“Hungry for Spring”

                               Feb. 9, 2010

     Today I stood at a window and watched as another storm rolled in from the west bringing snow to the mountains, rain to the desert and a little ray of hope to my heart.

   I was smartly dressed in my favorite Eskimo matron attire: Sheepskin boots, inch-thick sweatpants and a Polar Fleece pullover I gave my husband for Christmas, which is not only big enough to double as a cover for RV, but warm enough to withstand sub-zero conditions, lest I’m ever asked to lead an expedition to the South Pole.

   Somehow, I still felt cold. I’m sorry, but cold is cold.

   Three years ago, when we moved to Las Vegas, people joked that summers in Sin City would be hotter than Satan’s toenails. Nobody mentioned winters would be colder than the ice in his beer chest.

    I remember our first year here, the first time it snowed. It was barely an inch, but it covered the desert like icing on an apple cake, smoothed all the rocks, dusted the palm trees and even clung to the spines on the cactus. I’ve seen bigger snowfalls, but never one so incongruous and surprising.

   The second winter it snowed twice, a couple of inches each time, turning my husband’s usual 15-minute drive home from work into an hour-long demolition derby.

   No snow so far this winter. I suspect it’s as my mother used to say, too dang cold to snow.

   I know I shouldn’t complain, especially when other parts of the country are hip-deep in ice.

   Thinking about other parts of the country reminded me to call my brother in South Carolina to see how he was holding up. As usual, he took his time about answering the phone.

   “Hey, sister, it’s good to hear your voice!”

   “Good to hear yours, too,” I said. “How’s your weather?”

   Because Joe is blind, he can’t see what the weather looks like, so he likes to go out and check it first hand. Last night, when he started down the steps, tapping his cane side to side, his hand froze to the banister, he said, so he swung around and tapped right back inside.

   “It’s been bad here, sister,” he said, in a tone he reserves for big trouble, “bad, bad, bad!”

   How bad? They had to cancel church, of all things, a rarity in the Bible Belt, the kind of thing that only happens when hell freezes over, which, he added laughing, it probably had.

   “How’s the weather in Las Vegas of all places?” he asked.

   “Not as bad as yours,” I said, “but I am hungry for spring.”

   “I am, too,” he said. “I miss sitting out on the swing.”

   I pictured him in the lawn swing outside his apartment, where last summer I sat beside him pushing the swing with my toe while he smoked his pipe.

   “Spring will come soon,” I said, “I promise.”

   His voice brightened. “Oh, I know. It always does.” Then he added, “They’re calling for more snow this week.”

   “Stay warm,” I said, “and be careful on those icy steps.”

   We said our goodbyes and I went back to watching clouds.

   I wish you could have seen them. They rumbled over the mountains, pawing the air like a herd of wild horses, casting shadows, dappling the ridges with long fingers of light.

   Then the fingers closed and all went dark, except for one dazzling beacon shining on a valley like a spotlight, like a visible promise of spring.

   For a moment, I thought I saw a town in the valley, all lit up and glittering in the sun, in the midst of the gathering storm.

   Did the people in that town know how lucky they were? Did they remember to bask in the moment and give thanks?

   Or were they looking back across the desert at my house, asking the same about me?

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(Sharon Randall can be contacted at P.O. Box 777394, Henderson NV 89077 or at randallbay@earthlink.net.)

                “A Good Place to Be”

                       Feb. 2, 2010

   It was a good question. Too bad I didn’t have an answer.

   I was speaking about the importance of reading, what it has meant in my life. I told the story of how, after my first husband died, I spent a month alone on a lake and did a lot of reading. Reading, I said, had somehow helped me to heal.

   After the talk, a woman in the audience raised her hand.

   “What did you read after your husband died?” she asked.

   There is much I remember about that time in my life 12 years ago, and the things that helped get me through it _ family and friends and even strangers who bathed me in a thousand kindnesses.

   I remember the rhythmic drumming of rain. The weight of a cat that slept on my chest. The daily sea of condolence notes. The unspoken question in the voices of my children, “Mom, are you OK?”

   But for some reason, I don’t remember the books I read that month at the lake. They’re like so many people I’ve met over the years. I remember their stories, how they touched me, but I can’t recall their names.

    There is one exception. Near the end of that month, when I ran out of books, I drove into town to buy just one more.

   “Recommendations?” I said. The clerk smiled and handed me a novel about a grieving woman who was starting her life over _ as a detective.

    Alexander McCall Smith’s “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” was the first in a series. I didn’t just like it. I fell in love with its characters and the life they shared. To be with them was to be in a good place.

   I’m now reading “Teatime for the Traditionally Built,” the tenth book in that series. The next is due out this spring.

   Pursuant to my library talk, having failed to answer one question, I want to ask another: What have you read lately that helped you in some way or just put you in a good place?

   Here are my recent best reads:

1_ “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society” by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows; a friend gave me this for Christmas, and what a gift. In 1946, a London writer begins corresponding with members of a book club that was formed as a guise to shield them from arrest after their island was invaded by the Germans. Both a history lesson and a love story, I did not want it to end.

2_ “The Sweet By and By” by Todd Johnson; this was also a gift from a friend. It’s the hilarious and heartrending story of five Southern women whose lives intertwine in a nursing home. If I live long enough, I want Lorraine to be my nurse, April to handle my affairs, Margaret and Bernice as my bunkmates, and I surely hope Rhonda can do my hair. Also, if my life were a book, I’d want Todd Johnson to write it.

3_  “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett; recommended by yet another friend, it’s a fictional tale set in 1962 about a white Junior Leaguer in Jackson, Miss., who secretly interviews her friends’ black maids to write a book about their lives and their treatment by their employers. A story that could easily have been predictable shines instead with the clarity and grace of its characters. You won’t soon forget them.

4_ Finally, a book of poetry, “Telling Tales of Dusk,” by North Carolina native Terri Kirby Erickson. I carry this in my purse to pull out in airports or offices or any place a poem comes in handy. It never fails to deliver with lines like these: “Leaning on the counter by an open window with tomato juice dripping down your chin …you can’t help but think that eating a garden tomato sandwich in your own kitchen is finer than a café lunch in Paris.”

   Those are my answers. I’ll look forward to yours.

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(Sharon Randall can be contacted at P.O. Box 777394, Henderson NV 89077 or at randallbay(at)earthlink.net.)

                         “A Messy Perfection”

                          Jan. 26, 2010

   Patience? Yes. Wisdom? Sure. The ability to stir a pot, nurse a baby, keep one eye on a toddler, the other on a 5-year-old and talk on the phone all at once? Absolutely.

   But penmanship? Of all the skills I thought I’d ever need to be a mother, handwriting never crossed my mind.

   There was a time when my handwriting was legible. I don’t recall when that time was. It was long ago, before I spent years scribbling notes as a college student and a reporter. Most of what I now write by hand requires interpretation.

   Once, at a book signing in Texas, I told a woman that the inscription I had scrawled for her said “grace and peace.”

  She squinted at the page.

  “Sorry,” I said. “It looks like ‘grits and peas.’ ”

   She laughed. “Honey,” she said, “that ought to be the name of your next book!”

   Fortunately, I type better than I print. But my daughter says, no, typing will not do for addressing wedding invitations.

   “Here,” she says, handing me pen and paper, and speaking in the “teaching voice” she uses with her fourth graders, “let’s practice before we start.”

   I practice. I get worse.

   She sighs. “Well, just do the best you can. I need your help.”

   It isn’t often she asks for my help, so I try hard. But I write “Wring” intead of “Waring St.”

   “It’s OK,” she sighs, “we have extra envelopes.”

   “How many?”

   She counts. “A few.”

   I notice a small pile of rejects.

   “What’s wrong with those?”

   “I messed them up.”

   When she was little, learning to print, she’d rub holes in all her papers with erasures.

   “It’s OK,” I’d say, “it doesn’t have to be perfect. I like the way you write.”

   And she’d give me that look _ the one that says, “You’re my mother and I love you, but on which planet were you born?” _ and go right on erasing.

   That’s the look she’s giving me now. I know it well. I’ve learned not to argue with it.

   Never, in the months since she became engaged, have I felt as thankful as I do tonight that the wedding will be small.

   With our handwriting, there wouldn’t be enough envelopes in the world for a big wedding.

   Finally, we finish addressing and stamping. She’s not thrilled with how they look, but we’re out of spares and she wants to get them in the mail. So we put them in a plastic bag and drive to the post office in the kind of storm that, if you had a goat, you’d be smart to tie it down.

   The post office is closed. We sit in the car staring at the rain while the windshield wipers slap out an old tune, “I got the wedding bell blues….”

   “You could put them in the drop box, honey,” I say.

   “They’ll get wet!” she says. “Maybe the door isn’t locked.”

   Stuffing the bag of invitations under her sweatshirt, she jumps out of the car, runs up the steps and tries the door. It’s locked.

   When she whirls around, the wind catches the hood of her sweatshirt and rips it back, exposing her hair. I can see her face, streaked with rain, shining in the headlights.

   She is soaked.

   And she is laughing.

   I laugh, too.

   Then she sprints to the drop box, leans over the opening and stuffs the invitations inside.

   They are not perfect. Far from it. Neither are we. Neither is life. They’re a bit messy, hard to read, but interesting, not to mention, good for a laugh.

   In other words, they’re like us, our family, the people who love her and the man she’s soon to marry. They’re like most families, even yours, I suspect.

   I want to tell her this, my epiphany on the perfection of her invitations. But I decide it best to wait until she’s dry.

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(Sharon Randall can be contacted at P.O. Box 777394, Henderson NV 89077 or at sharonrandall.com.)

                       “Reading and Writing and Life”

                               Jan. 19, 2010
 
  Smiling faces always seem familiar somehow. But these were familiar for a reason.
   Between the mountains where I was born, and the desert I now call home, I spent most of my life in Pacific Grove, a small town on the coast of California.
   My three children walked to school, to the beach, to the ball park and the library. At night they fell asleep to a lullaby of surf and sea lions and foghorn.
   Two of the three grew up to be teachers in the area. We scattered their father’s ashes in Monterey Bay. As much as any place, Pacific Grove is home.
   So I was not surprised last weekend, speaking at a benefit for the library, to look out at a roomful of smiling faces and realize I knew most of the audience by name. I even knew the names of their dogs.
   The reason for the talk was simple: As in other places around the country, a lack of funding has forced the library to cut services and limit hours.
   I was among friends, passing the hat, preaching to the choir. So I told a story about reading, the difference it has made in my life and the lives of those I love.
   Here’s the short version.
   My grandmother taught me to love reading by reading to me and making me read to myself. By the age of 9, I was hooked.
   The problem was, outside my grandmother’s farm, I had little access to books. It’s hard to read without books.
   Imagine my delight to discover the public library and the librarian, Mrs. Mary Jane Christopher, who said that anyone, rich or poor, could borrow books for free. For the first time in my life, I felt rich.
   My mother was not a big reader. She dropped out of school at 15 to get married and have babies. But she knew the importance of reading. She insisted my blind brother learn to read Braille, though it meant he had to leave home and live at the school for the blind.
   My stepfather never learned to read. I found a paper once where his name was written repeatedly. When I showed it to my mother, she said she’d been teaching him to write it.
   “Don’t let on that you know,” she said. “He’s ashamed.”
   Years passed. I went to college, moved to California, got married and had babies.
   Every week, I’d take them to the Pacific Grove Library for a new stack of books. Then I’d read to them and make them read, just as my grandmother had done for me. I did it for them, so they’d learn to love reading, but mostly I did it for me. Reading was my salvation.
   My late husband loved hiking in Yosemite. At the end of his battle with cancer, barely able to walk, he’d lie on the couch reading John Muir’s adventures in Yosemite. It wasn’t quite the same as being there, he said, but it was close, and he didn’t have to worry about bears.
   Two years later, I wrote a book and was asked to speak at the library in my hometown. In the audience, along with my old Sunday school teacher, my high school English teacher and a few sheepish-looking members of my family, was 93-year-old Mary Jane Christopher, who didn’t go out much any more but insisted on hearing me read.
   The next day, when I gave a copy of the book to my stepfather and showed him where I had signed it for him, his eyes welled up like lakes.
   “I can’t read a word of it,” he said. “You know that, don’t you? But I’ll surely treasure it.”
   After I told that story for my friends and former neighbors, they stopped smiling and began nodding, as if to say amen.
   I hope you are nodding, too.
   I hope you will dream, along with me and everyone who loves reading, of a world in which every child will learn to read, every adult will read for pleasure and libraries won’t need fundraisers to remain free.
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(Sharon Randall can be contacted at P.O. Box 777394, Henderson NV 89077 or at www.sharonrandall.com.)

                              “Take Time to Smell the Mud”

                               Jan.12, 2010   

   In a rush to do a long list of errands, I tried to plan my stops in an orderly fashion to make the most of mileage and time.

   It would help, of course, if there were anything remotely orderly about my nature, which, I have to confess, there is not.

   Pulling out of the driveway, I waved to the gardeners next door and started making a mental list of stops:

   The bank for money. The post office for stamps. The cheese shop to get a surprise gift for never mind who. The market to get something to go with the gift, never mind what. And the dry cleaners to drop off ….

   Wait. My husband’s shirts. I forgot them. Making a U-turn, I doubled back, waved again at the gardeners and ran in the house to get the shirts.

   While inside, I decided to check my e-mail, make one last pit stop and grab the cell phone I’d forgotten, along with … oh, wait, the shirts. I almost forgot them again.

   Finally, I got back in my car, glad to see the gardeners were gone so I didn’t have to wave.

   I wanted to drop the shirts off first (my husband was near the point of going to work naked) but I got distracted by a passing car that appeared, I swear, to be driven by a poodle, and I drove right past the cleaners. So I had to play traffic light roulette and make yet another U-turn.

   After the cleaners, I went to the bank. The drive-thru line looked longer than the Indy 500, but there was only one woman at the walk-up, so I parked and ran to get in line behind her. She then proceeded with 50 transactions, including, I believe, a re-fi on her home.

   Next, at the post office, the 15 folks in line looked like a scene in “Night of the Living Dead.” So I tried to buy stamps from a vending machine. Big mistake.

    Apparently, the machine did not like me or my credit card. I tried not to take this personally. It did, however, seem to like the young woman behind me, who rolled her eyes and showed me, duh, the proper way to use it.

   Suddenly, I was tired. And hollow-eyed hungry. So I took a break for lunch, tomato soup, and while I ate, I opened mail.

   A reader in Alabama mourned the death of her brother. A grandfather in Arkansas reminisced about his youth. A woman in Ohio, in a faltering relationship, said she longs to have a baby and fears she’s running out of time. A single mother in Texas lost her job and worries that she and her children will be homeless.

   Remarkably, in every letter, each one of them found reasons to be thankful.

   An hour later, on my way to the cheese shop, I kept thinking about the people who’d written and how our lives _ theirs and mine and yours _ seldom seem to go according to plan.

   We try hard to put them in order, to line up the milestones like planes on a runway, like errands on a list: First, we’ll grow up. Next, we’ll get married. Then we’ll have children and live happily ever.

   But life defies order, laughs at our plans. It’s full of forgotten laundry, long lines, U-turns, missed opportunities and all sorts of machines that don’t seem to like us much at all.

   Years ago, when my children were small, I had a revelation. We were camping. It was raining. I was miserable.

   Then I looked down at my 2-year-old, who was sopping wet, caked with mud. And he was beaming up at me as if it were a miracle, the best day of his life, and I alone had made it happen.

   Life is not the dream vacation we plan. It’s what happens in a leaky tent in the pouring rain.

   I try to remember that, but at times, I forget. Lucky for me, I have readers who remind me.

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(Sharon Randall can be contacted at P.O. Box 777394, Henderson NV 89077 or at randallbay@earthlink.net.)

   There are times in the lives of those we love when we must respect their right to privacy and accept the fact that we may, on occasion, be left in the dark.

  Out of the loop.

  Uninformed.

  Clueless as a box of rocks.

  Fine. I do not need to know everything. For example, I do not need to hear a play-by-play description of the football game my husband just saw on TV.

  I don’t need to suffer through every painful complication of a gall bladder surgery recently performed on the cousin of the check-out clerk who rang up my groceries and overcharged me for Diet Coke. 

   And spare me, please, details of things my children did in high school that they deemed best not to tell me at the time.

   I don’t need or care to know any of those things. But that does not apply to my sister.

   We tell each other everything, she and I, and by that I mean everything. Or so I thought, until recently.

   It started one morning when I called her long distance to talk for an hour, as we tend to do.

   Usually, when I call, she’s busy pinching her grandbabies’ cheeks, or wandering the aisles of Wal-Mart or doing Lord knows what to her patients. (Besides being my sister, she is a devoted grandmother, an avid shopper and a dedicated nurse, but she was my big sister first.)

   This time she was home watching reruns of “Seinfeld.” So she had plenty of time to tell me. It’s not like she forgot.

   After we said goodbye, I called our brother, Joe, to ask him about the Clemson game.

   Blind all his life, Joe follows the games on the radio. I don’t care much about football, but I care about Joe and it gives us something to talk about. We were just wrapping up when Joe recalled that our sister was coming by the next day.

   “She’s going to see the heart doctor, then she’s going to pick me up and take me to Wade’s for some fried chicken.”

   Heart doctor? My sister had a stroke a few years ago. When she says “heart,” I listen.

   “OK,” I said, “when she gets there, tell her she’s in big trouble for not mentioning the heart doctor to me.”

   “Wait,” Joe said. “What if I get in trouble for telling you?”

   “You can handle it,” I said.

   I redialed my sister’s number. No answer. So I called her daughter, Deep Throat.

   “Talk,” I said, and she did. My sister had been “feeling funny” and was going in for a check up. “Mama didn’t want to worry you,” said Deep Throat. “Don’t tell her I told you. She’ll kill me.”

   “What do you think I’m going to do to her for not telling me?”

   Three days later, my sister finally returned my calls.

   “Who told you?” she said.

   “Never mind,” I said, “why didn’t you tell me yourself?”

   “Was it Deep Throat?”

   “No, it was our brother, and he was very proud of himself.”

   “The little toad.”

   “What did the doctor say?”

   Everything was fine, she said, her tests looked good, she just needs to adjust her medication.

    “Is that the truth?” I said.

    “Yes.”

    “Promise?”

    “I promise.”

   “Swear on a stack of Bibles?”

   She laughed. Then I gave her the talk, the same one she has given me. That we have to be able to trust each other for the things we need to know.

   That it’s better to face the truth than to fear that there’s something we’re not being told.

   That I need her and she needs me and we need each other.

   And that if she doesn’t tell me, she’s going to be in trouble.

   “Don’t worry, Sissy,” she said. “I will tell you.”

   “You’d better,” I said. “You might as well. If Deep Throat won’t talk, the Toad will.”

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(Sharon Randall can be contacted at P.O. Box 777394, Henderson NV 89077 or at randallbay(at)earthlink.net.


             "Picturing a Postcard-Perfect New Year"
                    Dec. 29, 2009
 

   Growing up, I could never understand why my mother went to bed before midnight on New Year’s Eve.

   In my opinion, grown-ups were supposed to get all done up and go out dancing at fancy parties and drink fizzy water from tall skinny glasses and kiss each other on the lips at midnight to usher in the New Year. At least, that’s how they did it in the movies.

   My mother was never big on movies. All she ever learned from movies, she said, was how to smoke and she was waiting for the sequel on how to quit.

   I knew she worked long hours at the mill. I knew that she was tired. And old. I often told her, in my opinion, if she didn’t want to stay up to celebrate, she could at least let me stay up to celebrate for her.

   She’d always reply that I was too young to have an opinion and send me sulking off to bed.

   So on New Year’s Eve, I’d sneak a flashlight out of the closet, check the batteries, and hide it under my pillow.

   And late that night_ while my mother slept and my stepfather snored and my brothers lay tangled up like a litter of pups _ I’d switch on the flashlight, pull the covers over my head and hold my breath, waiting to welcome in the New Year.

   I didn’t have a clock. Didn’t need one. In the town where I grew up, people weren’t much for parties on our side of the tracks, but you could be sure at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, some fool would fire off a shotgun, or maybe a few firecrackers, if I was lucky.

   I always felt lucky on New Year’s Eve, even stuck in bed with my head under a blanket, waving a flashlight like a band leader with a fat baton. I felt lucky just to be alive.

   I would whisper-sing a verse of “Auld Lang Syne,” then do a quick review of the year, listing all major events of the past 12 months of my life. That never took long. Then I’d move on to give thanks by name, one by one, for all the people I loved.

   As the flashlight grew dim and my eyes tried to close, I’d drift off to sleep picturing what wonders the New Year might bring, all the places I’d go, all the things I’d see, all the opinions I wouldn’t get to have.

   I’d lay it all out, season by season, month by month, in my mind and heart and soul exactly as I wanted and needed it to be.

   Then I’d send it flying off to God, a picture-perfect prayer for the New Year.

   Some of the things I pictured never came to pass. My mother, for example, never remarried my father. My blind brother never regained his sight. And Chuckie Ford never kissed me on the lips. Never even tried.

   That is not to say my prayers went unanswered; but the answers were not always what I had pictured. Still, it felt good and right to dream. And what better time for dreaming than at the start of a New Year?

   I have seen a lot of years come and go since then, celebrated in all sorts of ways. In my lifetime, I have never known a year quite like the last one. And as for the coming year? If I survive, I suspect I’ll say the same of it.

   The New Year is a time for dreaming, so why not dream big?

   Someday, I could be sitting in a rest home with my head under a blanket and a flashlight in my hand trying to remember 2010, the things I did, all the people who gave it meaning.  

   But for now, it is a clean slate, a blank check, an empty computer screen, a promise that says, yes, anything is possible.

   So I will picture it as best I can, perfect as can be, and send it flying off to God, a prayer.

   I think you should, too.

   That is my opinion. And I am old enough now to have one.

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(Sharon Randall can be contacted at P.O. Box 777394, Henderson NV 89077 or at randallbay(at)earthlink.net.)
     
             "Looking Back on 2009"

                    Dec. 22, 2009

   At the end of a year, before launching into the next, I like to look back at where I’ve been.
   There was a time when I could do that from memory. I don’t recall when that time was. It helps to keep a calendar, or in my case, a list of columns.
   January _ I began 2009 with a mistake. In my first column of the year, I described repapering a bathroom and accidentally pulling down all the plaster.
   After hearing from a reader, I wrote the following correction: “I’ve just been informed of an error in my column. Apparently I do not know a 'joist' from a ‘stud.’ According to my informant, a ‘joist’ is a horizontal structure in a floor or ceiling; a vertical structure in a wall is called a 'stud.' Thus, the sentence reading 'As I stood there staring at the naked joists…' could rightly be corrected to 'As I stood there staring at the naked studs….’ However, to avoid further confusion, I think it best to say, 'As I stood there staring at the gaping hole in the wall.' I apologize for the error."
   February _ For my birthday, I told you that you didn’t need to send me a card … unless you really wanted to. (Thanks to all those of you who really wanted to, and most especially to those of you who sent cakes.)
   March _ I described doing a “zip line,” swinging through the tops of redwood trees with friends I had known for years; what I didn’t know was that one of those friends _ Sally, who led the way on the zip line, as she did in most things _ would be gone by the end of the year.
   April _ A reader in Indiana sent me a “prayer shawl” that she said she knitted just for me. (Linda, if you’re reading this, it’s still keeping me warm.)
   May _ I spoke at the library in Fort Smith, Ark., while holding 10-month-old Heidi Mae West. (Heidi Mae, if you’re reading this, I’ll count on your help once again when I come back to Fort Smith next May.)
   June _ Two fuzzy quail chicks ran into my house and I spent hours trying to get them back to their mama. I like to think they’re those big fat birds I see every day at the feeder.
   July _ I bragged at length about beating my stepsons … at cards. They keep whining about a rematch. Fat chance.
   August _ I mourned the loss of my childhood friend, Jane.
   September _ In Salado, Texas, I met a whole lot of lovely people and had more fun than you would ever imagine possible in a flood.
   October _ I asked you what I should wear to a Halloween party and, boy, did you tell me. Thanks for all your suggestions, and especially for all the nifty costumes you sent. (For those of you who’ve asked, I drew musical notes on a bed sheet and went as “sheet music.”)
   November _ I was struck by the death of my friend Sally.
   December _ I wrote about the once-in-a-lifetime experience of shopping with my daughter for her wedding gown.
   Those are only a few of the experiences that filled my life this year, that made it worth waking up each day just to see what would happen next.
   I don’t know what the new year will hold. But if the past is any indication, I will probably make some mistakes. Swing through some trees. Weather a few floods. Right a few wrongs.
   If I’m lucky, I’ll hold babies and watch birds and meet a lot of good people who will tell me stories that I can tell to you.
   And at the end of the year, as I look back, I’ll say once again: Thanks for your readership and especially for your friendship.
   You don’t need to send me a card for my birthday. Unless you really want to.
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(Sharon Randall can be contacted at P.O. Box 777394, Henderson NV 89077 or at randallbay(at)earthlink.net.)

   This will be a different kind of Christmas for me and mine, and for a lot us, really, maybe even for you and yours.

   Each year I tell my children not to overspend on gifts. Telling them is my tradition. Not listening to me is theirs.

   A month ago, when we got together for Thanksgiving, I tried telling them again. And this time I really meant it.

   Like so many families, we’ve seen our share of financial “challenges” this year. Jobs were lost. Hours were cut. Budgets were stretched. Belts were tightened. It made me proud to watch my children and their others learn to make do, and to make more of less.

   This time, when I said they shouldn’t overspend, they all agreed in theory. But they couldn’t quite agree in fact.

   For them, the best part of Christmas is not the getting, but the giving. They truly love to give each other gifts.

   When I suggested drawing names, you’d have thought I said, “Let’s hog-tie Santa and stab him in the gut!”

   (I would never say that. I might joke about it, but I wouldn’t really mean it.)

   Finally, I, and the economy, began to win them over and we agreed, at last, to draw names.

   The plan was simple: We would each buy one gift with a $25 limit. We might have to shop for days to find something at that price but, hallelujah, we would not go deeper in debt.

   I, of course, planned to cheat. I’m good at it. Drawing names was my idea, but if I wanted to get something for everybody, what were they going to do about it, stab me in the gut?

   Then a funny thing happened on the way to Christmas. My husband lost his job. He was laid off two weeks ago with dozens of his coworkers.

   We were planning to have a Christmas party. Instead, we had a “pink slip” party for everyone who’d been fired.

    As I stood in my kitchen watching a houseful of newly unemployed people say their goodbyes and wish each other well, it occurred to me that this would be a different kind of Christmas (or Hanukkah or holiday) for all of us. We were all in that same leaky boat.

   A few days later my husband, God bless him, found another job. I wish I could say the same for everyone at that party. I can’t, of course. Not yet. And probably not any time soon.

   Statistics are only numbers until they have faces and names. It is one thing to know that unemployment in your state stands at 13 percent; it’s another thing entirely to know 35 people who just lost their jobs and could lose their health insurance and their homes.

    Today I spoke with my daughter-in-law, who would love to give Christmas presents to every soul on Earth, but can’t quite swing it this year.

    I wish you could have heard the excitement in her voice. Instead of buying gifts that she can’t afford, she has poured her heart into organizing drives for the needy, collecting blankets for the homeless and toys for children who might otherwise get nothing at all.

   I recall a Christmas in my childhood when my family hit hard times. Some people from our church brought us a ham and a box of groceries. I was so mortified I wanted to go hide under the porch with the dogs.

   After they left, my mother sliced the ham and said, “Life is a bank. Sometimes you put in, other times you take out; either way, it’s all the same bank.”

   Giving, she told me, is easy; taking is hard. “Remember how it feels,” she said, “because one day you will do the giving.”

   Whether blessed to give or blessed to take, all that matters, really, is that we do so with a sense of our abundance, and an open and grateful heart.

   And it will be a different kind of Christmas for us all.

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(Sharon Randall can be contacted at P.O. Box 777394, Henderson NV 89077 or at randallbay(at)earthlink.net.)

   Who goes shopping for a white dress on Black Friday?

   For all her life and half of mine, I’ve imagined watching my daughter try on a wedding gown. Never once did I picture it taking place in a grid-locked mall on the worst possible shopping day of the year.

   But being a mother has taught me you do what you have to do, and you do it when you can.

   My daughter _ who teaches a combination class of 32 third and fourth graders, and barely has time to floss her teeth _ is far more organized than I am.

   Three months ago, when her fiancé knelt on one knee and asked her to be his bride, she whipped a notebook out of her purse and started jotting plans.

   Well, first she said “yes.” Then she called me and her brothers and her bridesmaids. Then she whipped out the notebook, the first of many to come. She planned her wedding with no help from me, except for a few thousand e-mails and phone calls that we exchanged between her home in California and mine in Las Vegas.

   Picking out her wedding dress was one thing we wanted to do together. With four months until the wedding, the clock was ticking. We decided to do it the day before Thanksgiving, while my husband and I were in California for the holiday.

   When I was asked to speak that day at a memorial service for a dear friend, my daughter agreed: There are some things more important than a dress _ even a wedding dress.

   Thanksgiving Day we would be too busy eating to shop. And I was going back to Vegas on Saturday. If we were going to find a dress, it would have to be on Black Friday, the traditional start of the holiday shopping frenzy, a day I usually spend in my pajamas eating leftover turkey and the last piece of pumpkin pie that I hid behind the lettuce in the fridge.

   We do what we have to do, I told myself, when we can, even if it has to be on Black Friday.

   Friday morning, we left Monterey in a drizzle that became steady rain as we drove 60 miles north to San Jose. Traffic was heavy, but moving.

   My daughter had a long list of bridal shops. I prayed we would not need to visit them all.

   She made quick work of the first place, grabbed a few dresses, ducked in the dressing room and emerged minutes later, shaking her head.

   The second place was busier, but the attendant was helpful and didn’t hover. My daughter tried on five or six dresses, but I remember only one.

   I was sitting on a sofa by a giant mirror where the brides to be would step up on a pedestal to get a three-way look at the dresses they were trying.

   Mostly I was watching other mothers, how their faces lit up watching their daughters.

   Someone whispered “Oh!” very softly, as if in awe, and I turned to see what she saw.

   Nan was standing on the pedestal in a dress that looked as if it were made for Jackie Kennedy or Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelly _ or just for her.

   “What do you think, Mom?” she said.I smiled, trying hard to hold back tears. She hates it when I cry.

   I remembered a day nearly 20 years ago watching her stand before a mirror trying on her first prom dress.

   I didn’t know then what I know now: That we would lose her dad to cancer; that we’d become the best of friends. That she’d grow up to be a teacher and marry a good, fine man.

   We’ve weathered all sorts of “black days” together. Grace of God, we’ll weather a few more. This one I’ll not soon forget.

   Driving home, I picked up a pumpkin pie, had one slice after dinner, and two for breakfast. I might not eat it again until next Thanksgiving. We do what we have to do when we can.

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(Sharon Randall can be contacted at P.O. Box 777394, Henderson NV 89077 or at randallbay(at)earthlink.net.)

                           Nov. 17, 2009 

  This was going to be about Thanksgiving, the joys of overeating, the tradition of counting our blessings and the importance of giving thanks for the gift of family and friends.

   That’s what I planned to write about a few hours ago. Then I got a call that changed not only the plan, but the world as I knew it. It’s hard to be thankful when you’ve lost someone you love. And it’s especially hard to imagine a world without Sally.

   We were friends for 35 years through the best and worst of times. She was older by more than a decade, but you’d never have guessed it to look at her or talk with her or try to keep up with her on a hike.

   No one lives forever, not on this Earth. But I thought Sally might come close. I was certain she would outlive me.

   When she called a few weeks ago while on a trip to Brazil, and said she was in a hospital, I was stunned. In the four years since she lost her husband to cancer, she probably earned enough frequent flyer miles for a round trip to the moon, but never got sick. Until now.

   “Get better,” I said, and she did. At least, she got well enough to be flown home to a hospital in California.

   When I phoned her last week, she was hoping to be released soon, and I promised to come see her over Thanksgiving.

   Then on Friday came the awful news that she’d suffered a stroke and was in a coma.

   My husband and I were planning to leave early the next morning for an overnight trip to Zion National Park.

   “Want to catch a flight to California instead?” he asked.

   Sally was in ICU. I wouldn’t be able to see her. She was surrounded by family, an army of friends praying nearby.

   I asked myself what would she want me to do? And then I laughed, “hearing” her answer, “Don’t be silly, go to Zion!”

   So we packed up and drove for three hours from Las Vegas to Arizona and into Southern Utah, to a place that is as close to heaven as I ever expect to get in this life _ God’s masterpiece sandstone carving of soaring cliffs, blood red canyons and enormous monoliths, complete with a river running through it.

   The real treat for me in my thirst for a taste of fall were the cottonwood trees that dripped bright yellow leaves like shiny gold coins, covering the ground and sending them flying on the wind. I closed my eyes, snapped a mental photo and sent it on a prayer to Sally.

   We were waiting under blue skies to catch the shuttle for a tour of the park when we heard the first clap of thunder.

   A moment later, we climbed on the bus as rain began to fall and temperatures plummeted. Then the rain turned to hail. And the hail turned to snow. And fall turned into winter.

   It lasted only minutes, but what fine minutes they were.

   That was the image that filled my mind today when I heard that Sally was gone. I pictured her like the Snow Queen enthroned on all that beauty, and somehow it made it easier, just a little, to let her go.

   The seasons of our lives, like the seasons of the year, pass that swiftly, that beautifully, from one to the next.

   The secret, if there is one, is to love them all _ sun and rain and hail and snow _ to love the beauty and mystery of each moment before it is gone.

   This Thanksgiving, as in the past, I will set two tables for all the people I hold dear: One in the dining room for those who will be with me; and one in my heart for those who will not.

   I’ll eat too much, count my blessings and give thanks for the gift of family and friends _ especially my friend Sally.

   To you and yours from me and mine, here’s wishing you a blessed Thanksgiving.

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(Sharon Randall can be contacted at P.O. Box 777394, Henderson NV 89077 or at randallbay(at)earthlink.net.)