Opinions

When I look back at photographs of Thanksgivings Past, I always laugh at the line-up. There we are on Aunt Hazel’s porch, standing like majorettes in a row. We’ve turned to the left to look slim, with interlocking arms to look familiar. It’s the aunts, the girl cousins, and me, in my teenage years. Everybody has on something brown, green or orange.

In the 1984 movie, Ghostbusters, a supernatural comedy in which a team of scientists, who lose their well-paying jobs at a university in New York City, choose to fight paranormal beings for pay. Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd star with others who discover a dimension that will release evil upon the city, and they decide to save the people from destruction.

It’s important to have a good coffee cup. My husband, Peter, makes the coffee, and has since we were married. We will be celebrating nine years of marriage this spring, so you might not be surprised to hear that I no longer remember how to make coffee. This is called “learned helplessness” in psychology circles, and is certainly true in my case. Peter makes the coffee, and I drink it. This seems to me like a fair division of labor. And having the proper cup is essential. I am reminded of this every time I return to Mexico, because I do not pack a coffee cup. Our little furnished apartment has a perfectly fine selection of matching white ceramic coffee cups sitting on the shelf. But none of these cups is my cup. And so, usually on the first day, I will head out to the market where handcrafted items are sold in search of a perfect cup. Walking through the market, it is surprising how relatively few coffee cups I see. I suppose most people do not have a cup sitting beside them all day, or at least for the first six hours of every day. I don’t think this is nearly as common in Mexico as it is in the U.S. But still, there are a lot of nice cups and, eventually, I find my new cup. “What do you think?” I ask Peter when I triumphantly return with my new perfect cup. “Isn’t that the same cup you had before?” he asks.

When we moved to our small corner of the country, for which I am grateful, we were greeted by the aboriginals: creatures great and small who lived in the dense woods and had never been disturbed by man.

I just spent a wonderful long weekend with my sister and her son, Beau, “up north” at my parents’ cabin. Stubby the red squirrel is doing well. Since the tragic loss of the end of his tail (and his subsequent unofficial adoption by my mother), he has flourished. The end of his tail, while still cut off at a sharp angle, has sprouted an impressive line of dark fur, and he looks dapper, sitting on the railing, shaking his tail and showing off his new plumage. Mom still dutifully feeds him every day, usually bird food, although he recently had some leftover pasta shells, which he seemed to enjoy very much. Even without my mother’s offerings, he is kept busy this time of year with pine cones and acorns and the many other good things there are to be found in the forest. My mother is an intrepid gardener, braving the cold temperatures, lack of sun and marauding forest wildlife to keep the flowers in her many flowerpots growing and beautiful for much of the year. It is a neverending job, as the deer and, more recently, the wild turkeys love the tasty treats she has cultivated and placed around the house like a free salad bar. A pack of turkeys decimated her begonias earlier in the fall. She sent me a photo of her begonias, pre- and postturkey invasion, and it was not a pretty sight. My sister brought the family dog, Mabel, who gets along well with my parents’ cat, Katie, and Mabel kept the turkeys and deer at bay. But that didn’t mean we were free of animal drama. My nephew and my dad went down to haul in the dock before the lake froze. My sister and mother and I followed them down to the water’s edge, where we discovered the site of a recent raccoon feast. “They must have been eating crayfish,” my father guessed when he saw the enormous pile of fragrant poop at the end of the dock. “Oh, no!” I yelled, because -- at that moment -- Mabel discovered the pile of poop and was eating it as quickly as she could.

After Hurricane Idalia chewed up half the trees in Taylor County, and before Georgia-Pacific spit out the other half, I took myself to the doctor. As always, I told him what was wrong…just to be helpful. “It’s sinus and allergies,” said I. “I have no fever, no sore throat…yada, yada, yada…” “Did you test for Covid?” is the predictable question.

Living on Purpose

Quite reluctantly, I made my way to the cruise spa and salon. Took me three score and six to actually yield to getting my first pedicure. Left my man-card at the door and sunk my dogs in the warm water. Thirty-minutes later it was done. Now here I go, chancing my defiance again, but this time it’s at sea. Shouldn’t be as difficult to bare, and besides, there is no one among the 4,100 passengers who are friends of mine. But as I was about to learn, pride would still come undone on this floating oasis.

It seemed easy enough. I was to find a place for the husband and I to stay when we returned to our college alma mater for Homecoming.

Have you considered that worry and anxiety is an issue we can control? Many within the medical world agree that stress is not a lurking monster that forces us to be afraid, but rather our negative thoughts are a nurtured response to what we see and hear. In other words, our assumptions become empowered when our emotions embrace them. Thus, if we can learn how to re-wire or renew the way we think, we can begin to walk in victory over fear which we blame for ruining our happiness. We’ve heard about going to our “happy place” a seemingly magical location where we can take refuge from whatever is threatening our security. But what is this about? It can mean different things to different people, but for those who have a relationship with God, it’s a secret place in the deepest part of our soul where we can commune with God and embrace the safety and joy of His presence.