honorary medicine man!

I was a hundred yards out into the stretch of mud when I stopped and took a good look around. My neighbor had said “they just stand out”. I scanned the thousands of arrowhead sized clay coated rocks. Nothing stood out.  I must not have been at the good spot yet.  I looked across the water back toward my house.  My neighbor must have spotted me because he was making his way out to join me. I kept moving.  I had to beat him to the treasure.  He already had about a million.

Another fifty yards. Nothing.  Feeling like Yukon Cornelius, I squatted down to get a closer look. Red gravel. That’s what I saw.  My competitor was gaining on me.  He had real hiking boots.  It seemed like an unfair advantage.  I stood up and started out again, only my boot stayed where I had been squatting. Stuck. Next, I planted the bootless foot straight down into the soppy, sinky sludge. Now my tennis shoe along with the foot in it were stuck as well. Ugh. And here he comes. Practically gliding over the stickiness in his fancy hiking boots!

“Hey”, He said. “Found anything?”  I was half standing/half squatting and stuck in my tracks. Literally. He popped my rubber boot out of the mud and held his hand out for me. He pulled me back to full standing position and handed my boot back to me. “You should get some hiking boots”, he told me. Ha! Exactly.

And right then and right there, he said,” What did I tell you? They just stand out”. Without moving a step, he bent down and picked up a perfectly shaped arrowhead. “Yeh”, I said. “I was just about to pick that one up."  He smiled and held it out to me.  I took it and looked at it. 

It's beautiful. It's really old.

And someone a long time ago had carefully crafted it. Had used it to hunt. To feed his family.

I took off the other boot and started following my new best buddy around.  Every few feet he stopped and picked something up.  Sometimes it was nothing. Sometimes it was a broken piece of pottery. Sometimes it was an arrowhead.  Some perfect like mine.  Some with broken tips. Some worn smooth from the water lapping over them for a couple hundred years. But in every case, before he leaned down to pick them up, they still looked like clay covered gravel to me. He had magic eyes, I decided.  Nothing “stood out”.  He kept saying it over and over. He said, “I told you”, he was giddy now. “It’s only your first time out here and you spotted one right away.” He glanced down at the beauty in my hand.

I thought about Indians. American Indians. I thought about how I had admired them as far back as I  could remember. 

As a kindergartner, when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said, “An Indian.” This used to send my brother into fits of laughter.  I didn’t get what was so funny. Indians are noble.  Indians use strong words like honor. Indians tear up on TV when they see all the garbage left lying around by white people. 

Indians tell the truth.

Could my friend with the magic eyes see the guilt I was feeling?  I started to say that…

“Hey” he interrupted. “I think we are in the middle of a good spot. Look around you.  They just stand out.” He guided me with his eyes.  I followed his gaze and Bing!  It just stood out. An arrowhead.  I grabbed it up and examined it.  He looked at it over my shoulder, going on about how cool it is and how easy it is to spot them. It is cool. Not as perfect as the first one that was actually his find, but I had found this one. Sort of.

We kept looking. He found a few more. I found a couple of pieces of broken pottery. I didn't find any more arrowheads. I had two in my pocket. I really couldn't claim either one of them as true finds of my own.  But I did. I took them home with me and never looked back.

I showed them to people over the years always telling them that I had found them. I kept them in a box of special stuff. A polished rock that seems to magically stay frigid cold to the touch, a piece of petrified wood someone gave me. I showed these things to my own children and told them how I had found them. Magic Eyes never got credit.

Right in that same box with the arrowheads is a square tile of wood.  Back when I would say I wanted to be an Indian when I grew up, an older kid down the street had listened.  When he was away at camp he painted this wooden tile for me. The painting was of a noble looking Native American Chief in full headdress. On the back my name had been inscribed with a wood-burning tool. I treasured it. But I had not lived up to it.

So now I am saying to the world that my friend had magic eyes. He could spot beautiful ancient tools in the midst of a vast red field of gravel. I had no such talent. I’m coming clean.  I’m making an attempt at nobility and honor.

I want to still have a chance to grow up to be an Indian.

Fatherly Advice or How to Make Sure That They Don't Put Onions on Your Burger

It was crowded at Onie’s, the lakefront hamburger joint. This was a regular stop on our family boating excursions on the large lake we loved so much.  The lake boasted 525 miles of shoreline full of deep coves to explore.  Dad was always Captain. We would seek out glass surfaced coves for skiing and private spots to anchor and swim.  We would beach the boat on sandy, wooded islands and spend time hanging out with other boating enthusiasts. Mom might pack a picnic, or we would head to Onie’s place.

Dad had mastered the skill of smoothly docking the boat. My job for as far back as I can remember was to jump out of the boat onto the dock and grab the handrail on the bow to make sure we stopped in just the right place.  I knew how to do a quick and neat tie-off on the dock’s cleats. Boat secured, we headed into the grill pronounced Oh-Nies. That’s a long I and accent on first syllable.

Mom secured a table for us.  525 miles of shoreline and only two places you could dock your boat and eat!  It was packed and I was around ten years old.  I was painfully shy. I don’t mean to be cliché. It actually caused me physical pain to move outside my comfort zone and talk to strangers.  My stomach would clench, I would get shaky, and my muscles would tense.  My mother would gently ask that I say hello to whoever was addressing me, but my throat would dry up.  She would usually answer for me to save me the distress.

I walked to the counter with Dad. He always placed the orders.  He rattled off what the others wanted and then turned to me and said, “Tell him what you want.” Surprised that Dad was not ordering for me, my throat closed. There were people waiting behind us.  The short order cook was busy flipping burgers and dropping baskets of fries. The order taker looked impatiently at me as I remained silent.  Dad knew what I wanted. I looked at him with pleading eyes. He ordered for me.

Relief. Ahhhh. I can breathe.

We sat at the table and talked happily. I absorbed the excitement of people happy to be boating after long work weeks. The place was jammed and you would have to turn sideways to make your way between folks to leave, or use the restroom, or make your way to the counter.

The previously impatient counter guy shouted out our order number.  Dad squeezed his way through the crowd of hungry boaters to get the tray of food. He returned and Mom distributed the burgers, fries, and hot dogs. 

I was a picky eater.  When Dad had ordered my burger he had clearly said “No Onions”. As usual I immediately unwrapped the sandwich and opened the top bun to check that they got it right.  Nope. There on top of the meat was my standard mustard and catsup with tiny chopped up onions inextricably mixed in. I complained out-loud to my parents. Mom said to just scrape them off. Ugh, that never worked. “I can’t eat this”, I said. 

Then it happened. My father looked directly at me and said, “Take it back”. What?  He wanted me to go through that crowd of impatient and hungry people and ask for a new burger?? Yes, he did.  I pleaded with my father to do it for me.  I think that with my freeze-up at the counter being fresh in his mind, Dad decided this was a teachable moment.  He said that everyone else was happily enjoying their food and if I wanted to take the sandwich back, I would have to do it myself. Mom tried to volunteer to do it for me.  Dad drew a line in the sand. I was near tears. And then he said something that has stuck with me to this day.

Still looking directly into my eyes, Dad firmly said,” LeGette, you have to assert yourself.” He continued on with some tough love advice. “Have some self-confidence. They got your order wrong. Make them fix it.  You are going to have to stand up for yourself for the rest of your life. You can start now.”

I can’t say I was happy. Or that it was easy. I slid sideways between people and went to the counter, burger in hand, and shoved it forward. Impatient guy, “What’s wrong with it?”. I squeaked out “onions”. He grabbed back the sandwich, chunked it in the trash, and hollered out to the cook,” Hey idiot, I wrote NO ONIONS on this order!”.

Wow.  That felt kind of good.  They quickly corrected the issue.  I returned to the table with new sandwich in hand. Dad gave me a big smile and said, “Way to go, buddy!”. Now that felt great. My father is a master Dad.

Through the years he would use a similar method to show me how to navigate life. To be confident. To be a man. To be kind, but to stand up for myself.

Thank you Dad.