Years ago, I won first place in the class science fair for talking to plants.  Well, more specifically, for tracking the growth rates of two peas.  Pea One received harsh treatment.  Some days, I ignored her.  Others, I let her know in no uncertain terms that her shade of green was oh-so-last-year and garish to boot.

Pea Two garnered only praise and sweet smiles. 

By the end of thirty days, Pea Two had a right to preen.  The other pea pod hung her head in shame over her brown spots.

I thought of my Tale of Two Peas this morning while examining the zucchini in my garden.  I've never grown zucchini before.  I stood in front of the pinkie-sized veggies and whispered, "You are beautiful.  Thank you for blossoming in my garden."  Then I stole a glance at the neighbors.  I didn't want them to feel compelled to protect the tender ears of their six-year-old.

Another neighbor spied me, instead, and strolled across the street.  "What are you doing?"

Before I could remind myself that it's not socially acceptable behavior to chat with the flora, I blurted out the truth.  I braced myself for her ridicule.  Instead she looked thoughtful.

"Have you tried singing to them?" she said.

"No." 

My very solid neighbor tilted her head.  "Doesn't everyone like to be sung to?"  She then headed off to make breakfast.

I stood there contemplating whether I'd have the courage to sing out loud, even if it was just for an audience of veggies.  And what does one sing at the garden gate?  Country music?  A trilling aria?  Certainly not heavy metal.  Perhaps best would be a lullaby, something along the lines of "You Are My Sunshine."

I haven't tried singing to my vegetables, yet, but if I do, I'll let you know if they won first place at the County Fair.  At the very least, there's a lot to be said for starting out the day singing a happy tune.

        

Just finished reading Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life by Winifred Gallagher.  It's a fascinating book about the power of our minds to create our reality, or at least our perception of reality.  In it, Ms. Gallagher writes about how happy, inventive people "maintain a wide-angle perspective on life that ensures that they will...'be surprised by something every day.'"

I was thinking about this key to happiness on my walk this morning.  Instead of taking Jake, my Jack Russell Terrier, the same direction as usual, I opted to stroll him into the woods that border the lake.  Together we stood at the water's edge meditating on a flock of geese and the early return of fall.  Well, that's what I was thinking.  Jake's sniffing the air probably had more to do with visions of chasing birds than mediating on them.  

It wasn't until we turned to tramp home a new way, that a thought hit me:  I'd just written a book about the importance of taking detours.  And what is a detour but a way to surprise yourself? 

No wonder I'm basically a happy person.  Guess I was doomed to having a name like Bliss.

        

You can find a life philosophy anywhere.  I found one in line at Trader Joe's behind a well-dressed woman with a bulging shopping cart.

I stood behind her with my one jar of pineapple salsa, looking woebegone.  I gazed at my one item, then at her mountain of quasi-gourmet goodies, then at my jar again.  She looked oblivious.  I thought about saying, "Excuse me, but would you mind if I slipped in front of you?  I just have one item and can pay cash." 

Well, actually, I thought about saying, "Didn't your momma teach you better?" but that would have not been in the spirit of doing the right thing.

The next day, I'm picking up fresh fish at Haggens.  I grocery shop most days, so standing in line I usually have time to ponder the mysteries of the universe, such as, "Is Copper River Salmon for $27.99 a pound truly better, or is it a big marketing hype?"

Yet again, I'm behind a bulging cart with a couple of items in my hand.  To distract myself, I consider reading whether the Bachelorette is a good girl or a good-time girl.  I almost miss hearing, "Why don't you go ahead of me?"  When I slide in front of my beneficent stranger, I share my Trader Joe's experience from the day before.  She responds, "I don't understand passing up the opportunity to do a good deed."

"Me, either," I say.

On the way to the parking lot, I spot an elderly woman wrestling her groceries into her car, while trying to hold on to her shopping cart.  I grab the cart from her, and she seems startled.

"I can drop it off in the rack," I say, adding to help her keep face, "it's on my way."

She nods her gratitude.  While shoving her cart down the designated slot, it gives me a chance to think.  How many people would have passed her by, without a second glance?  How many people would have seen her challenges and thought, "I'm not my brother's keeper.  I'm in a hurry."  Would I have been so emboldened, if I hadn't just been on the receiving end of a kind deed?

My prayer is simple.  "I hope so."  After all, if we aren't here to take care of each other, then what's the point? 

I really want to know.

        

Just heard the amazing Alice Acheson--publicity maven--speak about what authors can do to market their books.  Alice suggested that we writers have 12 types of publicity at our disposal, and it would behoove us to go down multiple paths.  Now I wish that I could clone myself like Barbie. 

"Here's Speaking Bliss, podium and microphone not included.  Interview Bliss will talk at the simple pull of the string at her back.  And, of course, there's Writing Bliss.  Yes, she has dark circles under her eyes and hunched posture from banging on her keyboard, but she's on sale this month!  Magic circle eraser available this summer."

Then there's Real Bliss.  She's the one trying to figure out why her dog insists on leaving neon "gifts" in her office, how summer always happens before she's ready to expose winter white flesh, and which of her many projects to write next.

        

Ask yourself, "What touches me?" and you have the heart of meditation.  For some people, that's their children.  Others, it's a cat who sleeps on their chest.  There are even some known to shed a tear at NASCAR.

For me, it's a certain Oprah Moment.

I'm taken with the fact that I can hear stories of children being forced to sit on the stairs for hours without anything to eat or natural disaster victims and their pets and not well up.  Of course, I feel compassion, but that's not what opens me to the moment.  Instead, it's the foster parents who give the stair sitters a new home.  The foster mother perches on Oprah's couch with crumpled kleenex and describes the moment at church when she whispered to one of her new sons, "Look around this church.  No one's been through what you've been through."  My eyes fill, not at the sentiment, or with the sight of that one tear sliding down her cheek, but at the basic underlying goodness of everyday people. 

These people touch my core.  As does the neighbor who keeps the flood victim's dog found floating on top of his doghouse.  We viewers know that the owner's dog has drowned.  I cry, not for victim or for the dog--though I'm obsessed with my Jack Russell--but for the decency of a simple neighbor doing a simple good deed.

When others rise to the clarion call of angels, I am filled with the sound through their ears and consider myself blessed.

        

Moms wear a lot of hats: van driver, boo-boo kisser, and grammarian, to name a few.  My favorite chapeau is a beaten-up felt number the color of the ant hill my son kicked over at six, just before whipping out his magnifying glass to direct the sun.  That lecture about caring for all God's creatures, big and small, had me snugging my teaching hat closer to my head.

So with years of teaching under my belt, both inside and outside the classroom, it came as a bit of a shock to me that our children have something to teach us.  Wasn't mothering a one-way street all the way down from Mt. Olympus?

In particular, I've learned to pay close attention to those girls who come behind us.  My daughter has taught me a thing or two about how to update my look.  If it hadn't been for her, I'd still be wearing my husband's black gym socks--fetchingly pushed down to around my shins--on my date with the treadmill.  I hadn't noticed that over the past twenty years styles in sock wear had evolved.  Now I sport foot coverings in pinks and reds that hit the sweet spot right above my ankle, not, God forbid, right below it.

But it's not just fashion that our daughters have to teach us; it's bigger than that.  A few months ago our daughter's friend, Jenny, was over.  She loves my Southern-style macaroni and cheese, and if she plays her cards right, I just might show her how to make it.  (I know, I know, there I go teaching again.)  Just us girls were sitting around, chatting, and the subject of someone else's bad behavior came up.  Jenny sighed and said, "That's just not the decent thing to do."

Decent?  Decent?  On the blackboard of my life, my daughter's friend had just scrawled a new vocabulary word for me. That wasn't a word we used growing up, and not one I'd particularly pulled out during teachable moments as an adult.  Though I had raised my children to do the right thing, be good, etc., etc., it didn't occur to me to use the "D" word. 

As the word came out of Jenny's mouth, I liked the old-fashioned sense of it.  I rolled it around in my mind, the "D" firm, while the following syllable seemed quieter, blanketing the "D" with kindness.  "Do the right thing" could start wars.  "Be good" waggles its finger promising punishment if not followed to the letter of the law.  "Choose decency" calls out for a basic underlying humanity towards all God's creatures, big and small.

When the school bell of life rings, I look forward to seeing what else I can learn from the young women approaching the front of the room.  And, if I should ever have grandchildren, many years from now, and one of them kicks over an ant hill, I'll make sure to tell him or her, "That's just not the decent thing to do."

        

Check out an essay I had published on the wonderful website Your Life Is a Trip.  What's a mother to wear?

http://www.yourlifeisatrip.com/home/dressing-for-a-jerusalem-wedding.html

        

My husband and I sat in the fake leather booth, awaiting our server.  March was my birthday month and the free birthday buffet beckoned.  Would I shovel the stuffed cod onto my plate or the penne pasta?  As long as it was white--there were always the mashed potatoes to consider--I didn't care.
    
A slender young woman in a waitress's uniform headed our way.  I smiled, then bent my head over the dessert menu.  Best to be prepared for when the time came.  Since the dessert was included in the buffet, I wondered if I would be allowed to give my husband a few bites, or if some free buffet alarm would sound and I'd be dragged away to penne prison.

"You have braces," said a surprised voice.

At the same time I said, "Unfortunately," the waitress said, "You're so lucky!"

I looked up from my menu into an unlined face full of yearning.  She met my eyes and when her lips parted in a smile, I saw the wreckage in her mouth.  The upper row of her front teeth was divided in half.  One half stood normally, while the other half pushed back into a row behind where they should have been.  The effect was that of sliding doors where one door had slid off its track.

"I won't be able to afford them until I'm like thirty," she said.  She looked sad, then brightened.  "But at least you get to be like a kid, then, right?"

Her words were hard to understand, probably due to her malformed jaw, but her attitude wasn't.  What I had seen as a burden, she had seen as a blessing.  How old would I have to be before I really got that everything--and everybody--is our teacher?

In the end, I had the cod and a few spears of penne.  It was my birthday month, after all.  And of course we left the waitress a big tip, especially when she brought my Paradise Lemon Cake and said with a wink, "It's your birthday and you can share it with whoever you want."

I'm just glad she shared her sweet attitude with me. 

        

You can tell a tree’s age by cutting it down and counting its rings.  Counting the rings on a woman won’t tell you as much, but taking a look at old photographs and checking out the length of her nails will.  If they exceed half an inch, then most likely she owns nail polish whose color has gone in and out and in and out of style.

 

In the seventies, I wore my nails short, not because of any sense of fashion, but because I gnawed them off.  To compensate for my blunt fingertips, I brushed on the oh-so-popular white metallic polish.  The popular girls still snubbed me because they flaunted white metallic lipstick as well, and I wasn’t allowed to wear any. 

 

In the eighties, my nails started to grow, but these were the greed-is-good years and I had something to prove in the male-oriented professions to which I gravitated.  No polish.  Modest length nails.

 

In the nineties, my nails grew to match my expanding shoulder pads.  A professional woman without long, colorful nails was like a peacock without feathers.  As mine wouldn’t grow long enough, I visited the manicurist weekly so she could cement acrylic ones into place.  I was constantly popping them off and finding them in the soup pot, under the couch, or on the driveway.

 

In the oh-oh’s, I returned to nature.  The acrylics were a thing of the past.  My nails were a good length to teach in a classroom with authority, the polish pale, so as to keep the student’s attention on what I was pointing at on the chalkboard and not the pointer.

 

Now we’re in the new decade and I just cut my nails, filed them to a sexy half-moon shape and stroked on a deep purple color.  I’m glad I’ve found a way to express myself that doesn’t require anything to be pierced or tattooed.  And that I feel free from caring what others think about what I do to my body.

 

My fingers, like lacquered hand puppets, say, “I’m old enough to know what I want and young enough to go for it.”

 

I’m like a tree in fall, with Passion-in-Paris-Purple leaves.

 

 

        

Started thinking about this question, "If I could choose any woman in history or in fiction to be my mother, who would I choose?"

Can't believe Joan of Arc popped into my mind:  Had visions, burned at the stake, and definitely wasn't Jewish.  Hope someone out there has a better idea!